…still seems pretty accurate as stock markets crumble (as does the monbiot quote).

but of course financial market meltdown isn’t anything compared to what it’ll be like as oil supply starts to fall by 7 to 20% per year. hold tight and get those veg in the ground!

Bailout blues | Energy Bulletin. Thanks Richard - I feel like that about the news too. Instead of writing something eloquent I drank some beer and put on some very loud drum and bass. Great fun.

The issue is that capitalism involves lending money at interest. If you lend at 5%, then one of two things must happen. Either the money supply must increase by 5% or the velocity of circulation must increase by 5%. In either case, if this growth is not met by a concomitant increase in the supply of goods and services, it becomes inflationary and the system collapses. But a perpetual increase in the supply of goods and services will eventually destroy the biosphere. Monbiot.com » Identity Politics in Climate Change Hell

these people may be a tiny bit insane.

My friend Graham has just posted his latest response in an ongoing debate which is well worth reading. I’m with Graham all the way! Thanks for making the effort to to do all the writing Graham.

IndyMac Bank has gone bust. This is the second biggest financial institution ever to go bust in America. The reason is that too many people were losing confidence in it and were trying to withdraw their money. Because the housing market is not growing the bank would not be able to meet all these requests. So the regulators moved in and seized it’s assets. People now can’t get their money!

Pyramid schemes operate a little differently. The classic pyramid is fairly easy to see through. However there are more subtle versions as explained in the Wikipedia article. Debt-based money systems strike me as another very subtle version of the same thing. The economy must grow to prevent the system collapsing. Debt-based money systems are what we all use - euros, dollars and pounds.

When economic growth slows or stops, the ‘pyramid’ of lending that debt-based money systems rely on starts to collapse. In previous recessions, a few of the most exposed lenders would go bust and some people at the bottom of the pile would feel the pain. When the economy picked up again things would get back to normal. However, if we are at or close to peak oil there may be no more economic growth. Conventional growth based economics is due to collapse - it’ll be a bumpy ride and will take many years to pan out. But it will happen.

This will be a relief to me as it is hard living in a world where most people are so deluded that they believe in perpetual economic growth as a good thing…. (unfortunately economic collapse might increase the number of deluded people believing in fairies and a monotheistic god…)

(EDIT: Richard Heinberg has an excellent analysis of the current problems. He explains why the current situation is unprecedented in history.)

well it took them a bit longer than they might have hoped… but now that the price is right, the big boys are getting ready to start pumping oil and profits back to the UK and US… a win-win scenario! (oh, except for the Iraqi people of course…)

essential reading: david holmgren’s new future scenarios website.

some good quotes from the site:

There is a huge body of evidence that the next energy transition will not follow the pattern of recent centuries to more concentrated and powerful sources. The likelihood that this transition will be to one of less energy is such an anathema to the psycho-social foundations and power elites of modern societies that it is constantly misinterpreted, ignored, covered up or derided.

The explosion of economic activity based on financial services and information technology in the dominant economies during the early 90’s gave some credibility to this concept of the “weightless economy”, although it is now clear that globalisation simply shifted the consumption of resources to other countries to support this growth in the service economies.

The gentle whine of the electric milk float is a sound I remember vividly from my childhood slumbers. This quiet and efficient vehicle delivered our daily milk early each morning. In many parts of the UK they also delivered bread, fruit-juice and other perishables.

The beauty of an electric milk float is that it can charge each night when not doing the rounds and the electric motor is very efficient for the stop-start of a delivery round. Also, by delivering early they can be fairly sure that people are in to pick up their produce.

I think a Transition Town project somewhere should (if they haven’t already) start up a ‘local food float’ initiative and get a fleet of floats back on the road. Perhaps the ‘local food float’ could load up at a central distribution point where local producers bring their produce for distribution the evening before. This would save vegetable box schemes some of their distribution costs. Farming Today recently ran some programmes on how rising fuel costs are hitting local producers just as hard as the supermarkets. Conventional sustainability wisdom says that local producers will benefit as fuel costs rise as they can finally out compete the supermarkets on something - however most ‘local’ producers still rely on oil based distribution to get their produce out to the consumers - or for the consumers to drive to their farm.

Some great info on milk floats at milkfloats.org.uk.

I would like to echo Graham and point you to Rob’s excellent interview with David Fleming for brilliant insights on where we are with liquid fuels and some options for the medium term.

Of course this is all ridiculously hopeful given Brown and Bush’s sabre rattling today which makes me so angry at their stupidity. How can Gordon Brown sleep at night? It took Tony Blair 10 years to go this bonkers. Bloody idiots.