Nice to know people out there are paying attention............
More restaurants are going green by going local
One Los Angeles menu boasts dishes where 90 percent of the ingredients were raised within 400 miles.
By Daniel B. Wood | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
Los Angeles
One course at a time, David Siegel consumes five gourmet dishes remarkable for their flavor and also for where the ingredients came from: sardines and sand dabs from Monterey Bay, Calif., squab and veal from the state's central coast, and strawberries from Oxnard, Calif.
"Ordinarily, I would be gun-shy and run the other way when I hear the word 'sardine,' " says Mr. Siegel. But "because they didn't have to preserve it in salt, this had a freshness and nonfishy taste I've never experienced. It was delightful."
The comment is music to the ears of Neal Fraser, chef of the well-known Grace Restaurant here, who designed a "Close to Home" menu where 90 percent of the ingredients are sourced within 400 miles. Advancing a so-called "socially and environmentally responsible" agenda throughout his restaurant – which includes serving filtered local tap water rather than bottled water from afar and fueling his own car with leftover vegetable oil – Mr. Fraser is part of a growing nationwide restaurant movement to go "green." The ideas are not new, say experts, but they are gaining fresh currency because of the burgeoning global environmental movement and new generations of youth with budding enthusiasm for long-established notions of sustainability, ecological health, and food safety.
As exemplified by Grace Restaurant, one key idea is to leave less of a carbon footprint wherever possible – choosing local meats, vegetables, fish, and fruit over those shipped from thousands of miles away. Another push is to support smaller local ranchers and farmers who avoid the kinds of animal diets and pesticides that are typically used for produce and meat and are often served in the nation's 1 million restaurants.
There is a laundry list of other strategies to reduce global warming: from recycling and composting waste to conserving water and lights, using nontoxic cleaners, tapping wind or other "green" power, and designing minimal-impact buildings. Like Grace, many restaurants are moving away from bottled water because of environmental concerns about bottle waste, refrigeration needed, transportation costs, and shipping containers.
"I just began to think about the future of the planet that my daughters would be inheriting and their children and so forth," says Fraser, who decided it was time to change after seeing the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," starring Al Gore.
Supporters report more interest by owners and diners than at any time since such notions began coalescing in the late 1960s. "The movement today is really huge and the debate is getting a far broader audience now," says Wynnie Stein, co-owner of Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, N.Y., considered one of the national pioneers of locally sourced organic farming. "It's everybody from restaurants to colleges to food-service directors in schools, hospitals. People are very concerned about the environment for themselves and future generations and there is a new urgency to dramatically expand on ideas that have been around for years."
One measure of the interest is the growth of the Green Restaurant Association, which certifies restaurants coast to coast and encourages them to take four new steps to help the environment each year. Founded in 1990 in San Diego, the association has seen the number of its certified restaurants skyrocket from 60 to 300 in the past two years. The group is also negotiating with major restaurant chains, which could rapidly boost membership to 5,000.
"In the last year we have gotten more interest than in the previous 16 years combined," says founder and director Michael Oshman. "It's beginning to build exponentially from interest of previous decades."
Such restaurants are also drawing attention to the plight of smaller farms, ranches, and suppliers whose practices fit the model but are in danger of being lost.
"Government policies are making it very hard for the smaller, independent, family-run businesses, which operate with higher environmental standards," says Mike Antoci, who runs Superior Anhausner Foods, a Los Angeles distributor. "Restaurants like Fraser's are starting to raise public consciousness about what is at stake."
The new spotlight is creating a domino effect, say observers, in which restaurant customers begin to ask more questions about the local-food movement.
"We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of people who value the availability of food produced right in their own community," says Linda Halley, who runs Fairview Gardens, a nonprofit organic farm and education center in Goleta, Calif.
Some observers question some of the claims of the local-food movement. They say it's entirely possible that food grown locally could have a considerably larger carbon footprint than food flown halfway around the world because transportation represents only a tiny fraction – some experts say as little as 2 percent – of the energy required to grow, store, process, and package the food.
Supporters say that the movement is raising questions that society needs to ask. Mr. Oshman notes that Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, with 200 stores nationwide, was the first large chain to be certified green last year and this year has announced it will run its stores on windpower exclusively. "If larger chains like this can do it, it shows this is not a fringe thing anymore."
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Great Op-ed this morning........
My blog is sucking right now, but things sure are good! Great Summer all round, maturing ideas lead more people to our doors every day. It's time to look at some land, and some housing for our crew.........Here's a great article on the evolving west re:drought and self reliance.........
July 29, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Sunny California
By MIKE MADISON
Winters, Calif.
THERE is no better year for farming in California than the first year of a drought. The lakes and reservoirs still hold ample water from the year before, and the farmer can go about his chores without inconvenient rains confounding his schedule. Sunlight pours down from a cloudless sky. The crops prosper. Life is good.
