2009: The Status Quo versus The Long Emergency
Again, stop whatever elese you were doing, like reading things I wrote about 2009, and read Jim Kunstler’s forecasts about 2009. The author of The Long Emergency is experiencing the unenviable task of seeing dire structural change ahead, change that won’t be mollified by new gadgets, and being right about its consequences.
Some highlights:
He’s not a fan of techno-solutions. (not unlike yours truly)
The various tech industries are full of MIT-certified, high-achiever Status Quo techno-triumphalists who are convinced that electric cars or diesel-flavored algae excreta will save suburbia, the three thousand mile Caesar salad, and the theme park vacation. The environmental movement, especially at the elite levels found in places like Aspen, is full of Harvard graduates who believe that all the drive-in espresso stations in America can be run on a combination of solar and wind power. I quarrel with these people incessantly. It seems especially tragic to me that some of the brightest people I meet are bent on mounting the tragic campaign to sustain the unsustainable in one way or another.
He sees Dow 4000:
A consensus in the blogoshpere says that the stock markets will rebound strongly during the first Obama months. This is possible just on the basis of pure “animal spirits,” but the Obama Bounce will occur against a background of continued dismal business and financial news. It will appear to defy that news. By May of 2009, the stock markets will resume crashing with the ultimate destination of a Dow 4000 before the end of the year.
He believes that you’ll actually need positive cash flow to make a business run (old-fashioned, but radical!):
We’ll turn around early in 2009 and discover that we are a much poorer nation than we thought because from now on credit will be extremely hard to get for anyone for anything. The businesses that survive will have to keep going on the basis of accounts receivable…Giant enterprises requiring giant loans to get from quarter to quarter will tend to not make it. Borrowing from the future will become a practical impossibility as past bad debts from previous borrowings continue to unwind, cease performing, and get written off.
Real change. Not new technologies for old philosophies. Nobody will save the day. We’ll need to make workable solutions for many different types of people.
And still - people will need things. Goods and services will be required, perhaps just different types.
Business development will need to be on its toes! Are you ready?
Future brightspots will result from this mess
Here at Competitive Futures we regularly tell clients, “Just because something is a disaster doesn’t mean it will be a disaster for everyone.” History is filled with stories of leaders who perceived danger early, acted appropriately, and profited.
I’m a bit fatigued of straining about this financial mess, and naturally began to ask, “OK, what’s going to be 
positive out of this?” Despite the ugliness here, there will likely be many positive developments resulting from this crisis of business and governance. One example is quite close to home for me.
My father is in his 28th year running the Rutland Agway, a store dedicated to farm, home, and garden in Central Vermont. Recent economic trends have sent both farming and manufacturing to far-flung states or countries. Giant retailers like Home Depot came to take a piece of the diminishing supply of disposable income in the state. For local stores, things got pretty tight for a moment.
Fleeing jobs and rocketing fuel oil prices are putting a massive financial strain on rural households. How are they responding? By going local - planting gardens like never before. Staying at home, avoiding pricey vacations - and sprucing up the backyard with fertilizer and lawn mowers. And suddenly, times are better in the home and garden business. (On top of it, Vermonters are back to eating their own delicious local foods!)
What else could be positive about this? Think it through - there will plenty of time to think about disaster soon enough.
The new solar power - solar thermal
Great article yesterday from the New York Times about a little known type of solar energy that is showing some real promise: solar thermal energy.
It seems that in the desert you reflect solar energy to heat fluid into steam, and use it to turn a turbine to produce electricity. Evidently, it runs at roughly double the cost of coal, without any of the ecological impact.
Plus, looks really cool out in the desert.
America traded 15% of its corn for 2% of its gasoline? REALLY?
Investor’s Business Daily points out that today’s biofuels make no longer sense in a great editorial entitled "Bio Foolish Behavior."
Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic makes first jet flight powered by biofuels
Man, there is so much stuff going on right now, it’s hard to know where to start. We’ve got Castro
stepping down, bionic contact lenses, air powered cars that get 100 mpg, and a skinny African American dude with a weird name who’s up in the polls for president.
Something is up - it’s like we’re going to take quantum leap on a few levels.
