[Digestion] Midwest Renewable Energy Fair

[Harmon Seaver]

   The MREA this year was bigger than ever, major numbers of people
came -- in fact, on Friday it seemed like there were as many people or
more than you usually see on Saturday, but then on Saturday there were
so many people it was obnoxious. Hard to look at stuff, had to
constantly watch where you were going so as to not run into people,
hard to even get inside the tents at the workshops let alone get a
chair. Early Sat. am there was a 2.5 mile backup on the Hwy 10 coming
from Steven's Point at the turnoff to the fair.
    But I would really urge people on these lists to start attending
these fairs, if not the MREA (and I think it might be the biggest),
then a local one.
   The keynote speaker on Sat was James Kunstler, who has written a
number of books, the latest is "The Long Emergency". I just finished
it -- this is a MUST READ. In fact, you need to read it ASAP.
Seriously. But it's not just him, there were other people at the fair
giving much the same message --- many of the projections have been way
off, the world oil peak is right now, by 2010 it will be all downhill.
Natural gas has already peaked in the US and we are in serious
shortages on that already, most of it now comes from Canada and they
don't have much left either.
   Not that the oil will be totally gone that soon, but other serious
things are coinciding -- like by 2015, at it's present rate of growth,
China alone will need 100% of the world's oil, and India is about to
outgrow China in population. Not to mention all the other 3rd world
countries that are booming. Then there is the whole climate change
thing, water for irrigated agriculture is mostly gone, etc.
   There were three scientists from the Institute of Sustainable
Energy Education that gave a series of talks about this and also that
alternative fuels just aren't going to make a whole lot of difference.
One talk was "Bursting the Hydrogen Bubble". All of them are saying we
could have a major collapse of the trucking industry, industrial
agriculture, and then followed by the whole economy in as little as
ten years when the price of fuel jumps rapidly.
    Kunstler talks a lot about major dislocations in housing in the
US as well, because all those people in the suburbs won't be able to
heat their houses, or buy the fuel for their cars to drive to work in
the city -- if they even have a job left -- and also won't be able to
sell their houses either.
   Scary stuff -- you might also want to read Richard Manning's book
"Against the Grain: How Agriculture Hijacked Civilisation"  He's the
guy who wrote that article in Harpers awhile back -- "The Oil We Eat"
 which I think you read.  http://www.harpers.org/TheOilWeEat.html
   A lot of this stuff I already knew, but they really but it into
perspective. I think that anyone with half a clue needs to read what
these people are saying and take a good look at what their plans for
the future are, where they want to live, how they'll get the energy
they need, etc.
    I think there are a lot of Pollyannaish ideas about how technology
will somehow save us, biofuels will save us, etc. Of course they will
help -- for some people, those who have the forsight to prepare, but
for the masses -- it looks pretty dire -- at least in the 1st world.
In the undelveloped world (not including China and India here) things
won't be so severe, if they've been able to keep most of their local
economy intact and haven't had their farming  sector destroyed by
cheap US crop exports. In the US, however, there are going to be huge
numbers of hungry, angry people who have suddenly lost everything and
have no skills for survival into a non-cheap oil future.



-- 
Harmon Seaver