That’s our situation in the Sacramento Valley at the moment. We’ve had an unusually dry year, and I had to start irrigating in January — ordinarily our rainiest month — and I’ve kept at it all through the spring and summer.
Even if I were housebound and someone else was doing the irrigating, I would know from one glance at the electric bill. It takes a lot of power to move that water around, and it’s the single biggest expense on my farm. Some of my neighbors, who farm on a bigger scale than I do, have electric bills in the summer of $8,000 a month.
This year I’m converting my irrigation to solar power, installing silicon panels that turn sunlight into electricity. This will drive the pumps that lift water from underground and push it through the eight miles of plastic pipes that make up my irrigation system. Even though the panels are expensive, the return on my investment is about 12 percent, better than almost any stock or bond fund I could buy.
I’m not alone in the conversion to solar-powered irrigation. Drive the back roads around here and you will see solar panels on the roofs of barns and sheds or simply mounted on racks out in the open. If we keep at this long enough, we may reach the day when we can take down the miles of poles and wires that bring electricity from afar, and sell them for scrap.
In my neighborhood, walnuts are the preferred crop; they’re reliably profitable every year. But walnut trees are thirsty, and their irrigation has an urgency about it that will keep the walnut farmer awake at night. I didn’t want that particular worry in my life, and so I chose crops — apricots, olives, quince — that will tolerate a drought. I could skip irrigation for a year, and the trees would sulk, but they wouldn’t die.
Growing trees has a slower pace to it than farming row crops. The farmer of row crops — tomatoes, cucumbers, corn — believes that the future will arrive in about 110 days, maybe sooner. But the orchardist thinks in decades. He plants an orchard at great expense, and then waits six years for his first harvest. And it takes a decade after that to pay off his investment and start making money. To one who thinks in these terms, the year 2030 doesn’t seem far off.
As I mentioned, the first year of a drought is a gift to the farmer. Our apricot trees flowered under clear skies, the bees did their job, and in June we harvested a record crop. I sold fresh apricots, I dried apricots, and my wife put up 800 jars of apricot jam: straight apricot, apricot with lime, apricot with saffron. The other crops in the district — olives, walnuts, almonds, plums — are on the same track, heading for a record harvest.
But there is a dark side to this. If the first year of a drought is a gift, the second year is a worry, and the third year is a crisis. That crisis has a twist to it. In the third year, the lakes and reservoirs are empty, and not only is water in short supply, but so is electricity, for with empty reservoirs there is no flowing water to turn the hydroelectric turbines. We get power failures that frustrate irrigation and every other sort of industry. The farmers age a lot in those years.
Of course, the weather is undependable; it always has been, and our best guesses about it, like scientists’ predictions that a climate shift means that the West has many more years of drought ahead, are still guesses. But another observation, which 20 years ago would have seemed preposterous, is that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company is also not entirely dependable, and so we make our own arrangements for electricity.
We won’t know until next year whether this is the first year of a drought, or merely a lucky dry year sandwiched between two wet ones. Either way, we’re enjoying our gift year, and preparing for whatever might follow.
Mike Madison is a farmer and the author, most recently, of “Blithe Tomato.”
July 29, 2007
Op-Ed Contributor
Sunny California
By MIKE MADISON
Winters, Calif.
THERE is no better year for farming in California than the first year of a drought. The lakes and reservoirs still hold ample water from the year before, and the farmer can go about his chores without inconvenient rains confounding his schedule. Sunlight pours down from a cloudless sky. The crops prosper. Life is good.
That’s our situation in the Sacramento Valley at the moment. We’ve had an unusually dry year, and I had to start irrigating in January — ordinarily our rainiest month — and I’ve kept at it all through the spring and summer.
Even if I were housebound and someone else was doing the irrigating, I would know from one glance at the electric bill. It takes a lot of power to move that water around, and it’s the single biggest expense on my farm. Some of my neighbors, who farm on a bigger scale than I do, have electric bills in the summer of $8,000 a month.
This year I’m converting my irrigation to solar power, installing silicon panels that turn sunlight into electricity. This will drive the pumps that lift water from underground and push it through the eight miles of plastic pipes that make up my irrigation system. Even though the panels are expensive, the return on my investment is about 12 percent, better than almost any stock or bond fund I could buy.
I’m not alone in the conversion to solar-powered irrigation. Drive the back roads around here and you will see solar panels on the roofs of barns and sheds or simply mounted on racks out in the open. If we keep at this long enough, we may reach the day when we can take down the miles of poles and wires that bring electricity from afar, and sell them for scrap.
In my neighborhood, walnuts are the preferred crop; they’re reliably profitable every year. But walnut trees are thirsty, and their irrigation has an urgency about it that will keep the walnut farmer awake at night. I didn’t want that particular worry in my life, and so I chose crops — apricots, olives, quince — that will tolerate a drought. I could skip irrigation for a year, and the trees would sulk, but they wouldn’t die.
