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Re: green makeover post
Posted by: "Robert Waldrop"
Sat Mar 22, 2008 10:26 am (PDT)
And, if anyone needs any help with "procrastination", here is an expanded version of the message I sent to roe2, that I sent to the Oklahoma Sustainability Network listserv shortly after I posted here on the subject. It is a polemical call to action, I think it is one of the best essays I have ever written on the subject.
Bob Waldrop, OKC
Feb 29, 2008
This past week the price of crude oil hit 3 new highs. It goes up and then backs off a little, and then surges forward again, like a tide coming in. . .
And like the ocean tides. . . there is no stopping what is coming at us.
Our political leadership class, across the ideological spectrum, and at all levels of government, is failing this historical test. There is an occasional exception, but not enough to materially affect the end game. The Maps for Millionaires vote this coming Tuesday here in Oklahoma City is but a small snapshot of the "Let them eat cake" mentality that holds our leaders in its deadly grip.
Two years ago, I dived into our "extreme green renovation". The day we bought about 60% of the insulation we used, we literally cleaned out one Home Depot store of cellulose insulation. I noticed it took about 2 weeks for them to restock.
We are presently in another phase of our home renovation, and to get everything we needed for one project, I had to go to 4 different Lowes stores, and I cleaned out the inventory of 3 of them, and about half the inventory of the 4th (1 x 3 x 8 premium furring strips). Expected restock time (I asked): about 2 weeks, maybe.
Such is the world of our just in time inventory system. And JIT is a fine thing, as long e.g. as no more than 6 people at a time in central Oklahoma decide they want to do a super-insulation project for their 1500 sq ft houses on any given Saturday.
Central Oklahoma has about 300,000 households, and probably 2/3rds of them live in single family houses. At 6 houses every 2 weeks. . . it would take 961 years, except that it would take longer since many of those houses are twice the size of ours. OK, so maybe we could do 12 every 2 weeks and then it would only take 480 years.
If a line forms at Lowes and Home Depot for insulation, inventory will deplete rapidly. Sure, they presumably have a way to call for emergency inventory re-stocks, but if a line is forming at Home Despots around here, that's probably true elsewhere also, and how much surge capacity is there in the nation's insulation manufacturing system? I don't know the answer to that question.
The easiest thing to do regarding energy conservation is to procrastinate. Which, like just in time inventory systems, isn't a problem as long as energy doesn't become a problem.
However, the problem with an energy crisis is -- it never happens on a good day. In fact, there just isn't a good day to have an energy crisis.
So we can all bet on the fact that as the price of energy increases, there will come a serious "choke point" that is followed by what sociologists call "punctuated equilibrium" -- a time when what we know as "normality" is radically altered by rapidly changing circumstances that are, for the most part, beyond our individual or community control. This choke point will undoubtedly vary from place to place and from household to household.
Looking at the world, entire countries are already at a "choke point energy crisis". I believe I have written recently here about. . . starvation in North Korea. . . bulldozers and soldiers driving people out of cities in Zimbabwe. . . South African electrical blackouts. . . and miscellaneous stories from elsewhere in the third world about the problems high energy prices are causing there.
Even here, in the "land of plenty", in the past year we've seen the oil pipeline dry up "at the extremities", mostly the high central plains areas north of us.
Meanwhile, wheat -- which last year was selling for four bucks a bushel -- is now selling for TWENTY-FIVE DOLLARS a bushel. And that isn't a typo. We are exactly one crop failure away from a world wide grain shortage. The giant lakes of milk and mountains of butter in Europe, the bulging grain elevators in the United States -- all gone and empty. There's been news of that here recently too.
Every day the business section of the paper has news of another financial crisis. The feds are busy cutting interest rates, which is a fine thing except that there is a limit to how low they can go (what happens when interest rates are cut to 0% and still the economy doesn't return to "normal"?). The government and media are reduced to fiddling with statistics like the inflation and unemployment rate, to disguise how bad things are getting. Leaders -- who apparently aren't aware that $4/gallon gasoline is coming soon (!!!) -- constantly tell us "There will be no recession", even as people start worrying about going past recession into a second Great Depression.
Connect the dots. Energy crisis. Financial crisis. Food crisis. Climate instability.
Just how many crises can our "managers" juggle at any one time?
Isn't one of the lessons of the Katrina event that despite many confident claims by our leaders ("We are Americans, we can do anything"), the United States simply cannot manage a disaster of that magnitude? Let us recall -- and never forget -- that the poor of New Orleans were left behind to fend for themselves. When the going got rough in New Orleans -- the feds, the state, and the local government cut and ran, "every man for himself", leaving thousands of people behind for the Katrina wolf to devour.
These are all harbingers of things to come.
Everything is connected these days. "Cascading faults" is not only a problem with electricity grids, it is a problem for our entire economy and way of life.
