Portable shelters with a shopping cart look, EDAR or Everyone Deserves a Roof

Maybe it's a sign of the times. Maybe it's a re-enactment of the homeless encampments that existed in the 1930's during the Great Depression. Maybe it's what it is, a guy with an idea to improve the world. The idea is to help the homeless have better sleeping quarters than cardboard boxes hidden in the bushes. Whatever it is, it also is an enabler to help homeless people stay homeless. It also gives homeless people a better quality of life.

This tent is built on what's essentially a shopping cart frame. It has two compartments to store 'stuff', one in the front the other in the rear. It folds down to be small allowing it to be pushed around, uh, like a shopping cart. It unfolds easily and offers good quality shelter.

EDAR (Everyone Deserves a Home) is the brainchild of film-maker Peter Samuelson. He describes having become aware there an increase in homelessness and he had an inspired idea to create a solution. This portable tent thing. BTW I yahoogled "homeless statistics" and couldn't find a site that gives current rates or trends in homelessness. It seems likely that the current economic climate is making more people homeless. However this project had to have started a couple years ago during the time when the supposed economic recovery of the Bush Administration was in full swing. I believe that supposed economic recovery was only in the stock market and only gave an illusion of an economic recovery. In any case I wonder if this EDAR thing is the shape of things to come?

During the day, the EDAR unit is used to pursue the necessities of life. Personal belongings are secured by the use of locks. The front and back of the cart have storage baskets with removable canvas pouches. The unit is waterproof and provides protection for what it contains. EDAR's wheels are better than a supermarket cart's, being slightly larger and easier to steer in a consistent fashion. There are two brake and locking mechanisms which ensure the unit will not move on its own.

At night, the EDAR unit easily hinges out and down to Night Mode in less than 30 seconds, becoming a sleeping unit. Unfolding the unit allows it to lock in place as the flat metal base extends. The metal and wood base has a mattress and military-grade canvas cover, providing a robust tent-like shelter. The unit is flame-retardant, waterproof, windproof and helps protect from the elements. There are translucent windows that provides light and a view of the surrounding area. By re-folding the unit, the EDAR quickly returns to Day Mode.

He conceptualized EDAR as a mobile single-person device that would facilitate recycling, the principle source of income for many homeless.

Why is this better than a regular tent? Obviously tents have existed for thousands of years and humanity has millennia of experience using tents to camp. It seems to me the improvement here is to make it self contained and easy to push around and to provide security. A tent is bulky, doesn't set up quickly, and people tend to want to leave a tent in a given place once it's set up. I believe tents are frequently used by homeless people but that they hide them in the bushes etc. What about during the day? Tents provide no semblance of security, no locks, etc, and what would a homeless person do to protect their stuff during the day? If EDAR is as good as the claims, a homeless person can lock up their EDAR, securely containing their stuff, lock the EDAR to a bicycle rack or something, go into a building, etc, and have a relatively good assurance their stuff will be there when they return.

The EDAR units cost $500 apiece to build. They are constructed by a shopping cart manufacturer. I'm thinking "$500 apiece?? How can that be scalable to provide housing to a significant number of homeless??" That is, if it costs $500 for each unit and there are millions of homeless around the U.S. not to speak of the millions of homeless around the world, who can afford the money to buy one for each homeless?

While looking at EDAR postings I came across a different implementation of the idea: A Street Cart Named Survivor

This design may be a bit more practical and offer more income earning options for a homeless person than scavenging recyclables. The cart can be used as a vendor cart, and the bicycle wheels provide better mobility than a push cart, and it can be electrified to provide mobility and lighting.

<script src="http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/js/2.0/video/evp/module.js?loc=dom&vid=/video/living/2009/03/09/rowlands.shopping.cart.shelter.cnn" type="text/javascript"></script>

Embedded video from CNN Video

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Everyone Deserves a Home

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Upgrading from a cardboard box for the homeless

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Homeless Home Page - U.S. Department of Health & Human Services

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Everyone Deserves a Roof!

