Weather Report: The Economy, Water & Energy, Food & Subsistance Farms

THE ECONOMY: At money news.newsmax.com, 9/12/08, a very interesting article appeared entitled “America Is Not Too Big To Fail “ . The article (in the Street Talk section) opened with the brutal observation that “… the United States is harrowingly close to the same kind of utter financial collapse that Americans once thought only shaky Latin American regimes could suffer.” It continued by quoting Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, “ The earthquake will come about via a collapse in the market for U.S. government bonds as domestic and foreign investors realize that the only way Uncle Sam can meet his future spending obligations is to print massive quantities of money.” Professor Kotlikoff’s opinions appeared to be well supported by such data as: the real total debt of the U.S. at the present time is estimated to be $70 trillion (not including personal debts), massive government bailouts of ’Fannie’ and ’Freddie’, and sliding home values.

The folks at “ The Daily Reckoning” on September 11, 2008 seemed to reach some similar positions. An article by Bill Bonner, “ No More Delaying this Decline”, questioned the bail-out of ’Fannie’ and ’Freddie’ this way, “… what does it mean when the world’s most free-market government nationalizes its largest finance industry? “ It appeared to mean that while the shareholders here would suffer loss, the bond holders would not because the U.S. is in critical need of foreign capital to function. Foreigners hold literally trillions of U.S. dollar-debt as well as dollars themselves and if they thought the U.S. government would fail to back those they would dump them, effectively ending the dollar-based monetary system.

WATER & ENERGY: Energy Bulletin – Sept 12 (energybulletin.net),” Shrinking Water Supplies and Growing Energy Demands “ by David Hampton, E Magazine. This David Hampton article notes significant linkage between energy sources and water usage. For the U.S., in example, both nuclear power stations as well as conventional thermal units use major amounts of water in their “wet” cooling systems with 39% of all U.S. freshwater withdrawals in 2000 going to thermal power stations .

While agriculture is the worlds most significant user of water, there has been very little linkage (so far) between biofuel production and water usage. Other less conventional sources (shale oil & tar sands?) seem to require large amounts of water too in their processing.

FOOD & SUBSISTANCE FARMS: “Fannie, Freddie, Subsistence Farming and You” by Sharon Astyk published 9/9/08 by Casaubon’s Book and archived 9/10/08 by Energy Bulletin (energybulletin.net)

After a brief discussion of America’s economic crisis and a tipping of the hat to probable financial collapse, Ms. Astyk speaks of/to a “new normal”. This “new normal “ will encompass the societal changes brought about by peak oil and climate change: these changes will be huge. “It is quite possible that urban and suburban farming may provide a large portion of vegetable and livestock for the cities.” she says, but “ the suburbs will be quite hard put to feed themselves.” The suburbs will move to subsistence farming to meet a large portion of their food needs.

This subsistence farming will be similar to a lot of farming today in that it will not be full time but will share time with a second job of some sort outside of the home. Conditions themselves in the future will be similar to those now with everyday folks struggling even more to meet their basic needs. It is also a strong probability that subsistence farming will be further supported as an economic necessity due to the expense of commercially grown foods that will be, in the main, exported.

The foregoing is very brief sketch of a well written and reasoned piece that is worth your time to read. It supports the proposition that now is an excellent/the best time to develop food producing, storing, and preparation skills at the home level. While the future may not be “Mad Max”, it almost certainly won’t be a return to “Ossie and Harriet” either and their’s an awful lot of room in between.

Until next week, keep your eyes on the horizon.