Crash! Bang! Boom!

Looks like the $700,000,000,000 wasn’t enough to alleviate world markets. As money goes “Poof”, it is high time we look at the way the Internet innovation is presently acting as its own currency and market. If you will remember in March 2008 when I wrote the Trends-to-watch article regarding peak oil, I predicted that we would see the Internet moving in and encroaching on the government’s territory.

The geeks of the world are becoming the new masters of the Universe, and the leaders of the world are miffed. They do NOT want to lose control of the masses - and we citizens can only ponder what military solutions they have in store for us as the value of American paper dollars become more and more meaningless.

The US Government is ready to deploy the US Army to fight back our own citizens, who are rightfully pissed off that their 401Ks have taken such a massive hit. But, there is risk in any investment, and it’s not like people haven’t been warned time and time again this crash was coming.

But let’s face it - we must like George Orwell’s 1984. Since its late arrival, we have grown accustomed to our “telescreens”, and we know the government has us bugged. But as long as there is food, electricity, the Internet, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, we apparently aren’t ready to fight for the Constitution.

So as the economy contracts and we start to experience fuel and electricity shortages, all sorts of funny human behaviors will start emerging. Who knows what our failed government has in store to control enraged the citizens of the US - only the biggest, most shadowy figures have the playbook.

What we do know, however, is that even as markets fail, Internet startups will continue to create and innovate. There are coffee shops loaded to the hilt with programmers and entrepreneurs teaming up in collaborations to unite local communities through social innovations.

The focus of the startups that matter are around real-world needs, including food, communications, community-building, hyper-localization and revenue sharing. Revenue doesn’t necessarily mean paper money, either. Collaborations are forming based on shared value(s), meaning whatever the participants decide is worth something is becoming its own currency. That means barter and trade - just like the old days.

As America collapses Enron style, we will probably begin to experience hyper-inflation. That means “consumers” will continue to experience a serious wake-up call into what we truly need versus what we think we need to be happy. But hey - Ramen Noodles have got a lot of people through tough times before.

In case you are a government employee reading this and need to do something to help your local municipality or emergency responders deal with this crash, here are some of the nifty things that Bright Neighbor offers communities:

- Fast and easy searching for all things local
- Discover and meet people around you based on location and interests
- Safe & Secure - only your real community members allowed
- Food Growing / Garden system automation
- Swap & Share allows the community to lend, barter, trade and sell
- Add and discover community events, hyper-local news, views, and reviews
- Transportation & Ride Sharing tools

Bright Neighbor offers a strong solution to help communities deal with the new depression. It’s going strong in Portland, and there are multiple new Bright Neighbor communities launching across the US.

As things get worse in the currency markets, we will be counting on the geeks to help the new farmers of the world.

BONUS! See how the Executives at AIG are spending the $85,000,000,000 of your tax dollars. And oh yeah - they want more.

Congrats America - you just bought yourselves a whole lot of bad debt! Yay for our collective wisdom, or lack of it. Wall Street and the big bankers of the world thank you very much.

Just a friendly reminder from your friend David Blume, the director of the International Institute for Ecological Agriculture who gave you the plan to avoid this mess in the first place:

We don’t need gasoline.
We never needed it.

Facts: Scientific and historical about gasoline and alcohol

1. The original automobiles ran on alcohol because when they were invented gasoline was not available.

2. John D. Rockefeller spent $4 million in early 1900 dollars (that we know of) to promote Prohibition, a ban on alcohol manufacturing in the US that started in 1919 just as the car industry was taking off.

3. When Prohibition was lifted in 1933, gasoline stations were ubiquitous and most engines ran on gasoline only.

4. Alcohol can be manufactured locally and on a community level from renewable plant material for $1 - $2 per gallon.

5. The growing of plant material for alcohol would have no effect on the price of food.

6. The growing of plants for fuel would more than neutralize the carbon created by burning alcohol for fuel.

7. In Brazil, over 50% of new cars sold can already run on 100% alcohol.

8. Producing alcohol from plant material is energy efficient and has a positive energy return (You get more energy out of alcohol than it takes to make it).