Growing trees has a slower pace to it than farming row crops. The farmer of row crops — tomatoes, cucumbers, corn — believes that the future will arrive in about 110 days, maybe sooner. But the orchardist thinks in decades. He plants an orchard at great expense, and then waits six years for his first harvest. And it takes a decade after that to pay off his investment and start making money. To one who thinks in these terms, the year 2030 doesn’t seem far off.
As I mentioned, the first year of a drought is a gift to the farmer. Our apricot trees flowered under clear skies, the bees did their job, and in June we harvested a record crop. I sold fresh apricots, I dried apricots, and my wife put up 800 jars of apricot jam: straight apricot, apricot with lime, apricot with saffron. The other crops in the district — olives, walnuts, almonds, plums — are on the same track, heading for a record harvest.
But there is a dark side to this. If the first year of a drought is a gift, the second year is a worry, and the third year is a crisis. That crisis has a twist to it. In the third year, the lakes and reservoirs are empty, and not only is water in short supply, but so is electricity, for with empty reservoirs there is no flowing water to turn the hydroelectric turbines. We get power failures that frustrate irrigation and every other sort of industry. The farmers age a lot in those years.
Of course, the weather is undependable; it always has been, and our best guesses about it, like scientists’ predictions that a climate shift means that the West has many more years of drought ahead, are still guesses. But another observation, which 20 years ago would have seemed preposterous, is that the Pacific Gas and Electric Company is also not entirely dependable, and so we make our own arrangements for electricity.
We won’t know until next year whether this is the first year of a drought, or merely a lucky dry year sandwiched between two wet ones. Either way, we’re enjoying our gift year, and preparing for whatever might follow.
Mike Madison is a farmer and the author, most recently, of “Blithe Tomato.”
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
Nice Article
Here I go again........Posting on my personal and professional Blogs, but this article is pretty great. Well written, and a good forward looking snapshot......
The Next West
What $7 gas means for the West
Higher energy prices will drive change in the sprawling West,
and its exurban development, recreation-based economies
By Courtney White
for Headwaters News
July 11, 2007
During the spike in gasoline prices last summer, our Representative, Tom Udall – a co-founder of the Peak Oil Caucus in Congress – warned us that one day we would be “wistful about $3-a-gallon-gas.”
Filling up my gas tank the other day in Santa Fe, and paying $3.49 a gallon for the privilege, I thought “Hey, I'm already wistful about $3 gas!” I just didn't think I would be so wistful so fast.
I had better get used to the feeling. All indicators suggest that gas prices are heading in only one direction ultimately: up. Perhaps way up.
If this is true, it has serious implications for the New West – implications that perhaps we should begin to consider.
The reasons for the upward trend in gas prices are complicated but boil down to the principal of supply and demand.
Globally, crude oil production rests at about 84 million barrels per day (mbd). Global demand is also about 84 mbd currently. A few years ago, however, demand was only 66 mbd; and it is projected to rise to 120 mbd by 2025.
Can production keep up with demand? Not likely. In fact, experts in the field are now suggesting that the current rate of 84 mbd may be about as much as the world can produce annually, give or take a million barrels.
In other words, oil production, in their parlance, has “plateaued.”
That's because while production of light crude oil in some parts of the world is increasing (slowly) it is declining in others (rapidly in some cases). So far, it's been a wash mostly – thus the plateau – and that's just the cheap, easy stuff. The rest of the globe's oil reserves are harder to reach or more expensive to produce – which is why we went for the easy stuff in the first place (we've burned up half the planet's known light crude oil reserves in less than 100 years, by the way).
This is why Peak Oil is so important, not because we will “run out” of oil – we won't – but because when production “peaks” and then drops (for good, by definition), even a tiny bit, it means the gap between supply and demand will expand relentlessly over time, resulting in higher prices. And if production drops by a lot, as some predict, then prices will rise substantially. Author's note: For a recent, readable analysis of Peak Oil see an article by Gail Tverberg
It's old school economics – and in the old days, high prices normally had two effects: it “crushed” demand while stimulating new production. Unfortunately, neither one appears to be happening today on a scale that matters.
In fact, despite higher prices at the pump, gasoline consumption in America has increased by 1.5 percent in the past twelve months. Then there's China, India, and other rapidly developing nations. Their demand for oil will not be “crushed” any time soon – not if they can help it.
As for increased production – well, as westerners know first hand oil companies are giving it their best shot. But none of the current exploration frenzy (and high profits) has changed a simple fact: the global “peak” of new oil discovery happened decades ago.
This is the basic reason why gas price have risen over the past six years. It's not a "refinery problem" or a "hurricane problem" or a "Middle East plot" or even an "oil company plot." It's a supply and demand problem. Look at the numbers: in 2000, oil sold for around $10-a-barrel. Today it sells for over $70. Many experts, including many in the oil industry itself, think that $80-a-barrel oil is inevitable, and soon.
