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James Howard Kunstler writes: America is on vacation from its financial, fiscal, and economic
problems, having left the centers of power in Wall Street and
Washington for a Nantucket-of-the-mind, where, in a haze of artisanal
vodka and bong smoke, it’s out in the cool dune grass watching
imaginary whalefishes blow, leaving only the TV Bubbleheads behind back
home. Larry Kudlow of CNBC was practically drooling into his cufflinks
on screen last week when the dollar popped against the Euro, and crude
oil slumped, and the equity markets climbed up a flagpole.

This sort of euphoria is actually an alarming pre-crash symptom,
in this case of a patient (the US) entering the terminal phase of
sclerosis. Our society and all its playerz — especially the appointed
communicators — just can’t fathom the reality of the threats we face,
which are 1.) the loss of primary energy resources, 2.) the loss of
technological potency, and 3.) the loss of a comfortable standard of
living.

As the boys over at the Financial Sense
News Hour podcast have been saying for months, we’re caught in a
paradigm shift and we’re trying desperately to prove (to ourselves)
that we can get back to the way things used to be. This is a broad
cultural phenomenon and helps to explain why even the greenest captains
of environmentalism strive to find groovy new ways to run all our cars,
while their counterparts on Wall Street strive desperately to salvage a
set of “innovative” financial rackets based on getting something for
nothing. It also explains the foolishness of the “drill drill drill”crowd, which believes we could be back to 99-cent gasoline if only
Exxon-Mobil were allowed to prospect offshore where the codfish used to
swim. (By the way, I’m in in full favor of granting them permission to
do so, if only to put an end to this foolish debate.)
Reality,
meanwhile, strives to take us in another direction. Our destination is
a far less complex society in a larger, rounder, and less
economically-integrated world. We will be leaving a lot of our
technological comforts behind, staying closer to home, living in
smaller cities and reactivated small towns, working the land more
intensively to produce the food we need, and possibly organizing our
governance at something less than the continental scale our dwindling
riches used to afford. That is, if we’re lucky enough to avoid the real
possibility of social disorder and violence that would attend a
fullblown economic collapse scenario.

August is historically a quiet time for oil, the so-called
“shoulder season” when vacationing climaxes, but before deliveries of
heating oil get underway in earnest. We have no real prospects of
overcoming any of the structural problems now built-in to our oil
supply, starting with the grim central fact that we import at least 70
percent of the oil we use. Add to this the fact that world production
of conventional crude has not exceeded the 2005 rates; that export rates from our Number 3 and 4 sources of oil, Mexico and Venezuela, are down a combined 30 percent this year; that discoveries of new oil are meager to the degree that they fail by a long shot to offset current world-wide depletion;
that the oil available on global markets is proportionately more sour
and heavy crude than the light and sweet our refineries are designed
for. And so on…. (08/11/08)
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Ellen Brown writes: Last week, Congress passed a housing bill that gave the Treasury Department a blank check to inject billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars into mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, snatching them from insolvency.  To accommodate this blank check, Congress obligingly raised its debt ceiling by $800 billion.  Ouch!  That’s nearly a trillion dollars.  Why was it necessary to incur this potentially crippling public debt to bail out two completely private, for-profit behemoths, which have run themselves into bankruptcy with their own risky investment schemes?  Policymakers said it was essential to maintain the country’s creditworthiness with foreign lenders, which today hold about one-fifth of Fannie and Freddie securities.  According to a July 21 report by Heather Timmons in The New York Times: “One out of 10 American mortgages is, in effect, in the hands of institutions and governments outside the United States.”

Ten percent of American mortgages are now owned by foreigners?  Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of Fannie Mae (the Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Mortgage Corporation)?  They were supposedly set up to fund “the American dream” – home ownership by Americans.  Today, American homes are owned by anonymous pools of private investors, many of whom are foreign governments and foreign central banks.  How did we manage to give away the farm?  And why are we bowing to the interests of foreign investors to the point of driving our own government into bankruptcy?  The federal debt is already nearly ten trillion dollars, more than the government can ever possibly repay with taxes.

“According to analysts, the bailout of the two mortgage giants is necessary “because America’s relations with a host of countries are intricately tied to Fannie and Freddie,” and because we need to assure “Americans’ future ability to gain access to credit. If foreign companies and governments abandon United States investments, home, auto and credit card loans will be much more difficult to come by.”

The same sort of argument was once made by U.S. banks to get Third World countries to pay up on their foreign loans. The U.S., it seems, has finally achieved Third World debtor-nation status. For the last half century, the push for “free trade” has been all about preserving profitable opportunities for investment, finding ways to “make money” without actually making anything, exploiting the work of others by buying up corporations around the world and drawing profits off the top. But now the tables have turned. We have gone from being the world’s largest creditor to the world’s largest debtor. We spent our dollars abroad and now they are coming back to shop for our own real estate and corporate assets. (08/11/08)
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BBC Environment – Proponents of a motoring technique known as “eco-driving” — who include the AA, the Energy Saving Trust and the government — claim that it will not just cut emissions of carbon dioxide, but could also improve fuel efficiency by up to 30%.

The idea is that through good maintenance, a more relaxed driving style and cutting out short trips, you can make a difference to the health of the planet – and your wallet.

First rule of eco-driving – ditch unnecessary weight. The suitcase,
beach bag, cool bag and picnic rug are weekend essentials. But I chuck
out old car park tickets and receipts, and recycle the accumulated
water bottles and drink cans.

Next I make sure the tyres are inflated to the correct
pressure. Under-inflated tyres are not just dangerous – they create
more resistance to the road and so make the car less efficient.

Stopping at a supermarket to get fuel, I obey another
eco-driving edict – not to brim the tank, as this adds extra weight and
reduces fuel efficiency. I pump in 35 litres (the tank holds 40).
£41.26 – painful, but not as bad as before. …

The central tenet of eco-driving is to get into the higher gears sooner and not to rev the engine too hard. At 2,500 revs a minute, I change up. And again. And again. So far so good. The road is relatively quiet, there are no speed bumps and few traffic lights.

An eco-driver has to read the road – if you can plan ahead, you won’t be accelerating and braking so much, thereby saving fuel and CO2 emissions. Sadly I am a bit poor at this aspect, and miss my turning. Doubling back wastes fuel, pumps out more greenhouse gases, and earns me some wifely derision.

For as long as I have driven, I’ve used the gears to slow down. But with eco-driving, the idea is to lift off the gas in a higher gear, and allow the car to lose momentum. If you’re a good eco-driver, you’ll then select the right gear to smoothly move on, without coming to a halt and having to bury your right foot in the carpet to get going. Soon, we’re cruising along the A3 at a stately 60mph – 10 miles per hour under the speed limit is good for the environment and more miserly on fuel. (08/11/08)
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