Selfsufficientish.com

Okay I know I am in a minority but yes I AM reliant on fossil fuels as I live on an island and it would be a heck of a swim to get to the mainland and back for work. I will happily walk to our (only) shop when I can but I am not going to do it in the rain, sleet and snow to satisfy someone else's opinion of how I should live my life.

I think there can be too much of the absolutist "I am right and you are wrong" attitude on this forum and perhaps that is something that will alienate posters and make them timid about joining in the debate as it can get quite accusing!

Cheer up, zaxdog

Yes, it can get a bit heated - especially in this particular corner of Ishdom. But I'm sure that most of that is just genuine emotional reaction, exactly the kind of thing you'll find in any discussion environment, be that on the telly, the radio, the net, or in the local pub. I disagree markedly with some of the things said on here, and sometimes respond a little too forcefully (especially after a wine-testing day). The next day I read it again and feel guilty (well, a bit). Also, it's actually very difficult sometimes to get a point across from a personal point of view when other people are reading that point from their own point of view. You know - the kind of "Why will they just not understand?" kind of thing. The thing you think you've written is not, necessarily, what people think they are reading.

I'm sure that it's all, in the end, well-meant and that the great majority of people on here are all pulling in the same general direction.

Mike

Agree with all of that.Sometimes I look back at what I've written and feel bewildered!It's mostly people at cross purposes,and if it intimidates then I for one apologise,and will avoid this corner, which will shed a bit more light,and a bit less heat the more inclusive it can become.

MKG wrote:No, we're not completely f**ked by a disappearing oil supply. We're going to enter a difficult phase, certainly, but I truly believe we'll get past that. Watch out for the renaissance of nuclear power. We'll survive and we will, as a species, look back on the history of oil and chuckle away merrily.

If it was just the oil, I might agree with you. It's the intersection of the oil and everything else (biodiversity loss, soil erosion, aquifer depletion, climate change, etc, etc, you know the list...) that worries me.

oldjerry wrote:What could be more condescending than suggesting to people who are struggling to make ends meet that their way of life is completely un tenable and so it's all in a good cause?

Firstly, I'm not saying that your lifestyle is completely untenable, just private motor transport. (And I think it's quite telling that people conflate the two...) I'm saying you're going to have to make some changes. People live in rural settlements without private motor transport (with emphasis on the words private and motor) all over the world, and have done throughout history. It can be done, but you will have to make some adjustments.

Secondly, I don't recall ever saying that it's all in a good cause, just that it's inevitable and inescapable.

isn't it eminently feasible to produce oil/petrol from coal? (I think they did this during WW2?)

apart from biodiesel there might be other more sustainable ways to fuel motor vehicles... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manure-der ... _crude_oil

dave45 wrote:isn't it eminently feasible to produce oil/petrol from coal? (I think they did this during WW2?)

Germany did resort to this, yes. Didn't work out very well for them.... It's horrendously expensive, inefficient and polluting - the sort of thing only the truly desperate resort to. The EROEI is about 5:1 - better than corn ethanol, but still lousy when compared to oil.

You can run an internal combustion engine directly on powdered coal slurry if you're desperate enough and you don't care about the resultant pollution.

As for deriving oil from manure, I think we're going to be needing the manure as a fertiliser in order to feed ourselves.

gregorach wrote:People live in rural settlements without private motor transport (with emphasis on the words private and motor) all over the world, and have done throughout history. It can be done, but you will have to make some adjustments.

I think rather than (or as well as) individuals needing to make adjustments there needs to be infrastructure change as well, i.e. viable public transport not one bus a week (I know that isn't long-term sustainable either but I imagine better lots of people being on a bus that everyone being in cars). Because I honestly don't see realistically how someone in a rural community with no public transport can manage without a car unless they never leave their village or get taxis or lifts (which is kind of defeating the point). Do everything on the internet? I'm not being argumentative, I honestly don't see.

Susie wrote:I think rather than (or as well as) individuals needing to make adjustments there needs to be infrastructure change as well, i.e. viable public transport not one bus a week (I know that isn't long-term sustainable either but I imagine better lots of people being on a bus that everyone being in cars).

Certainly. I perhaps should have said "we" rather than "you". But there's a hole-in-my-bucket problem here - running public transport is impractical unless people are going to use it, and they're not going to use it as long as they can hop in the car.

Because I honestly don't see realistically how someone in a rural community with no public transport can manage without a car unless they never leave their village or get taxis or lifts (which is kind of defeating the point). Do everything on the internet? I'm not being argumentative, I honestly don't see.

Local shops? Car sharing? Car clubs? Organising bulk purchases? "Public" transport doesn't necessarily have to mean "buses run by a commercial operator". A lot of the problem is that car culture has destroyed the basic infrastructure that used to make rural life possible - this will need to be rebuilt. And there were plenty of people in the village I grew up in who very rarely left it... We will almost certainly have to alter our expectations of mobility.