9. The oil companies aggressively promote garbage science to deceive the public into believing that alcohol fuels:
a) will cause starvation
b) are uneconomical
c) are net polluters.

10. Gasoline is a high toxic material.

11. It is entirely unneeded to fuel our cars.

12. Oil companies like Chevron have pressured PBS, commercial TV networks and other news media to keep this basic information from the public for decades - and the censorship continues to this day.

Remember this information when the gas shortages start, and pick up a copy of America’s playbook for digging out of this mess.

Our biggest challenge in the world right now is not our 401k’s… it is that there are nuclear armed countries whose people are starving, and they are descending into chaos. All the leaders of the world need to do is feed people and they can maintain order.

The highly armed nations of the world need to be fed, folks - because it sucks to die and countries that are armed with weapons of mass destruction will take others out with them as they go.

And to add to our own domestic national security problem here in the United States, Matt Simmons, one of the world’s foremost energy experts, says gasoline stocks are the lowest here since 1967 and refinery production is down following recent hurricanes. He warns that if there were a run on the “energy bank” by everyone topping off their gasoline tanks, the U.S. would be out of fuel in three days, and grocery shelves largely emptied in a week.

We do not have a very large alcohol fuel energy infrastructure in place yet, and there are bound to be emergency shortages of energy. You can live without electricity and gas, you would just have to get used to digging in the dirt. They survived collapse in Cuba, and we can do it here.

So let’s become less selfish REAL FAST. We can survive without money. But it will be easier as long as we have communities with local leadership, farming and people-organizing skills, electricity, the Internet, and barter systems. I think it would suck if the Internet went away.

Because if it did, I couldn’t watch this Stephen Colbert video.

This will be short and quick. CNN has a report on raw foods and how they are helping people retain their health and weight.

Yes, sexy bitches like it raw.

I dare to say he has struck planet earth before.

Keep fighting, America! Don’t let him tell you how the party should be.

Well folks - all the stuff I have been blogging about for so long seems to be coming to pass. Congress just received America’s financial death prognosis from the Feds.

Can’t say we didn’t know this was coming for years, and I blame the entire government for their failings - as well as the rest of us for being too comfortable with our electricity and easy food options.

I hope you know some folks with solar panels on their house, seeds to plant ASAP, and gardening books in their library. Good luck everyone!

Remember - we have lots of stuff we can share with one another - including our labor to ready any and all available land for conversion to productive crops. Except baseball fields - gotta kave kickball through the crash. It’s free!

Pardon me for saying so, but I don’t think President Bush and the first lady get it on much.

The president is out there touting that America’s economy is safe and strong. No it isn’t - don’t be an idiot. Even Wall Street bounce-backs do not mean the economy is safe.

We have had enough lies from our leaders. Are they honest enough to have the tough “world family” conversation we really need to have, from the US, to Iran to Russia - to the local community at the street level? It’s time to grow up, shake off the violence, and learn to work together as a global community. But without leaders that still enjoy life and all the wonderful beauty of existing on planet earth, we will remain in a state of violence and planetary imbalance.

And part of that enjoyment is getting it on. You know, firing up all the cylinders in your netherbits, tickling your pleasure zone, getting all hot and bothered.

Now, I would have to guess that French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is so happy of a guy he got drunk at the G8 summit, enjoys spending time with his hot wife.

Also, take a look at Putin’s new babe.

These are happy men. They don’t want to blow up the world - they just want to party and throw each other around a Judo mat.

By the way, in no way am I insinuating that leaders should be men. I think it’s high time we have many, many more women leading the way. But no matter male or female, you had better have a positive vision of how to ensure continuity of local communities, meaning having serious leadership abilities but also a real love of living.

And part of that means shedding the Puritan mask that we so badly try to wear in this country. Politicians and group leaders are caught in sex scandals every day. My hypothesis is that we are facing inner-turmoil inside ourselves, ashamed that we dig hot sex even though our religions tell us we should shun it. We are so angry and ready for violence because of sexual frustration that we refuse to free ourselves from the grips of oil companies.

So I wonder…. are our own leaders too sexually frustrated to handle the converging crisis of climate change and peak oil?

All I can say is that I hope the president and his wife are happy people. And the next president as well, for that matter.