Don't hold your breath for technology to ride to the rescue. An economic hydrogen-fuel cell car is a long way off. Ditto with solar. Besides, technology is only useful to those who can afford it.
Forget ethanol. It's a fraud.
So, what might $7 gas then mean for the New West, with its dependence on tourism and its embrace of urban and exurban sprawl? For that matter, what might it mean for the West as a whole – Old or New - with its extraordinary bounty of natural resources, its aridity, and its long distances?
The answer, I suspect, is this: we're going to be wistful about more than just $3 gas.
Old Wests
Change, of course, is inevitable – as are the inevitable laments.
In his memoir, A Walk Toward Oregon (2002), noted historian Alvin Josephy, Jr. quotes the famous western artist Frederic Remington in 1902 mourning the passing of the Old West and the arrival of something new: “I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever,” said Remington. “I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat, and now I see quite another thing where it all took place, but does not appeal to me.”
Josephy is sympathetic – but only up to a point. “As a historian of the American West, I also knew that, before and after Remington, each generation in the West had lamented in its own way the passing of its Old West.”
The original Old West of the Native Americans was replaced by a New West of missionaries and mountain men. That West was replaced by the brave new frontier of miners and soldiers; which gave way to homesteaders, farmers, ranchers, capitalists, doctors, city folk and so on. The next New West included artists, movie stars, dudes, automobiles, picnickers, oil men, and land speculators. Next up were bureaucrats, environmentalists, backpackers, migrant workers, Land Rovers, latte and, well, more land speculators (I'm filling in for Josephy here).
His point is this: every New West eventually becomes an Old West which is replaced in turn by something new, whether we like it or not.
It happened to Josephy as well. “The Old West that I had experienced was now gone too,” he wrote, “changed by industrial and military centers, interstate highways, recreation developments, trophy ranches and urban sprawl, conformity, high-tech pop culture, television, and economically stressed cattle and lumber operations struggling to survive against global competitors.”
“Components,” he concludes, “that will become someone else's Old West.”
My guess is that this inevitable transition has already started. $7 gas simply means this transition will pick up speed. This news is neither good nor bad necessarily (though it's hard to imagine indulging in a Remington-esque lament for the passing of parts of this New West) – instead, it just is.
But what does this mean exactly? No one knows. As someone once quipped “prediction is difficult, especially about the future” (I think it was Yogi Berra). I'm not a professional geographer or demographer, but since no one in either field has yet (as far as I know) plugged the variable of $7 gas into their models of the region's future, I'll take a stab at it.
I'll start with five principal effects that $7 gas will have on the New West:
1) Don't Bet the House on Recreation Anymore.
One of the early casualties of rising gas prices will be long-distance tourism, a victim of the West's legendary wide open spaces. As gas prices rise, recreation will become increasingly localized. Why drive to northern Wyoming to camp or stay in a B&B in southern Arizona when they are plenty of good choices closer to home? It's not just driving – higher air fares (and hotel room rates) are inevitable as well. In fact, it's a safe bet to say that any tourist activity involving fossil fuel will become more costly, which means all of them. Some people will still be able to afford to play, of course, but I'm not sure it's wise to build an economy based only on the whims of the wealthy.
2) The Juggernaut of Urban & Exurban Development Will Falter.
Cheap gas begat our love affair with the automobile which begat suburban and exurban (ranchette) development which begat an intense period of economic prosperity all across the West. But what will $7 gas beget? The entire suburban/exurban experiment of the past 60 years was built on the foundation, and the promise, of cheap fossil fuel.
Think about the two-hour one-way daily commute into Los Angeles for work, or the costs associated in reaching that second home in the woods, or just driving to the grocery store. And it's not just about driving – fossil fuel permeates nearly every aspect of suburban development and maintenance. When costs rise, we may reconsider our behavior. We may have to.
3) Water Will Become More Expensive:
Mark Twain famously quipped that in the West “Whiskey is for drinkin' and water is for fightin'.” And we know why – in the arid West water is our life source. Much of western history can be explained by the availability of cheap (i.e. subsidized) water – for agriculture, for new homes, new cities, and endless growth. But much of this water is pumped or otherwise dependent on fossil fuels for its delivery. Rising energy costs mean higher water costs, which, along with water's general scarcity, mean we'll be making more changes to our behavior in the future.
4) Economic Hardship Will Spread Upward:
As the basic necessities of life – food, energy, and water – become more expensive, the economic pain will be felt among the poor and disadvantaged of us first and hardest. This fact will have all sorts of ramifications, from increased crime to social unrest possibly. A recent study by the Santa Fe-based nonprofit Local Energy showed that while the annual median income of New Mexicans has remained relatively flat for the past thirty years – at approximately $29,000 – the cost of energy has risen steadily. In that widening gap lies trouble for many of us.