And yes, the option of doing stuff via the internet is a very good one, which didn't exist back when people used to manage to live in rural communities without mass transport. So if they could manage even without our modern advantages, surely we should be able to manage too?

Coal: too late, mate.

Maggie was a bastard of a prime minister but she was well aware the coal industry in this country was doomed anyway. We passed 'peak coal' in the 1920s and what's left are thin seams that require a lot of energy for extraction.

People used to live with very little transport apart from sail, animals and feet. Going back to that is not short or medium term - and no-one is saying otherwise - but if we survive climate change, pollution, resources wars, species extinction, disease and starvation, we will get back to that at some point. We have a thing called the third law of thermodynamics, which trumps human desires.

In the meantime, there are two choices: carry on as we are or do something about it. The majority want the former and the minority, who want the latter, get ridicule and anger hurled at them.

Condescension: don't worry, the government/economists/technology will sort it out.

greenorelse wrote: People used to live with very little transport apart from sail, animals and feet.

I'm doomed if we have to go back to riding horses! They don't take any notice of me. I tried it when I was young and had a horsey friend. I swear the stable used to bring out the most awkward evil old creature as soon as they saw me coming. He was completely set in his ways and he thought I was just a brief inconvenient interlude between nibbling on his hay or intimidating the horse in the next stall or whatever it is horses do. And he was so hairy! Who knew horses could be so hairy? I always thought they were brown and sleek.

Millymollymandy wrote:Guys I just got a bit bored going through asterisking out the F words - there should be a swear word filter for that word but it appears to be not working, or maybe it's just been set up for the 4 letter word, not the one with 'ed' on the the end!

So can you please not use it as there are people of all ages reading this forum. Thank you.

Admin

Ah, sorry, that would be me... I tend to assume that if people care about such things they make sure their filters work, so if it's not filtered, it's OK. I shall restrain myself in future.

now - who had a surplus of grass clippings?

http://www.networkworld.com/community/b ... iofuel-alt

There are a lot of big words and long sentences in this thread that I don't understand. What I do understand though is that I bought a car nearly 10 years ago that was affordable and more economic than the previous one I owend. That is now too big, too costly to run and has no material worth if taken off the road in order to buy a cheaper one.
Income has severly reduced for both myself and my working wife with a household income from April will be less than £14000 with a mortgage of £9k a year.
The public transport has become a joke over the last 10 years and starts at 7 am until 9 pm but only on the main through route of my town, a town of 100,000 pop. Everything else is hit and miss with services of the buses every 30 minutes and trains every 1 hour at best. The only alternative is taxi cars which are expensive to use regularly.

My disabillities have got far, far worse in those interviening 10 years resulting in my business closing so, with the lack of decent public transport [ one bus serves my house area and takes 70 minutes to get to the local shops] I'm reliant on the car as walking or cycling a mile to the shops is beyond me now.
Reducing the size of cars and the speeds they can go will not solve the oil problem. Getting people to walk to work will not happen when many have to work 20 or 30 miles away from home because they cannot afford local housing, even rented housing. It is illegal in this country to leave a horse unattended so even if I had a horse and cart how would I go into a shop?
As for sail....... IN A TOWN ???????????
It's ok for those who are able to walk and cycle to tell the rest of us to do the same. It's ok for those happy to live in a tent to tell us to do the same and it's ok for the veggetarians to tell us to give up meat etc so we can grow more crops to feed the hungry. All may be valid arguments on their own but try doing it all together and much more besides from a different persons point of view and you will soon realise how ************** hard life is! (my asterix's)
Some people need to wake up and smell the coffee... oh sorry the dandelion coffee because real coffee has to be imported on those nasty poluting, oil guzzling ships that have engines and not sails...

". A lot of the problem is that car culture has destroyed the basic infrastructure that used to make rural life possible - this will need to be rebuilt.

As a lifelong devotee of the Prince I'd LOVE this to be viable.Here's the problem for me: (I only know round here and Cornwall,elsewhere may be different,I hope so),Lets say someone from round here who actually has a job would typically travel the 26 mile round trip to Kidderminster for £7 an hour,rising fuel prices make this increasingly unviable.eventually the poorer section of the local community,or their children,or both ,will leave the area.In their place? 4X4 driving,horse-owning(therefore a nice little smallhoding,giving a second-income supplying local produce, soon becomes redundant,except for a few horses and a lot of docks) people who can easily afford to motor the 32 miles to Birmingham (and still will even if it was £20 a gallon),they shop in T***o,on the way home,their kids CERTAINLY dont go to a local state school,they treat the countryside as the suburbia many of them have moved from.

I'm not blaming them,it's just the way it is,I just don't see the high oil price bringing about the scenario we'd both like to see.

Similarly,It's always the way,when moneys tight you seem to get economies of scale,big farms/shops/government get bigger not smaller.