We have a lot of problems, and if people would get laid more, we would be a lot happier of a planet. Maybe then we could start addressing our real, deep problems and work together as local communities to fix each place on earth, starting where we each live. In order to have resilient communities that thrive, we must each start in our homes.

In America, we can’t can’t help what someone in China is doing, but we can grow a garden at home here in the US. We can ride share with our friends and neighbors. We can swap and share with them, legally make our own auto fuel, lend out tools, books, labor and anything to help one another out. We can even create community classes and learn together.

We can set up solar powered Internet servers that are off-grid, so that we can connect using Bright Neighbor and wi/fi systems via public Internet kiosks. This way, no matter if the electricity grid goes down, friends, families, businesses, and the government can still easily communicate with one another and self-organize.

Here in Portland, people are connecting via Bright Neighbor and working together to build a resilient community across all 95 Portland neighborhoods. We have plenty of stuff among all of us, we just need to move it around better. So now you can find who around you has a ladder, saw, drill, food - you name it. It will be more fun than camping!

It’s possible to fix this place without worrying whether Wall street survives or not. They key is to take action in each of our communities so we can remain resilient across the United States and the world, for that matter.

Here is our Federal government’s strategic plan for keeping you secure. They get an “E” for “Effort”, but I say just make sure that your local leaders still like to dance, love, and most of all… get it on. Ready everyone? Here we go…

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!

Well, here we are.

No matter what pills the American government prescribes to try and fix our economy, we seem to keep getting worse and worse. The Fannie Mae Freddie Mac takeover is just one more pill shoved into the decaying capitalist body lying on a gurney in America.

The problem patients, of course, are economies spread out all over the world. The chronic black plagues called energy depletion and entropy have slipped some economies into a coma already, and world leaders are scrambling around like doctors on medi-flights to intervene.

Of course, what does it matter if we end up with a leader just itching to be the one to welcome in the end times? It really doesn’t matter what your outlook is on abortion when you abort the entire planet.

But this is what happens when you have a populace brainwashed by TV commercials promising them an easy life. TV numbs the pain of having to think critically, and it’s much easier to just trust that what the talking picture box tells you is true.

But boy, do I enjoy “Man VS Wild” and “Mythbusters”. Awesome stuff.

So we are all hypocrites, spouting off what we think we know as truth, when most of us fail to realize the real limitations of matter. That’s why “Drill! Drill! Drill!” sounds so appealing - as if more oil will solve our woes and bring back the rainforests we’ve cut down, or will reduce the human appetite for eating animal flesh. The following graph somewhat depicts our current trajectory:

So there is the prognosis for our economy. Our problems run so deep that injecting more money into a corpse of an economy will only provide us with short-term relief. And this is why chronic pain sufferers seek support groups. Because eventually, they stop denying that their pain will go away and rearrange their lives around their pain - managing it. Even if the prognosis is death, you can still have a period of acceptance and live a joyful life.

So if you need some help dealing with your pain, here is a good place to get started.

If you’ll remember when I posted about turning the White House lawn into a food garden, now Roger Doiron has taken the idea to the extreme.

Hip Hip, hooray, Roger!

It’s too bad they bash ethanol - they point out a corn problem, not a food or fuel problem. They have apparently never heard of kelp whiskey, or mesquite, or cat tails, or sorghum, or a variety of other feedstocks used to make ethanol!

In the “Good News” department, 2008 Is the Year of Bright Neighbor! We can lick this oil problem.

The energy crisis is hastening its speed in whipping America into shape. Regardless of who or what is to blame for our present energy and economic woes, the media is now being forced to report on the repercussions of bad government decisions and rampant consumerism. And from the looks of things, Americans had better quickly embrace the three “L”s of peak oil: Learning To Live With Less.

This doesn’t necessary mean less of ‘things’. It could mean less quality of produce as we learn about waste and food storage from our gardening experiences. It can mean less car transportation. Less, less, less.