5) Expect More Oil & Gas Development – Perhaps a Lot More.
Our economic (and emotional) dependence on cheap fossil fuel as a nation means you ain't seen nothing yet in terms of oil and gas development. Marginal oil and gas fields, for example, are already looking not-so-marginal to oil companies. Eventually they won't look so marginal to the public either, I'm afraid. I worry about protected areas the most. Pressure is already building in the Midwest to crack open land that was set aside for protection in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in order to grow more industrial corn for ethanol production. If this happens, how safe are our parks, wildernesses, and refuges?
And if these sacred places aren't safe, what does this mean for society as a whole?
The Next West
There are things we can do – now – to prepare for the inevitability of change. In fact, the sooner we do something the better.
Again at the risk of making predictions, especially about the future (maybe it was Vice President Dan Qualye who said that), I'll hazard a few best guesses about what's coming next and what we might be able to do today.
I believe that a new word is going to dominate our lives in the upcoming decades: relocalization (it's not even a word yet – at least my computer's dictionary doesn't recognize it!).
Rising energy costs mean more and more of our daily lives, from food production to where we work and play, will be increasingly localized. This won't be by choice, as it is currently, but by necessity (that economic hardship thing again).
The key is to look at relocalization as an opportunity, not just a challenge. It can be a form of rediscovery – learning about our roots, about community, neighbors, gardens, and doing with less in general. One could even look at relocalization entrepreneurially – those individuals and organizations that get into the game early, by providing re-localized goods and services, will stand a very good chance at a profitable living as the transition begins to unfold.
In my opinion, relocalization includes the following (at least):
The Development of Local Food and Energy Sources:
Working landscapes will become critical again. So will the innovations currently taking place at the nexus of agriculture and ecology (this is where I would bet my money if I were a betting man) – a nexus that requires working lands. This is not to dismiss wilderness or the needs of wildlife – I believe $7 gas means we'll have plenty of wilderness again someday, in fact – but it does mean concentrating our efforts on answering an important question: could New Mexico feed itself? Could Utah? Or Montana? And if not, why not, and what can we do to stimulate local food and energy production?
Farm and Ranch Land Will Become Important Again:
So will farmers and ranchers (see the previous point). Local food and energy, as well as recreational opportunities, require local land that is available for these uses. We'll need local people to do this work too, as well as their local knowledge.
This means figuring out how – now – to keep the current generation of farmers and ranchers on the land, as well as encourage the next generation to stay, come back, or give agriculture a try. Furthermore, we're going to regret paving over all that prime agricultural land, I suspect – which will eventually raise another important question: how do we unpave some of it?
Restoration Will Become An Important Business. Producing local food and energy from working landscapes, especially in quantity, will require healthy land as well as best management practices that work "within nature's model." Unfortunately, while the "toolbox" of progressive stewardship is now well developed, a great deal of our land is in poor condition (for a variety of reasons), requiring restoration and remediation. The good news is that this work could afford local communities a bounty of jobs at good wages, if only we would begin to value it properly.
County Governments Will Rise In Influence:
Almost by definition, relocalization means political action and policy-making will become increasing redirected to local levels. In fact, as historian Patricia Limerick said recently, there's a good chance counties could become the key unit of governance in the West in the future.
Partly that's because the federal government is proving increasingly incapable of meeting the needs of citizens at the local level, but mostly it's because there's been so much grassroots innovation across the West in recent years that need for federal involvement is no longer as necessary as it once was. However, some sort of reform of county governance (increasing the number of commissioners, for example) will likely be necessary as things begin to change.
Co-Management of Public Lands Will Evolve Into the Norm:
For the reasons cited above, pressure will build on the federal land agencies, which control one-half of the West's 425,000 square miles, to adopt co-management principles with private organizations and associations on public land. The feds not only can't do it all currently, they won't be able to handle the upcoming transition either, due to staffing and budget reductions as well as other limitations.
Partnerships with private entities, including a new generation of grazing permittees, that aim at progressive, relocalized activities on working landscapes will become the norm in the 21st century, I believe.
But I could be wrong. As I said, no one really knows what's coming next. All we can say with confidence is that $7 gas (and higher) means that things will be very different here in the West. Whether it will be for better or worse depends on your point-of-view. I think it presents tremendous opportunities – even a new frontier, if you will. Hopefully, we can keep the latte and avoid the gunfights this time.
As for me, I'm trying to get over my wistfulness by making fewer visits to the gas pump. It's hard, I'll admit, but then no one said change is ever easy.
