I was coming from Port Orchard/Bremerton on the 3pm ferry and decided to go first to my Des Moines residence on an absolutely tight bus schedule. My first return bus picked up three wheelchairs and dropped them off, so I didn’t get to my bank in time. Needed cash, but that ATM outside was out of order, so downtown on express bus, but the secound ATM I tried was also out of order. Okay, now I need to wait 30 minutes for another metro # 5, third ATM worked, but the #5 then was over 15 minutes late and by now, my ETA at Phinney Ridge was after 8:20, so I gave up. Went to First Thursday at the Art Museum instead, which was an extremely well-attended event.

Our society is not set up for effective, constrained energy living, what I experienced on a minor level will be general reality for people coping with various breakdowns of complex systems. Regardless of the fate of SPOA, the issues of resource depletion are not going to go away and basic living difficulties are going to become more commonplace. There remains a cultural need for a community forum where people can discuss resource depletion in realistic ways and to plan/prepare themselves.

There is a huge marketplace for end of the world cycle type of thinking, just look at the 2012 phenomemon or the Left Behing Rapture series or the lecture just given at Phinney Ridge by that ET-God Messenger quack, Marshall Vian Summers this past weekend. My own tinfoil beliefs are at these ’social memes’ are cultural psy-ops to explain, manipulate and control various sub-sections of the public. For sure, a lot of these ‘disasters’ are sure to happen, as a direct consequences of our civilizations’s demands and extractions from our abundant, but finite and ecologically constrained world. Witn the wrong understandings and attractive explanatory myths, it is more likely that present trends will not be reversed, destructive practices not ceased, necessary infrastructure investments not made, ecosystems not preserved and the eventual outcome of the ever cascading crises to be much worse than what needs to be.

I have just read over the Peak oil explanation of this web link and the links embedded in those articles. The info is really pretty good and the presentation not excessive or hysterical at all, it is a good, sober and reasonable exposition and I am guess that a number of minds not just one or two added to the writing.

I am disappointed in, but accepting of the evolution of SPOA. This is a bit critical, but it seems that what has happened is a logical result of various decisions and actions made by core SPOA principals to establish SPOA as an proponent of early peak and imminent hard crash scenarious well at the same time disrespecting and discounting the opinions, values and beliefs of more moderate members of the peak oil and sustainability community.

What seems to be happening in reality is in slow motion however, and many of the leading peak oil writers look like they are very wrong in their timelines as well as their dismissal of emerging petroleum/gas recovery technologies and other energy developments. I think this group’s love affair with the more lunatic side of the peak oil community like Kuntsler, Ruppert, Darley, Duncan Simmons and Savinar is a mistake (even if they are fun and often enlightening to read).

Then when the simple costs and realities of doing or managing anything, in this case running a group and community network - on the volunteer energies of a shrinking group of enthusiasts - became too great relative to the opportunity costs for these enthusiasts, the group’s fate moved toward the path of dissolution. SPOA decided not to have a legal structure nor establish any type of business enterprise or cash flow other than voluntary donations.

It may be that taking care of one’s family and spending time with your daughter, watching her grow and learn, sharing in her joys and discoveries, expressing love and teaching her about things you understand, are far, far more important to one’s survival and happiness than organizing a lecture series on peak oil. It is good for people to get clear senses of their priorities and to nourish themselves and their close ones.

This doesn’t mean that peak oil is dead as an issue nor that there is no longer reason not to maintain a public forum for its discussion and exposition. What it does mean is that SPOA as a group entity has lost momentum, direction and energy. I personally feel that while the life boat concept is sensible and actually necessary, that the community outreach portion is just as critically essential.

Lots of talk and writing was devoted to building a resilient community, but in actual practice, a form of cliquism and exclusion seemed to be practiced. You either agreed whole-hearted or you didn’t belong.