At the same time, however, it means more. More riding your bike, walking, and carpooling. More meeting your neighbors. More time in the garden and not in front of the TV or computer. But to get back to my point, let’s connect a few recent dots:

Vulnerable populations are being squeezed out of existence. My neighbor receives food from “Loaves & Fishes” and she reports over 300 elderly in the area rely on them - but their volunteers have had to stop due to fuel prices.

Homeowners experiencing foreclosure are gutting their own houses to sell everything from copper pipes to whatever they can salvage.

Fuel theft is now a booming business. NOTE* If you are buying gasoline from the Black Market, you are only encouraging thieves to steal more gas from other drivers and you are hurting yourself and others.

Oh, and watch out for foofie going missing as well.

As we predicted in our groundbreaking report: “Descending Peak Oil: Navigating The Transition From Oil and Natural Gas”, America is witnessing behaviors that define peak oil’s arrival. In terms of the social fabric and economic victims, here is what we wrote would happen:

“Vulnerable and marginalized populations will grow and will be the first and hardest hit by peak oil. The impacts of increasing oil and natural gas costs are felt first and deepest among vulnerable and marginalized populations. Rising oil and natural gas prices increase the cost of transportation, housing, food, and other goods and services. The sharp rise in gasoline prices in 2005 provided direct evidence of the effects of increasing fuel costs as people shifted their budgets from food to fuel.

In addition, these populations are the least likely to have the resources needed to protect their rights. Many are already vulnerable to being displaced by growth and development. Lack of integration or isolation of people and populations within Portland places them on the outside of both communication and information networks, as well as having fewer resources to adapt to changing circumstances. These are groups who are also frequently not represented in policy and planning discussions.”

So obviously we have a lot of work to do. I have a feeling we will be hearing stories out of Texas soon as gas thieves get blown away by gun owners with RVs. That means, unless we want to disintegrate into social chaos, Americans are going to have to embrace the three “L”s: Learning To Live With Less.

Now is the time to find the hero within each of ourselves and get to work to fix this place, but in the meantime - we must learn how to be more humble. It sucks “losing” things like loved friends and family - and lifestyles as people have known them have been a comfortable “friend”. Our ability to live as wastefully as we have in America, however, is changing whether we want it to or not.

The best prescription I can think of at the moment is to busy yourself over the next few weeks reading three books guaranteed to arm you with the knowledge you need from this point forward:

Food Not Lawns

Alcohol Can Be A Gas

So Easy To Preserve

I first read about Floyd Butterfield in David Blume’s book “Alcohol Can Be A Gas“. Knowing the history of Alcohol in America will leave you feeling pretty duped by the oil companies. You can be sure that the alcohol fuel and permaculture revolution is well under way in America - the rest of Americans are just now starting to play catch up to reality.

In the first video, you get a quick introduction to Floyd.

The following video introduces their home-alcohol fuel still called the Efuel-100. While it is impressive, it has drawbacks in it’s feedstock and output limitations. Wait until you see the amazing still that Still Energy Solutions are about to introduce to the market. It’s time to make a lot of money while helping save the planet. Let new, earth-positive markets flourish!

And if my usually-correct hunch is right, I think this company’s stock is going to skyrocket in the next year.

We are attempting to make contact so Corey Delaney can coordinate the Bright Neighbor launch party, only with more “Community Spirit” in mind.

Just kidding. But we are excited about our upcoming launch! Get ready for Communities That Thrive.

Our world governments have failed humanity. Every nation in the world has to do more to avert the darker impacts of the energy crash, and it will be a “Bottoms-up” people’s revolution that kicks business and government into high gear ( I love reading the work of famous dead economists).

As markets are slow-crashing around us, we are seeing America enter into the “Behavior Modification” era of peak oil. We are witnessing people’s consumption habits change, which is reflected in a consumption based currency with values mostly pegged on a framework of continuous growth. Since our economy is contracting, even if the government prints more money into existence, our present value system attached to energy is declining in worth. That means consumption power is grinding to a halt as financial difficulties multiply for Americans and people around the world.

America has been a main prop for globalization. As we restructure our country, the entire global banking system will need to restructure itself, which could mean the breakup of nation states into smaller, more viable and resilient communities. The future is a mashup of everyone’s execution of their visions. How well communities thrive or how bad they fall apart depends on the vision, skills, and ability of the people within that community to cooperatively work together for the greater good. The idea of community is to live a happy life, not just ’survive’.