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EDAR: Everyone Deserves A Roof

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Everyone Deserves a Roof: Portable, Innovative Homeless Shelters

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Everyone Deserves a Roof

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EDAR: Everyone Deserves A Roof

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Homeless: EDAR (Everyone Deserves A Roof)

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shelter in a cart

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EDAR: Everyone Deserves A Roof

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http://www.youtube.com/EDARorg

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Tents on wheels give homeless people roof and pride

External Media

Building pressure for a world war to secure oil supplies?

What are we fighting in Iraq for? What are we fighting in Afghanistan for? Why are we threatening Iran?

Think it's about ephemeral things such as establishing democracy and freedom? Think again. There are dozens of freedom-hating countries around the world that we don't threaten with our military. Some of those freedom hating countries had their leaders installed by the U.S. We aren't threatening those countries, only the ones in the Middle East.

This article outlines the growing danger of a world war fought to secure oil supplies: A battle for oil could set the world aflame International powers will do everything to protect their access to dwindling resources. We are mad not to have an alternative strategy (Will Hutton, Sunday April 30, 2006, The Observer)

The key piece is twofold. First is the incontrovertible fact that the U.S. and China both have very little domestic oil supplies. What has allowed our modern societies to flourish isn't technology, it's that the technology has cheap energy to drive it. We could have the same dazzling array of technology, but if the energy to drive the technology wasn't available the technology would be useless. And, this is a situation we all may be facing in a few years.

The U.S. imports over 60% of its oil needs. In the 1970's there were two oil embargo crisis, at a time when the U.S. imported only 35% of its oil needs, and which drove the U.S. into a recession. What would happen today if the supply of oil to the U.S. were to dry up?

At the same time China is experiencing rapid economic growth, which is in turn causing rapid growth in its energy demands.

The article discusses China's role in both the Sudan/Darfur fiasco, and the showdown against Iran. In both cases China has made oil deals with the countries in question, and at the same time are expected to veto any UN Security Council actions against those countries. Further, Iran and China have an oil deal, part of which is shipping oil from Iran to China via a pipeline through Central Asia. Such a pipeline is a strategic move that would keep the U.S. from enforcing anything against that oil, because our Navy is useless in reaching Central Asia.

The coming world oil disruptions

I was in my young teens in the early 1970's when the oil embargo was used against the U.S. In the second oil embargo I was in college. Those two events really affected me and is what's driving me today to study energy supplies.

Stanford EMF: 80% Probability of Major Oil Disruption in Next Ten Years covers a study done by Hillard Huntington, Executive Director Energy Modeling Forum (EMF), Stanford University, which discusses the probabilities of another oil disruption.

Thinking about it now, this shouldn't be surprising. For example we are threatening Iran right now which could easily turn into a major oil disruption. And generally speaking, OPEC did it before (staging oil disruptions) so why wouldn't they do it again?

The thing that's really alarming is what the effect would be.

In the 1970's the recessions we had then were likely triggered by the oil embargo's. Those oil embargo's caused the price of oil to rise pretty high. Remember Carter's Windfall Profits Tax? President Enron nor Vice President Halliburton nor Secretary of State Chevron are likely to push for such a tax, but we have the same conditions today that occurred in the 1970's that prompted that tax.

In the 1970's the U.S. imported 35% of its' oil needs. Today we import 70% of our oil needs. If there were another oil disruption today, the effect on the U.S. would be far more dramatic than the effect in the 1970's.

