TCLocal thinking makes a lot of sense to me. Energy affordability, not
price or production, is the most important variable to understand.
Because it is governed by numerous feed backs and contingencies, its
dynamics in the short term (next few years, not to mention next few
months) are extremely hard to predict. Just considering oil price alone,
some of the variables that vary with price are:
1. The emerging economies consumption of world oil
2. Energy conservation adoptions
3. Oil buyer market as it shrinks or grows with fluctuations in oil price
4. Oil producer nation export share as affected by increasing profits
which heats up those economies and burns more oil internally, and oil
conservation policy shifts (keeping the oil in the ground for later
generations - known arrogantly as hoarding "our" oil, in imperial nations
experiencing oil shortages)
5. Oil region sabotage, privateering, and its return on investment that
grows with oil price, and the protection costs of international/internal
conflict over oil, which drives oil price up further.
In an attempt to illustrate the feedbacks and their effect on oil price,
I have created some Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs), which systems thinkers
have found provide insights about how system feedback structures generate
likely scenarios of system dynamics, the behavior over time of variables
that are important to understand, like future trends in the world price
of oil.
Although I am an admitted amateur at this kind of systems science, I will
send a copy of these CLDs and accompanying analysis to TCLocal, and to
anyone who asks.
Karl North
Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
www.geocities.com/northsheep/
"Mother Nature never farms without animals" - Albert Howard
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
Sun, 12 Oct 2008 20:34:22 -0400 Jon Bosak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> [Patricia Haines:]
> | this discussion is all very present-oriented - if you're
> listening
> | at all to Bethany and Jon's TCLocal work, you'll know that
> "energy
> | descent" - what I've been thinking of as post-peak oil - is going
> | to hit far sooner than we realized, especially now that the world
> | economic system is experiencing such upheavals. This means that
> we
> | MUST move QUICKLY toward local food self-sufficiency.
>
> Economic collapse for financial reasons unrelated to peak oil is
> one of the possibilities we've been talking about for the last
> couple of years in TCLocal presentations, though not one that most
> people have taken seriously until lately. What we've said is that
> economic collapse may push the peak of production out a ways due
> to decreased demand, but that we would still be in an energy
> descent situation simply because no one would have money to buy
> much energy (despite lower prices).
>
> Having said that, it has to be recognized that the current
> meltdown has already eliminated much of the potential funding that
> would have enabled the implementation of the policies we've been
> promoting. So while it's no less urgent that we move toward
> increasing local self-sufficiency, we're going to have to
> concentrate on actions that can be carried out inexpensively.
>
> This is one reason that I find the central market idea attractive;
> apparently the City has to tear up the Commons to perform
> unavoidable once-in-a-century repair work on sewer and water mains
> (though there seems to be some controversy about that). So if the
> City has to put the Commons back together again anyway, it might
> as well be in a form that promotes local food distribution and
> production in the ways that have been discussed in this thread.
> Permanent roofed stalls of the kind I've seen in Latin America
> couldn't be more expensive than some of the proposals being
> floated for a rebuilt Commons and would certainly be more useful.
>
> Beyond that -- I think we'll need to reassess the situation after
> the dust has settled in the financial arena. Personally, I had
> hoped to see local government revenues stay available a while
> longer than it looks like they're going to. And much as it pains
> me to say so, it's quite possible that big-box distribution will
> get a shot in the arm from the sharply reduced incomes we can see
> on the horizon as unemployment becomes widespread.
>
> This isn't going to be easy.
>
> Jon
>
>
>
>
>
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