So dissolution may be the best solution right now. I do favor a resurrection of SPOA after it has regained focus. I welcome meetings over meals and drinks, where it would be possible to discuss goals, focuses and positions with the main stakeholders in the SPOA brand. I sort of favor a passing of leadership to a new generation of SPOA core with careful consideration given to the preferences of the people who have contribute so much to SPOA.

So what will works? What is desired? What do you want to do? Right now, we have probably have little more than a year until the next superspike in energy and commodity prices. CERA and Goldman Sachs have both issued warnings that a ‘poor’ investment climate is delaying petroleum and energy infrastructure investments and a supply crunch is heading to us in 2010/11. We really ought to believe those guys on this. SPOA could continue to be a bright light spreading insight, knowledge and practical advice to the larger community as people face what is certain to be unfortunate discontinuties in their understanding of reality. This is something worthwhile to do. -Joe

Then we have ammonia (nitrogen fertilizer) not yet price adjusted from the highs inspired by the main feed stock - natural gas. Haven’t read that much on this issue, but what I have says that US wheat farmers are not applying the same level of ammonia to their fields due to their cash crunch and they simply can’t afford to. It does pencil out.

No shortage for us, just some higher prices, but people in Egypt or Pakistan may fare differently. My question the real sticker shocker will be meat and particularly beef.

Many people in America might have improved diets from a health standpoint, even if they don’t like them much. -Joe

Just read an excellent article and just as good-better comments (to the article) from Catherine Austin Fitts. Here is the link: http://solari.com/blog/?p=2005

Here are some quotes from that article:
“In fact, if you look at the value of most 401(k)s and IRAs lately, a great deal has already been “confiscated.” The mainstream media has described these losses as part of the normal economic cycle, but this is a fallacy. The losses are the result of a financial coup d’etat, including fraudulent housing bubbles, pump and dump schemes, naked short selling, precious metals price suppression, and active intervention in the markets by the government and central bank. Which begs the question, where is all this going?

I began hearing questions about whether it was safe to leave money in 401(k)s and IRAs late last year. These questions were due, in part, to a report in the Carolina Journal that floated the idea of federally-managed retirement accounts. And there were other concerns: the ease with which financial interests have manipulated Congress, the passage of the highly unpopular bailout package in 2008, and the growing federal deficit. These issues have raised the possibility of greater financial losses in 2009, increased capital controls, and possible constraints on 401(k)s and IRAs.”

Catherine quoting the Wall Street Journal:
“About 50 million Americans have 401(k) plans, which have $2.5 trillion in total assets, estimates the Employee Benefit Research Institute in Washington. In the 12 months following the stock market’s peak in October 2007, more than $1 trillion worth of stock value held in 401(k)s and other “defined-contribution” plans was wiped out, according to the Boston College research center. If individual retirement accounts, which consist largely of money rolled over from 401(k)s, are taken into account, about $2 trillion of stock value evaporated.”

“Congress has begun looking at ways to overhaul the 401(k) system … One such plan called for establishing accounts that would receive annual contributions from the federal government, and would offer a guaranteed, but relatively low, rate of return. Another proposed automatically investing contributions in an index fund that holds stocks and bonds, with the mix getting more conservative as workers approach retirement.”

So, the solution is that the victims cede even more power to the perpetrators. Who’s pushing these ideas? Why is the Wall Street Journal floating such a trial balloon on the front page? (Catherine Fitts)

The comments are very worth reading, but one about the movie “Three Days of the Condor” was very sobering. Quote from the movie off this letter:

Gordon:

Three Days of the Condor is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITES. For sure, we will do it. One of the greatest quotes every to come out of Hollywood about the challenge before us:

Higgins: It’s simple economics. Today it’s oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Joe Turner: Ask them?
Higgins: Not now - then! Ask ‘em when they’re running out. Ask ‘em when there’s no heat in their homes and they’re cold. Ask ‘em when their engines stop. Ask ‘em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won’t want us to ask ‘em. They’ll just want us to get it for ‘em!

Wouldn’t mind watching this movie with a group of like-minded people. Possibility of renting/buying it and showing it on a movie night based upon the Soup Night concept? -Joe