Peak oil, fearism, and our future

Consider this article: Energy refugee fleeing $100-a-barrel oil .. "Around the time of the first oil shock in 1973, columnist Art Buchwald penned a satirical column about what life without cheap oil would be like in the 1990s. One day, a father and son go out for their first drive in weeks because fuel costs $8.50 a gallon. 'I feel like a steak,' says the father to his son. And the boy asks, 'Dad, what's a steak?' ... To many Americans, the approaching petroleum calamity remains invisible, but not to my pal John P. Like so many others, he rolled into Arizona from the Midwest a few decades ago bent on fleeing an assortment of ecological and environmental abuses in favor of adventure, clean air, cheap energy and abundant water.... 'You might say that I was an environmental refugee,' the steely-eyed, onetime congressional candidate and former big-time river guide said as he sipped some simple black coffee on the outskirts of Sedona not far from his hideaway in Rim Rock.... 'I always figured that I'd stay here until the managed-care guys came to take me away.'... But my pal has changed his mind. 'See that price?' he said, pointing to a gas station sign advertising fuel for $2.50 a gallon. 'There have been warnings galore, but we've to fix the energy levees, so to speak. That's the last time you'll see it that low; denial about our oil addiction trumps any 12-step program. We are out of here because here in the red rocks and in so many other places, inconvenient facts about energy and water are taboo; oil is headed for $100-a-barrel oil, just the least shock will do it: a tanker blown in the Persian Gulf, a refinery sabotaged.'..." And with that he's planning to move to Idaho to escape the coming fuel catastrophe.

This kind of story just reminds me of one thing. Survivalists. In the 1990's they were escaping the y2k problem. Earlier they were escaping nuclear war. Today there's scares about bird flu, terrorists, peak oil, etc.

Now, I'm very interested in this peak oil scenario. This scenario certainly looks very realistic and I am very concerned about when will it happen.

But ... let's consider the psychological/emotional/spiritual component to this.

What we have is a scary story. People like John P quoted above are taking the fear in that story, and living that fear as if its true, taking drastic actions out of fear.

Ask yourself, if you are having fear, if you are in so much fear you're terrified of the future, how does that affect the range of actions you can take? Doesn't this trigger the fight or flight reflex, causing it to become a survival issue? And, sure enough, there is a lot of evidence with the peak oil scenario that make it look like the survival of our society is at stake.

One of the things that is true about fear is it limits your vision. Your limited vision can see fewer possible solutions.

For example John P is missing out on all sorts of solutions being developed in the world. Instead he's escaping to Idaho expecting the world he knows to collapse into bloodshed. No doubt he's going to stockpile food and guns and be prepared to be killing anybody who wants to take his survival, represented by the food and guns, away from him.

But what about the development of biofuels, of better solar energy systems, better wind energy systems, more reliable nuclear systems, vehicles available from the car companies that can burn non-fossil fuels, and more. He's not seeing them, because the fear doesn't allow it.

If you find yourself in fear, what can you do? There's a range of possibilities.

For example if you're unaware of your fear, you have little ability to navigate out of the fear. Instead it's more likely you'll take rash actions based on the limited vision your fear allows you to have.

The key is to learn to be aware when you are in fear, and to recognize the effects to yourself that come from being in fear.

Next, having the awareness of the fear and the effects is when you can choose differently. What I recommend is a prayer I've learned from Ron Roth: Peace to my thoughts, peace to my emotions, peace to my body, peace to the world. You can also meditate upon the divine presence such as repeating to yourself, and embodying, "come holy spirit, divine holy spirit".

Those practices are not the only ones which will help you come out of fear. They are what I do for myself.

Another thing I've learned is there are many problems, such as the peak oil issue, where my conscious mind, my ego, has no clue how to solve the problem. However, the divine mind does know the answer. The divine, or if you prefer the name 'God', created this universe and surely must have an idea or two of how we in this culture at this time on this planet can resolve the problems facing us.

I don't know what that answer is, but I do know that whatever it is has to happen through us. For 'God' to act in the world 'we' must take actions, because we are God's agents in the world.

What this leads to is an idea. Taking the prayer concept I described above, here's how you might apply it to a world situation like the peak oil scenario, the Iraq war, the impending war in Iran, etc.

First spend some time meditating upon the divine as I described above. Then shift to a prayer like "come holy spirit, peace to the people of Iraq, peace to the soldiers in Iraq, peace to the countries surrounding Iraq, peace to the leaders in Iraq, ...". It helps to visualize inside yourself peace flooding through Iraq.