(1) For a recent, readable analysis of Peak Oil see an article by Gail 1) For a recent Tverberg at: http://www.energybulletin.net/31332.html
The Next West
What $7 gas means for the West
Higher energy prices will drive change in the sprawling West,
and its exurban development, recreation-based economies
By Courtney White
for Headwaters News
July 11, 2007
During the spike in gasoline prices last summer, our Representative, Tom Udall – a co-founder of the Peak Oil Caucus in Congress – warned us that one day we would be “wistful about $3-a-gallon-gas.”
Filling up my gas tank the other day in Santa Fe, and paying $3.49 a gallon for the privilege, I thought “Hey, I'm already wistful about $3 gas!” I just didn't think I would be so wistful so fast.
I had better get used to the feeling. All indicators suggest that gas prices are heading in only one direction ultimately: up. Perhaps way up.
If this is true, it has serious implications for the New West – implications that perhaps we should begin to consider.
The reasons for the upward trend in gas prices are complicated but boil down to the principal of supply and demand.
Globally, crude oil production rests at about 84 million barrels per day (mbd). Global demand is also about 84 mbd currently. A few years ago, however, demand was only 66 mbd; and it is projected to rise to 120 mbd by 2025.
Can production keep up with demand? Not likely. In fact, experts in the field are now suggesting that the current rate of 84 mbd may be about as much as the world can produce annually, give or take a million barrels.
In other words, oil production, in their parlance, has “plateaued.”
That's because while production of light crude oil in some parts of the world is increasing (slowly) it is declining in others (rapidly in some cases). So far, it's been a wash mostly – thus the plateau – and that's just the cheap, easy stuff. The rest of the globe's oil reserves are harder to reach or more expensive to produce – which is why we went for the easy stuff in the first place (we've burned up half the planet's known light crude oil reserves in less than 100 years, by the way).
This is why Peak Oil is so important, not because we will “run out” of oil – we won't – but because when production “peaks” and then drops (for good, by definition), even a tiny bit, it means the gap between supply and demand will expand relentlessly over time, resulting in higher prices. And if production drops by a lot, as some predict, then prices will rise substantially. Author's note: For a recent, readable analysis of Peak Oil see an article by Gail Tverberg
It's old school economics – and in the old days, high prices normally had two effects: it “crushed” demand while stimulating new production. Unfortunately, neither one appears to be happening today on a scale that matters.
In fact, despite higher prices at the pump, gasoline consumption in America has increased by 1.5 percent in the past twelve months. Then there's China, India, and other rapidly developing nations. Their demand for oil will not be “crushed” any time soon – not if they can help it.
As for increased production – well, as westerners know first hand oil companies are giving it their best shot. But none of the current exploration frenzy (and high profits) has changed a simple fact: the global “peak” of new oil discovery happened decades ago.
This is the basic reason why gas price have risen over the past six years. It's not a "refinery problem" or a "hurricane problem" or a "Middle East plot" or even an "oil company plot." It's a supply and demand problem. Look at the numbers: in 2000, oil sold for around $10-a-barrel. Today it sells for over $70. Many experts, including many in the oil industry itself, think that $80-a-barrel oil is inevitable, and soon.
Don't hold your breath for technology to ride to the rescue. An economic hydrogen-fuel cell car is a long way off. Ditto with solar. Besides, technology is only useful to those who can afford it.
Forget ethanol. It's a fraud.
So, what might $7 gas then mean for the New West, with its dependence on tourism and its embrace of urban and exurban sprawl? For that matter, what might it mean for the West as a whole – Old or New - with its extraordinary bounty of natural resources, its aridity, and its long distances?
The answer, I suspect, is this: we're going to be wistful about more than just $3 gas.
Old Wests
Change, of course, is inevitable – as are the inevitable laments.
In his memoir, A Walk Toward Oregon (2002), noted historian Alvin Josephy, Jr. quotes the famous western artist Frederic Remington in 1902 mourning the passing of the Old West and the arrival of something new: “I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever,” said Remington. “I saw the living, breathing end of three American centuries of smoke and dust and sweat, and now I see quite another thing where it all took place, but does not appeal to me.”
Josephy is sympathetic – but only up to a point. “As a historian of the American West, I also knew that, before and after Remington, each generation in the West had lamented in its own way the passing of its Old West.”
The original Old West of the Native Americans was replaced by a New West of missionaries and mountain men. That West was replaced by the brave new frontier of miners and soldiers; which gave way to homesteaders, farmers, ranchers, capitalists, doctors, city folk and so on. The next New West included artists, movie stars, dudes, automobiles, picnickers, oil men, and land speculators. Next up were bureaucrats, environmentalists, backpackers, migrant workers, Land Rovers, latte and, well, more land speculators (I'm filling in for Josephy here).
His point is this: every New West eventually becomes an Old West which is replaced in turn by something new, whether we like it or not.
It happened to Josephy as well. “The Old West that I had experienced was now gone too,” he wrote, “changed by industrial and military centers, interstate highways, recreation developments, trophy ranches and urban sprawl, conformity, high-tech pop culture, television, and economically stressed cattle and lumber operations struggling to survive against global competitors.”