For many years, we have heard predictions of energy and food and climate crises, and since we have managed to muddle along thus far, those predictions have merged with the background noise and lack urgency.
But the fact that our ears don't want to hear these things, does not change the reality of the in-coming tides of cascading crises.
It won't be long before tens of millions of people wake up and decide they need a lot more energy conservation in their lives. When that happens, and you go to Home Despot or Lowes, you will find long lines and empty shelves.
Specifically -- these items will be in high demand, their prices will radically escalate, and there will be periodic shortages of --
+ storm windows
+ storm doors
+ double paned, gas filled windows
+ insulation
+ wood burning stoves
+ weatherstripping and other common energy conservation supplies.
The time to super-insulate your house is BEFORE the energy crisis hits.
That of course is a fine and pious thing to say, but how do we move from intellectually understanding this to actually implementing it?
Here's what I did. I have never mentioned this little detail before in all the thousands of words I have written about our extreme green house renovation. To motivate myself to spend the money, do the work, and put up with the aggravation, I decided -- as an interior, emotional response -- to just go ahead and declare, in my own life, an "Energy Crisis."
Think of it as "method acting", "Bob believing and acting on his own bobaganda". In every decision, I told myself, "I won't be able to afford this next year, and I am going to really want it, I don't want to be huddling with the dogs and cats in the dark to keep warm in the winter." Been there, done that (a lot in the 1980s), it is no fun. Being chronically cold over an entire winter because you can't afford to adequately heat your house is at best "very tedious" on a good day, and at worst utterly depressing and demoralizing on a bad day.
So the "inside story" is that I went through my own personal energy crisis two years ago, and as a result got a lot of work done. Now when I look at these incoming tides, I am not as worried as I would be if I lived in a house with minimal insulation, no passive solar, and no non-grid-connected alternatives to keep my house comfortable.
I invite everyone to just go ahead and declare an energy crisis in your own life, and then make your decisions on work and spending money accordingly. Even if you don't have time to do the work right at the moment, stock up on what you will need to do this work later.
Between the time that I bought the first batch of insulation in 2005, and the last load, which was about 4 weeks, the price of the insulation had gone up 20%. It is more expensive now than it was then. And next year it will be even more expensive. You can bet on that and take it to the bank.
Nothing is going to stop the on-coming energy crisis.
The time to stop it was 30 years ago, and we missed that chance. Now what is left is adaptation. Those who adapt early (and alas, probably also "often") will do a lot better in the long run than those who wait until the last minute.
Remember the story of the grasshopper and the ant.
These days we think of that fable as a quaint story we use to instill a "good work ethic" in children. But that story has been around for a long time -- some versions are dated to 300 BC. For most of the history of this narrative, it has taught life and death issues. In an age without a social safety net, those who did not look ahead and "prepare for the days of necessity" died of starvation. We can all hope that those days don't return -- but if that hope is to be a prophecy and not an idle wish -- then it will be because we, as individuals, households, and local communities -- embrace the fable of the grasshopper and the ant anew, and prepare now for the days of necessity which are coming.
So go ahead and embrace your own personal "energy crisis" and get through it -- and be done with it! -- while there are still plenty of affordable resources around so you can develop your own household's adaptations to the rising tide of energy and food crises. Yes, it will be work, and it will cost money, and there will be aggravation and hassle, but in the end, you will improve your own personal situation so much that you will understand that it is worth every dollar, every aching muscle, and every moment of aggravation.
You will also end up making money on the deal. I am. My return on my investment (in terms of money I don't have to spend now for energy) increased to 8% this past year. Every year, as the price of energy goes up, my tax free return on my investment will go up. I just updated my energy use charts at
http://www.energyconservationinfo.or...erformance.htm which chronicle my household's energy consumption, 2004-2007. See for yourself.
I am laughing and dancing all the way to the bank. We do not have to be at the mercy of giant energy corporations. We can gain control of our energy "destinies" and insulate (literally) our families and households from the rising tide of energy, food, and climate crisis. It doesn't happen by just wishing and talking though. We have to take action, spend money -- defer present gratification for future gain -- work smart and work hard.
The day is soon coming when we will either be very glad that we did this work -- or desperately sorry that we allowed procrastination to be the thief of our time. The value of the United States dollar is rapidly declining, consider keeping some of your household savings in the form of energy conservation and passive solar retrofits of your dwelling.
Selling stock market or other dollar denominated assets to buy energy conservation is not "spending money" or "withdrawing from savings".
Instead, consider this to be a reallocation of your investment portfolio into a secure and certain investment that will pay you a tax free dividend that will go up every time the price of energy increases, and retain its value even if -- when!!! -- the stock market falls through the floor.
Something wicked in the form of a very lean and hungry wolf really is coming our way. If he procrastinates along the way so that we have more time to get ready, so much the better. But don't doubt that sooner or later the wolf will show up at your door. When that happens, be ready.
Bob Waldrop, Oklahoma City