Now, I should point out that true peace is not the cessation of war. I think of true peace as it is exemplified by forests. A forest has a life of its own which manifests and protects the systemic organization that is the forest. Stuff happens in forests, there are animals hunting for meals, they sometimes kill one another, there are ant colonies having wars with each other, etc. All that stuff is going on, but whatever it is the life of the forest is completely intertwined with all that stuff that's going on. Anything that happens is swallowed by the life force of the forest.

Which was a long way of saying, you can pray for something but let go of attachment to a specific result. Your ego mind may have brilliantly come up with the supposedly perfect solution, but God may have a completely different idea. As the old saying goes, if you want to hear God laugh tell her your plans.

Save the Rainforest! Buy a tree!

Here's an idea that ought to appeal to everyone. Rainforest Forever is selling trees in the Amazon rainforest. Or, more specifically, what they're selling is the timber rights. By buying up timber rights, you'll gaurantee some section of the rain forest does not get logged.

What you receive is a certificate and GPS coordinates for your tree.

Why should you care? Why should you buy protection for trees? Here's a few of the reasons they offer:

• The Rainforest Helps Us Breath
• The Rainforest has been shown to contain medicines that could heal the sick
• The Rainforest supports a huge abundance of life, and represents great biodiversity

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

This: What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis is perhaps the most important thing you could read to aid understanding the oil and energy problem. The oil and energy problem is very likely going to sink our modern way of life. Why? Because our way of life is utterly dependant on hugely extravagent energy use, facilitated by fossil fuels like oil and gas. Why is this a problem? Because the oil and gas are in limited supply, and relatively soon the oil and gas companies will be unable to supply the demand.

The other day I wrote a posting quoting an oil company economist saying not to worry, market forces will take care of it. Consider this effect of market forces:

Meanwhile, domestic gas bills, which rose by more than a third last year, are expected to rise even higher in the next few months. For many people, such fluctuations have lethal implications. Last winter, there were some 35,000 "excess winter deaths" in the UK, most of them attributable to old people not being able to keep warm enough; and last winter was a relatively mild one.

That's market forces at work. The price rises, people can't afford to stay warm, and 35,000 people die as a result. Yup, sorry about your grandma, but that's just market forces at work.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.

The article goes on from there to describe America's contribution to this mess. The U.S. domestic oil supply reached its peak output in 1970, and U.S. domestic oil production has only declined since, while U.S. oil demand has only climbed. "Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds of the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. " The U.S. could reduce demand by 5 million barrels of oil very easily by requiring an increase in fuel efficiency of only 2.5 gallons per mile. This would be easy for Detroit to achieve, but realistically speaking with President Enron and Vice President Halliburton in office is there a chance of that happening?

The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in 1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon. This at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles per gallon.

With this kind of trend, we are literally driving ourselves to oblivion.

The importance to this question lies with how is it going to be solved. No amount of economic free market theory will cover up the fact that what we have is a limited, and declining, resource. We will not have the luxury of waiting 6 million years for oil reserves to recover through geologic mechanisms. Instead, when the oil peaks and begins to run dry, the wars we're seeing now will seem tame in comparison.

If we are to avoid that fate, we must begin working on some alternative way of moving our butts from place to place. And it's not just transportation, it's our food supply. As the article says, agriculture is a huge user of oil if only because the Market Economy has resulted in most cities not having their own food production capacity, and instead relying on the ability to ship food from far remote places. How else can arctic cities have fresh fruit in the dead of winter???

It takes time to develop a new energy technology. A lot of time. Fortunately there are some alternative technologies being worked on, but they are all struggling with limited funding for research. Plus they all are suffering from a playing field shaped by market forces that are strongly favoring the entrenched fossil fuel resources.

What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis

This: What they don't want you to know about the coming oil crisis is perhaps the most important thing you could read to aid understanding the oil and energy problem. The oil and energy problem is very likely going to sink our modern way of life. Why? Because our way of life is utterly dependant on hugely extravagent energy use, facilitated by fossil fuels like oil and gas. Why is this a problem? Because the oil and gas are in limited supply, and relatively soon the oil and gas companies will be unable to supply the demand.