This is why I am convinced America will pull through this leadership and economic debacle. Maybe not all of America, but at least those communities with enough people able to tolerate one another trying to learn and adjust to a less energy-intensive lifestyle. For, as capitalism reinvents itself through collapse, the public will learn that markets and leadership fail in order to evolve better solutions.

There will always be markets. Even if everything collapsed and we were pummeled into global human cannibalism, you would still see markets around for trading (trade you two arms for a leg?)

I happen to follow the Social Networking economy very closely. Once ridiculed for predicting the current depression the advertising and media industry are reeling from, now I am sought out as a consultant for how these businesses can thrive in a post-peak oil economy.

Here is the big secret: My company Bright Neighbor has developed a technology (Launching in three weeks!) that will outperform Google, MySpace, Facebook, Meetup, Craigslist, and Evite. The secret is in our company values, our interface, and functionality.

My opinion is that MySpace and Facebook are just toys. As my friend Mark puts it, “They are the modern day inside of a school locker”. They of course, have the ability to change their interface and functions on the fly and present changes instantly to a vast universe of present users. This makes them formidable foes.

As humanity (and especially Americans) come to terms with our global fight-for-oil predicament, it is more modern, innovative local solutions such as Bright Neighbor that will lead the way for better local living. The larger technology companies will either swallow technology-driven, for-profit activist companies whole or assimilate their competitive advantages.

Either way, the market will win where governments have failed - which means we have a real possibility of a peaceful energy transition to much more earth-aligned living styles.

Alan Watts had to write an entire series of books about this subject to say the same thing.

More awesome videos are here.

Stunning!

A US Senator has outed the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s well planned and executed smear campaign against ethanol.

Senator Chuck Grassley says “Ethanol and alternative fuels are being made the scapegoat for a whole variety of problems. Never before have the virtuous benefits of ethanol and renewable fuels been so questioned and criticized. The problem is, none of these criticisms are based on sound science, economics or even common sense.”

Senator Grassley has unveiled the the dirty, nitty-gritty details of the Grocery Manufacturers Associations’ smear campaign:

“Some of my colleagues here in the Senate have also gotten involved in this misinformation campaign. It seems there is a “group-think” mentality when it comes to scapegoating ethanol for everything from high gas prices, global food shortages, global warming and deforestation. But, as was recently reported, this anti-ethanol campaign is not a coincidence. It turns out that a $300,000, six-month retainer of a beltway public relations firm is behind the smear campaign, hired by the Grocery Manufacturers Association.”

WHOA!

Isn’t that what David Blume has been saying all along? Ask yourself - who runs the Grocery Manufacturers Association and why would those people not want you to know the truth about ethanol?

Oil is at $145 today. Last Independence Day weekend, drivers were paying just $2.95 a gallon for gas, about $1.15 less than today. Oil prices are up more than 50 percent since the start of the year. Prices rose by a similar amount in 2007 — but it took almost the entire year for them to make that trip.

Just this week alone, the price on a barrel of oil jumped 3.6 percent. So please keep in mind right now oil barons are laughing and spending your money on $80 million dollar paintings. Wake the hell up, folks!.

I happen to be involved with some folks brewing their own car fuel, and it’s actually pretty easy once you get the still up and running. Try sticking your nose into a vat of fermenting yeast sometime. POW!

Wow.

I never thought I would see the day. Things must be getting REALLY bad when CNN calls for peace.

I love their “Don’t do it!” Message. It’s the obligatory message the corporate media must follow.

That’s right, I said it. Peak Oil is a straw man argument.

If you want to understand what I mean, watch this alternate ending to “The Lord Of The Rings”. You will quickly understand.

See what I mean?

What it sums up is that fixing Peak Oil all comes down to the community’s decision to follow a smarter plan, act accordingly, and share collective resources and talents with one another. That is how you win.

Think about it this way. The “Lord of The Rings” movie everyone has collectively seen presents a story the way it was written. Everyone leaves the theatre thinking that was the way the story had to be. But Ho Ho! If J.R. Tolkien had written “The Fellowship Of The Ring” to actually follow the course in the alternate ending, people would have had a much shorter movie and still had a happy ending.