“Components,” he concludes, “that will become someone else's Old West.”
My guess is that this inevitable transition has already started. $7 gas simply means this transition will pick up speed. This news is neither good nor bad necessarily (though it's hard to imagine indulging in a Remington-esque lament for the passing of parts of this New West) – instead, it just is.
But what does this mean exactly? No one knows. As someone once quipped “prediction is difficult, especially about the future” (I think it was Yogi Berra). I'm not a professional geographer or demographer, but since no one in either field has yet (as far as I know) plugged the variable of $7 gas into their models of the region's future, I'll take a stab at it.
I'll start with five principal effects that $7 gas will have on the New West:
1) Don't Bet the House on Recreation Anymore.
One of the early casualties of rising gas prices will be long-distance tourism, a victim of the West's legendary wide open spaces. As gas prices rise, recreation will become increasingly localized. Why drive to northern Wyoming to camp or stay in a B&B in southern Arizona when they are plenty of good choices closer to home? It's not just driving – higher air fares (and hotel room rates) are inevitable as well. In fact, it's a safe bet to say that any tourist activity involving fossil fuel will become more costly, which means all of them. Some people will still be able to afford to play, of course, but I'm not sure it's wise to build an economy based only on the whims of the wealthy.
2) The Juggernaut of Urban & Exurban Development Will Falter.
Cheap gas begat our love affair with the automobile which begat suburban and exurban (ranchette) development which begat an intense period of economic prosperity all across the West. But what will $7 gas beget? The entire suburban/exurban experiment of the past 60 years was built on the foundation, and the promise, of cheap fossil fuel.
Think about the two-hour one-way daily commute into Los Angeles for work, or the costs associated in reaching that second home in the woods, or just driving to the grocery store. And it's not just about driving – fossil fuel permeates nearly every aspect of suburban development and maintenance. When costs rise, we may reconsider our behavior. We may have to.
3) Water Will Become More Expensive:
Mark Twain famously quipped that in the West “Whiskey is for drinkin' and water is for fightin'.” And we know why – in the arid West water is our life source. Much of western history can be explained by the availability of cheap (i.e. subsidized) water – for agriculture, for new homes, new cities, and endless growth. But much of this water is pumped or otherwise dependent on fossil fuels for its delivery. Rising energy costs mean higher water costs, which, along with water's general scarcity, mean we'll be making more changes to our behavior in the future.
4) Economic Hardship Will Spread Upward:
As the basic necessities of life – food, energy, and water – become more expensive, the economic pain will be felt among the poor and disadvantaged of us first and hardest. This fact will have all sorts of ramifications, from increased crime to social unrest possibly. A recent study by the Santa Fe-based nonprofit Local Energy showed that while the annual median income of New Mexicans has remained relatively flat for the past thirty years – at approximately $29,000 – the cost of energy has risen steadily. In that widening gap lies trouble for many of us.
5) Expect More Oil & Gas Development – Perhaps a Lot More.
Our economic (and emotional) dependence on cheap fossil fuel as a nation means you ain't seen nothing yet in terms of oil and gas development. Marginal oil and gas fields, for example, are already looking not-so-marginal to oil companies. Eventually they won't look so marginal to the public either, I'm afraid. I worry about protected areas the most. Pressure is already building in the Midwest to crack open land that was set aside for protection in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in order to grow more industrial corn for ethanol production. If this happens, how safe are our parks, wildernesses, and refuges?
And if these sacred places aren't safe, what does this mean for society as a whole?
The Next West
There are things we can do – now – to prepare for the inevitability of change. In fact, the sooner we do something the better.
Again at the risk of making predictions, especially about the future (maybe it was Vice President Dan Qualye who said that), I'll hazard a few best guesses about what's coming next and what we might be able to do today.
I believe that a new word is going to dominate our lives in the upcoming decades: relocalization (it's not even a word yet – at least my computer's dictionary doesn't recognize it!).
Rising energy costs mean more and more of our daily lives, from food production to where we work and play, will be increasingly localized. This won't be by choice, as it is currently, but by necessity (that economic hardship thing again).
The key is to look at relocalization as an opportunity, not just a challenge. It can be a form of rediscovery – learning about our roots, about community, neighbors, gardens, and doing with less in general. One could even look at relocalization entrepreneurially – those individuals and organizations that get into the game early, by providing re-localized goods and services, will stand a very good chance at a profitable living as the transition begins to unfold.
In my opinion, relocalization includes the following (at least):
The Development of Local Food and Energy Sources:
Working landscapes will become critical again. So will the innovations currently taking place at the nexus of agriculture and ecology (this is where I would bet my money if I were a betting man) – a nexus that requires working lands. This is not to dismiss wilderness or the needs of wildlife – I believe $7 gas means we'll have plenty of wilderness again someday, in fact – but it does mean concentrating our efforts on answering an important question: could New Mexico feed itself? Could Utah? Or Montana? And if not, why not, and what can we do to stimulate local food and energy production?