The other day I wrote a posting quoting an oil company economist saying not to worry, market forces will take care of it. Consider this effect of market forces:

Meanwhile, domestic gas bills, which rose by more than a third last year, are expected to rise even higher in the next few months. For many people, such fluctuations have lethal implications. Last winter, there were some 35,000 "excess winter deaths" in the UK, most of them attributable to old people not being able to keep warm enough; and last winter was a relatively mild one.

That's market forces at work. The price rises, people can't afford to stay warm, and 35,000 people die as a result. Yup, sorry about your grandma, but that's just market forces at work.

We have allowed oil to become vital to virtually everything we do. Ninety per cent of all our transportation, whether by land, air or sea, is fuelled by oil. Ninety-five per cent of all goods in shops involve the use of oil. Ninety-five per cent of all our food products require oil use. Just to farm a single cow and deliver it to market requires six barrels of oil, enough to drive a car from New York to Los Angeles. The world consumes more than 80 million barrels of oil a day, 29 billion barrels a year, at the time of writing. This figure is rising fast, as it has done for decades. The almost universal expectation is that it will keep doing so for years to come. The US government assumes that global demand will grow to around 120 million barrels a day, 43 billion barrels a year, by 2025. Few question the feasibility of this requirement, or the oil industry's ability to meet it.

They should, because the oil industry won't come close to producing 120 million barrels a day; nor, for reasons that I will discuss later, is there any prospect of the shortfall being taken up by gas. In other words, the most basic of the foundations of our assumptions of future economic wellbeing is rotten. Our society is in a state of collective denial that has no precedent in history, in terms of its scale and implications.

The article goes on from there to describe America's contribution to this mess. The U.S. domestic oil supply reached its peak output in 1970, and U.S. domestic oil production has only declined since, while U.S. oil demand has only climbed. "Of America's current daily consumption of 20 million barrels, 5 million are imported from the Middle East, where almost two-thirds of the world's oil reserves lie in a region of especially intense and long-lived conflicts. Every day, 15 million barrels pass in tankers through the narrow Straits of Hormuz, in the troubled waters between Saudi Arabia and Iran. " The U.S. could reduce demand by 5 million barrels of oil very easily by requiring an increase in fuel efficiency of only 2.5 gallons per mile. This would be easy for Detroit to achieve, but realistically speaking with President Enron and Vice President Halliburton in office is there a chance of that happening?

The SUV market share in the US was 2 per cent in 1975. By 2003 it was 24 per cent. In consequence, average US vehicle fuel efficiency fell between 1987 and 2001, from 26.2 to 24.4 miles per gallon. This at a time when other countries were producing cars capable of up to 60 miles per gallon.

With this kind of trend, we are literally driving ourselves to oblivion.

The importance to this question lies with how is it going to be solved. No amount of economic free market theory will cover up the fact that what we have is a limited, and declining, resource. We will not have the luxury of waiting 6 million years for oil reserves to recover through geologic mechanisms. Instead, when the oil peaks and begins to run dry, the wars we're seeing now will seem tame in comparison.

If we are to avoid that fate, we must begin working on some alternative way of moving our butts from place to place. And it's not just transportation, it's our food supply. As the article says, agriculture is a huge user of oil if only because the Market Economy has resulted in most cities not having their own food production capacity, and instead relying on the ability to ship food from far remote places. How else can arctic cities have fresh fruit in the dead of winter???

It takes time to develop a new energy technology. A lot of time. Fortunately there are some alternative technologies being worked on, but they are all struggling with limited funding for research. Plus they all are suffering from a playing field shaped by market forces that are strongly favoring the entrenched fossil fuel resources.

RIGZONE - U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API

This is meant to calm us? In U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API, an economist is quoted about near term oil supply and pricing worries. Namely, the U.S. is probably getting ready to beat up on Iran like we've been doing to Iraq. As I've pointed out in numerous postings, the Project for a New American Century (and the NEOCON's in general) have had this plan since at least 1992, to reshape the Middle East beginning with Iraq and moving on to either Syria or Iran (or both), toppling governments as they go and "installing" moderate democracies in their wake.

The current tough stance against both Iran and Syria fits right into that plan, regardless of how dangerous either country really is.