And this is our society’s problem. We love thrillers. The story of “Peak Oil” is currently being presented as a potentially cataclysmic global energy problem. It is not. Peak Oil is a communications problem among a spoiled, techno-zombie culture. We have communicated with one another for so long about the story ending, we can’t decide what our global population’s story of continuity should be.

In America, the lagging economy is driving a dramatic move back to basics and a reversal of decades-long trends of convenience. Roughly half of all consumers with incomes less than $55,000 per year say they have trouble affording the groceries they need, while nearly a quarter of those earning between $55,000 and $99,000 also say so. Among those with incomes over $100,000, 16% report having trouble. 42% of consumers say they have given up favorite food brands because of rising prices and economic concerns. Source: IRI Economic Trend Database/AttitudeLink, May 2008

Also, large numbers of Americans face the prospect of energy shutoffs during the coming months because of rising energy prices and stagnant wages.

And so communities around the world are going to have to grapple with dwindling resources at the community level. You will not get help from the folks at the top. Anyone over 30 knows that money drives politics, and money is presently tied up in oil. This will remain true until communities free themselves from the global money system and start basing values on things that matter, such as services you provide that benefit the entire community and that do not cause harm to the environment or other people.

I would argue that hemp does not cause harm to people. It is a renewable energy resource and medicine. It’s human laws and lawns getting in the way of nature that are stopping us from having enough food and fuel for everyone.

Because cars are cool. I like walking, but I still want to drive, damnit! And right now, I am making my own fuel - which can run in any car with a combustible engine. The oil companies took over the fuel market a long time ago, and they are defending their money with as much vigor as they can.

So until local communities start firing up moonshine and having their local farmers plant sorghum as a better feedstock alternative than corn, we aren’t really serious about fixing our problems. Until we each begin to learn about the soil food web, we aren’t serious about fixing the problem. Until we each accept one another’s faiths, and work together to improve earth’s life support systems, we are not serious about fixing the problem. If we aren’t willing to help more than just ourselves, our family, and our friends, we aren’t serious about fixing the problem.

It’s going to take collective action from each of us, as well as the truth to emerge about certain solutions that have been suppressed, to implement desperately needed changes. Changes that allow us to continue to live happy lives, eat better, and travel from one place to another. Changes that are possible, given that we take away so much power from corporations and weapons companies that run the world.

Unless communities immediately create renewable local food and water systems, it means even more war and death. Until a majority of us are ready to act on the advice of innovators with proof that we don’t have to be less than human to one another and that there is plenty of land to grow enough food to feed the entire planet, we will just keep on reading headlines about bombs dropping.

If you are ready to listen to a leader that offers real ways our children of tomorrow can be proud of the actions we take today, my company has created a proven path of how we can get there. It’s a positive, loving, and life-affirming alternate ending to the Story of Peak Oil, and I am launching it in Portland.

BONUS VIDEO!

Imagine the message it would send around the world if we planted a food garden on the White House lawn. The folks from Kitchen Gardeners International have come up with a new campaign called “Eat The View“, which is a petition to get our government to do just that.

It would be one way we could fight back against Monsanto.

If you haven’t started planting your own garden yet, I highly suggest you get the book “Teaming With Microbes: A Gardeners Guide To The Soil Food Web”.

Worm poop, worm poop, worm poop!

It’s one of the secrets to overcoming the problems posed by peak oil. If you are hurting for a job, learning about worm poop is a sure-fire way to make a living with the new kind of employment that will be sweeping across America.

Tom Szaky is under 30, and he made $1.5 million in from worm poop sales in 2006. Now the worm poop industry is ready to fertilize itself and promote it’s own growth. Hey, all you office workers looking for the next chapter in your life… if you already tried to strike gold by dealing with a bunch of crap at work, why not do it for real?

This is why I do my videos. Here is Episode 5 of Lawns to Gardens: Worm Poop. Enjoy! (10 minute episode)

BONUS VIDEO: At least CNN reported something useful and did a piece showing people an alternative lifestyle we can all live up to.