Farm and Ranch Land Will Become Important Again:
So will farmers and ranchers (see the previous point). Local food and energy, as well as recreational opportunities, require local land that is available for these uses. We'll need local people to do this work too, as well as their local knowledge.
This means figuring out how – now – to keep the current generation of farmers and ranchers on the land, as well as encourage the next generation to stay, come back, or give agriculture a try. Furthermore, we're going to regret paving over all that prime agricultural land, I suspect – which will eventually raise another important question: how do we unpave some of it?
Restoration Will Become An Important Business. Producing local food and energy from working landscapes, especially in quantity, will require healthy land as well as best management practices that work "within nature's model." Unfortunately, while the "toolbox" of progressive stewardship is now well developed, a great deal of our land is in poor condition (for a variety of reasons), requiring restoration and remediation. The good news is that this work could afford local communities a bounty of jobs at good wages, if only we would begin to value it properly.
County Governments Will Rise In Influence:
Almost by definition, relocalization means political action and policy-making will become increasing redirected to local levels. In fact, as historian Patricia Limerick said recently, there's a good chance counties could become the key unit of governance in the West in the future.
Partly that's because the federal government is proving increasingly incapable of meeting the needs of citizens at the local level, but mostly it's because there's been so much grassroots innovation across the West in recent years that need for federal involvement is no longer as necessary as it once was. However, some sort of reform of county governance (increasing the number of commissioners, for example) will likely be necessary as things begin to change.
Co-Management of Public Lands Will Evolve Into the Norm:
For the reasons cited above, pressure will build on the federal land agencies, which control one-half of the West's 425,000 square miles, to adopt co-management principles with private organizations and associations on public land. The feds not only can't do it all currently, they won't be able to handle the upcoming transition either, due to staffing and budget reductions as well as other limitations.
Partnerships with private entities, including a new generation of grazing permittees, that aim at progressive, relocalized activities on working landscapes will become the norm in the 21st century, I believe.
But I could be wrong. As I said, no one really knows what's coming next. All we can say with confidence is that $7 gas (and higher) means that things will be very different here in the West. Whether it will be for better or worse depends on your point-of-view. I think it presents tremendous opportunities – even a new frontier, if you will. Hopefully, we can keep the latte and avoid the gunfights this time.
As for me, I'm trying to get over my wistfulness by making fewer visits to the gas pump. It's hard, I'll admit, but then no one said change is ever easy.
(1) For a recent, readable analysis of Peak Oil see an article by Gail 1) For a recent Tverberg at: http://www.energybulletin.net/31332.html
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The 2007 Hood River Walk for Life and YOU!
Click Here to Donate
(Yes, Yes, i know I've not been updating this Blog as frequently as I would like. I'm keeping track though.....I'll catch up soon....Please read below)
Alright all you Blog readers. I know that there are lots of readers out there, so I'll make this short. Please read the letter below. It's about asking you to send in some $$ (Ka la in Hawaiian) to support the Hood River Relay for Life, an event I'm in.
It's easy. You could surf over to the sponsorship page in a second and help out........Click Here to Donate Now!
Maui's Request for Sponsorship for the 2007 Hood River Walk for Life
I’ve got a friend, and she’s a cancer survivor. Pretty miraculous story, for another time, but she decided a few years ago to start the local Relay for Life, which you may know, is one of the major fundraisers for the American Cancer Society.
At dawn on Sunday morning, July 22nd, as a part of the Hood River Rotary Team, I’ll be walking around the track thinking about two things.
1. My Friends and Family whom I’ve lost to Cancer.
2. How lucky I am that I’m still around and able to do something as simple as walk around a track to raise money.
I’m writing to you right now to ask you, and I’ll be blunt about this, to send me money so that I can pass it along to the American Cancer Society to further research into finding effective ways to research a cure for Cancer. For my part, I’ll be donating both my time and money to the cause. My goal is $5,000.00 which should be a doable thing with your help.
I’m doing this for personal reasons, in honor of my sister, and for familial reasons as well, but when all is said and done I’m doing this because that is what we do in Hood River.
We help out. We give, and continue to give, always, to pitch in, lighten the load and build interdependency. It’s what makes Hood River, Hood River.
So please send along some money. You may do it online, or mail it to me, instructions are below.
Tell me to buy a Luminaria ($50.00) for your friends passed, or sponsor my time out on the track. But if you really want to do something, join me at 4:00am on Sunday morning July 22nd, and regale me with stories of your friends. I’ve got a few of my own.
We can all drink coffee and watch the sun rise together.
Best-
Maui
Monday, July 02, 2007
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