But back to this nutball economist and his attempt at psychological mass influencing of opinion.

In all likelihood it will be a tight market," said John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute. "But as long as the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies," he told reporters at a briefing, "I would not expect to see shortages."

... Felmy acknowledged that Saudi Arabia, the world's only producer with significant spare capacity, would not be able to totally fill the gap should Iranian flows stop and that U.S. motorists could experience spot shortages of fuel.

... We can see occasional gas lines and spot (supply) problems like we experienced right after Hurricane Katrina if the public panics but that was a real special situation," he said.

The context is that ... assuming some significant action is taken against Iran, then we can expect an oil supply disruption. Quite possibly Iran will become unable to export oil. Oil prices have been surging the last couple weeks because of that expectation.

So, when the economist says "the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies" ... well ... let me provide an interpretation.

• It means that oil products will become scarcer ...
• hence the price will go up ...
• hence once the price goes up, people will decrease their usage ...
• then with decreased usage, the demand will fall (some) and eventually the supply/demand equation will reach some equilibrium.

He says the same thing himself, but he's pussyfooting around the effect. It means disruption to our calm lives in the U.S. It means there will be a lot of angst this year, again, just like last year, over oil, gasoline prices, and "why won't the government do something about this". Just like last year.

Why won't the government do anything about this? Well, it's because the people re-elected that sleazeball corrupt President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron. That's why.

The government isn't about to do anything about this, because the government was bought and paid for by the oil industry. That's why.

Oh, and what should the government do about it anyway? The people in their grand lunacy are buying humongous SUV's that get 10 miles/gallon when there's a tailwind. In other words, the oil demand has only been going up, and up, and up, and up. So long as the U.S. demand for oil keeps going up the problem will only get worse and worse.

The fact is the U.S. has very little oil within its own territory. That means we have to look outside the U.S. for the majority of the oil we consume (aroundd 70% of our oil comes from foreign sources). Since oil is such a crucial part of the U.S. economy (we can hardly do anything without burning some oil), the supply of oil is absolutely essential to continuing life as we know it in this country.

That means, like it or not, that the government has to go to great lengths to ensure supplies of oil. Because without the oil the country will collapse.

And what are those great lengths? Try, for starters, to consider the purpose of invading Iraq.

The reasons given by the government for the war have all been shown to be poppycock, and what's worse is it's clear they were consciously lying to us and the world as they originally told us those stories. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about evil Saddam, etc. There's lots of WMD and evil dictators in the world which the U.S. is doing nothing about. Instead Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And Iran, the next target apparently, is right up there with its own large oil reserves.

The real solution is for the U.S. to permanently decrease its oil usage. But so long as President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron are in office don't expect that kind of wisdom to escape from the mouth of government.

Instead it's up to the people to do this on our own.

RIGZONE - U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API

This is meant to calm us? In U.S. Won't Run Out of Fuel if Iran Flows Stop - API, an economist is quoted about near term oil supply and pricing worries. Namely, the U.S. is probably getting ready to beat up on Iran like we've been doing to Iraq. As I've pointed out in numerous postings, the Project for a New American Century (and the NEOCON's in general) have had this plan since at least 1992, to reshape the Middle East beginning with Iraq and moving on to either Syria or Iran (or both), toppling governments as they go and "installing" moderate democracies in their wake.

The current tough stance against both Iran and Syria fits right into that plan, regardless of how dangerous either country really is.

But back to this nutball economist and his attempt at psychological mass influencing of opinion.

In all likelihood it will be a tight market," said John Felmy of the American Petroleum Institute. "But as long as the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies," he told reporters at a briefing, "I would not expect to see shortages."

... Felmy acknowledged that Saudi Arabia, the world's only producer with significant spare capacity, would not be able to totally fill the gap should Iranian flows stop and that U.S. motorists could experience spot shortages of fuel.

... We can see occasional gas lines and spot (supply) problems like we experienced right after Hurricane Katrina if the public panics but that was a real special situation," he said.