Check this out: Virgin Atlantic just made its first cross-Atlantic flight using coconut oil-based biofuels. It is evidently the first flight made on "renewable" fuels. So, that’s cool, right?
Apparently the old-school environmentalists are deriding this as greenwashing and a publicity stunt, and they are right - to a point. Yes, biofuels tend to drive up the cost of food and have just as high a carbon footprint as regular jet fuel. This is still a major step - global businesses are taking sustainability more seriously than in the past, and are making moves to change their practices. Of course the firs
t step isn’t perfect, but it’s better than just sitting back and burning coal dust or whatever.
Besides, what happens when researchers get the cost of large-scale algae biofuel production plants to the point of competing with fossil fuels? We’ll be glad there was a market established well in advance, making further advances possible and profitable.
Consumer Electronics Show 2008 becomes the world’s largest carbon neutral event
As a rule, I haven’t really understood carbon trading and carbon caps as a way to mitigate global warming. It has always seemed just a stop-gap measure on the way to the real heavy lifting of transforming industry. But that doesn’t mean it’s not useful - or about to gain more acceptance.
According to Newsweek, this years Consumer Electronics Show, the blinding Vegas orgy of televisions,
satellite radios, and gadgets galore, has announced it has become the world’s largest carbon neutral event.
According to carbonfund.org’s Eric Carlson, they are offsetting the carbon from CES 2008 in a variety of ways. "One third is through renewable energy, which means things like wind
energy and methane. Another third is through reforestation and the
other third is through energy efficiency, which is general industrial
energy improvements. CES is offsetting 6,500 tons per type."
When operations as big as the Consumer Electronics Show start leading in this manner - what are the implications? So what? What if? What else?
-Garland
The true costs of globalization
In the United States, we have become inured to foreign manufacturers producing most everything we use. Cars, eletronics, steel, toys - there are few products we expect to be made in the U.S. anymore. Even with the price of energy what it is, we accept that its likely cheaper to produce goods overseas and drag them to America in a giant container ship. Apparently New York City has even taken to making manhole covers in India for use on Manhattan streets.
Yeah, well guess how those manhole covers are produced so cheaply.
How do they get it so cheap? Ah yes, their workers pour hot iron BAREFOOT. Getting rid of those pesky worker protections sure will help bring cost down.
Here’s a prediction - when the world goes to China for the Olympics in 2008, it’s going to be more evident how many of our consumer goods are being produced. And it won’t all be pretty, not even close. This is going to lead to a new renaissance in thinking about producing products locally.
Is this what globalization demands so we can make manhole covers cheaper?
When the big money gets into sustainable energy…
LONDON, June 7 (Reuters) — Billionaire Richard Branson’s commitment
to combat global warming got on track Thursday as Europe’s first
scheduled passenger train fueled by vegetable oil left London for North
Wales.
Branson’s Virgin Trains is running one of its trains on a
20 percent biodiesel blend for a six-month trial, and the British
entrepreneur said his whole fleet might eventually be converted to run
on biofuels.
 |
| Richard Branson’s Virgin Trains sets the first vegetable-fueled service in motion. |
 |
Britain’s
current finance minister and next prime minister, Gordon Brown,
attended the send-off at Euston station after facilitating the trial by
allowing a special tax dispensation.
"There is a possibility as
the engines get changed we could go up to 100 percent biodiesel,"
Branson told a news conference, adding the company had been advised its
current engines should run on a 20 percent blend.
Trick out your hybrid to get 100 mpg
Some people are way handier than I am. Some efficiency geeks in California have hacked their Toyota Prius, enabling it to get 100 miles per gallon.
The upgrade invoved adding inexpensive lead-acid batteries and
"some innovative software" to fool the car’s computerized controls into using
more of the energy stored in the batteries.
I was NOT good enough in chemistry or physics class to just tinker with the software that regulates the freaking electricity in my car, but these guys claim it’s only a $5,000 investment to get a lifetime of 100 miles per gallon.
Since 95% of the remaining petroleum is stored under Middle East countries that keep exploding, perhaps this is a small price to pay and a smart strategy for the future.
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