The context is that ... assuming some significant action is taken against Iran, then we can expect an oil supply disruption. Quite possibly Iran will become unable to export oil. Oil prices have been surging the last couple weeks because of that expectation.

So, when the economist says "the market system is allowed to work we will have price adjustments that allocate scarce supplies" ... well ... let me provide an interpretation.

• It means that oil products will become scarcer ...
• hence the price will go up ...
• hence once the price goes up, people will decrease their usage ...
• then with decreased usage, the demand will fall (some) and eventually the supply/demand equation will reach some equilibrium.

He says the same thing himself, but he's pussyfooting around the effect. It means disruption to our calm lives in the U.S. It means there will be a lot of angst this year, again, just like last year, over oil, gasoline prices, and "why won't the government do something about this". Just like last year.

Why won't the government do anything about this? Well, it's because the people re-elected that sleazeball corrupt President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron. That's why.

The government isn't about to do anything about this, because the government was bought and paid for by the oil industry. That's why.

Oh, and what should the government do about it anyway? The people in their grand lunacy are buying humongous SUV's that get 10 miles/gallon when there's a tailwind. In other words, the oil demand has only been going up, and up, and up, and up. So long as the U.S. demand for oil keeps going up the problem will only get worse and worse.

The fact is the U.S. has very little oil within its own territory. That means we have to look outside the U.S. for the majority of the oil we consume (aroundd 70% of our oil comes from foreign sources). Since oil is such a crucial part of the U.S. economy (we can hardly do anything without burning some oil), the supply of oil is absolutely essential to continuing life as we know it in this country.

That means, like it or not, that the government has to go to great lengths to ensure supplies of oil. Because without the oil the country will collapse.

And what are those great lengths? Try, for starters, to consider the purpose of invading Iraq.

The reasons given by the government for the war have all been shown to be poppycock, and what's worse is it's clear they were consciously lying to us and the world as they originally told us those stories. It wasn't about WMD, it wasn't about evil Saddam, etc. There's lots of WMD and evil dictators in the world which the U.S. is doing nothing about. Instead Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world. And Iran, the next target apparently, is right up there with its own large oil reserves.

The real solution is for the U.S. to permanently decrease its oil usage. But so long as President Enron, Vice President Halliburton and Secretary of Defense Chevron are in office don't expect that kind of wisdom to escape from the mouth of government.

Instead it's up to the people to do this on our own.

Green Car Congress: Russia Turns the Natural Gas Screws on Ukraine, Europe Feels Effect

Green Car Congress has a report about a crisis in natural gas supply between Russia, Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Apparently Russia has jacked up Ukraine's prices, and the resulting dispute has interrupted natural gas supply to Ukraine. Russia Turns the Natural Gas Screws on Ukraine, Europe Feels Effect (Green Car Congress, 2 January 2006)

One of the comments on GCC is "Ukraine has to pay market price, so US can't object to capitalism. This is direct result of Ukraine's orange revolution." to which I say... your nuts. It isn't capitalism to jack up prices just because of a change in government. That's manipulation. Russia was on the losing side of the Orange Revolution event, and I suppose now they want to use the cold of winter to create a heating crisis and maybe anger the people of Ukraine enough to topple the government. That is not capitalism at work.

Some interesting factoids in the article -- Russia has the largest Natural Gas reserves in the world, followed by Iran. The three major fields, Urengoy, Yamburg, and Medvezh’ye, are in Siberia and the Russian Gas company, Gazprom, admits these fields are in decline and there will be "steep" declines in output between 2008-2020.

That makes part of this episode looking to the future of the peak for natural gas having been reached.

The "peak oil" effect also applies to other natural resources. The model is that there is a fixed amount of each resource on the planet. And humans have a given ability to tap those resources. Between usage of the resource, the resulting depletion of the resource, and the ease/difficulty of tapping the resource, a peak will be reached in production capacity. For example the U.S. reached its peak of oil production capacity in 1970. The world is projected to reach its peak of oil production capacity, well, any day now, if not already.

Try as you might, after the peak is reached you can't increase production because the resources are heading towards depletion.