A Curiously Modified Paranoia

[degringolade]

 

Harlem Renaissance (New Negro Movement) / Horace Pippin/ The Hoe Cake

It’s kinda funny what has been happening lately.  Here in Oregon, the state government has banned the sale of fossil-fuel cars starting in 2035.  Here more locally, the City government of Milwaukie has banned all new homes from installing gas ranges.  I think that the talk of doing a similar move by the feds in banning gas stoves is being bruited as we speak.  

Now, I suppose that you are expecting an extended polemic on the stupidity and injustice of these moves.  I suppose that I could easily write such a thing, but my heart just isn’t in it.

In a way, I see these kinds of things as being a reasonable warning of the road ahead.  Now, this doesn’t mean that my countrymen and peers won’t go screaming apeshit about this.  It is just a matter of time before some dude come up with a meme about prying his ‘cold dead fingers’ off his gas stove, but that is just a digression from the point of this post.

I think that half-baked measures like this are not so much laws as they are warnings.  They serve as the all-important ‘I told you so” for the state of affairs that is most likely to come to pass in the near (± 10 years) future.

I tend to think that the American hegemony that has served up the goodies that we hold as our ‘right’ is coming to an end.  We have been painted into a corner by a couple of generations of MBA’s and piss-poor decisions at all levels of government.  That corner is that we are going to necessarily need to reduce overall consumption and the cost of things are going to go up appreciably.  

What the warnings are telling me is that a greater increase in frugality is in the cards.  Now this kind of thought is about as un-American as you can possibly imagine.  The mindset of America is and always has been that things are getting better and we will have more than last year.

Well, the lower half of the socioeconomic spectrum was disabused of that silly idea beginning with Bill Clinton and the pace has been accelerating ever since.  I figure that I am right on the 50% mark of the spectrum and what I am seeing is a warning that the next decades are going to eat into the upper fifty percent at about 2% a year.

California and Oregon, by telling you no new internal combustion cars by 2035 aren’t telling you that your next car will be electric, they are telling 80% of the population that the car you have is going to be the car you have.  Electric cars are for rich people.  You aren’t rich.  The grid is strained now, it can maybe handle 30% electric cars tops.  Chew on that for a while.  

Trying to ban natural gas stoves is telling you that the gas and oil companies can make more money selling outside the country than inside.  So plan on your gasoline being more expensive and harder to get.  

At the end of the day, there are too many people in the world chasing a limited amount of energy.  The things that you are seeing are governments giving you fair warning about the road ahead.  Pay attention.  

I am going after my planning by trying to trim luxuries that I have somehow been considering essential.  If cars are going to become prohibitively expensive to own/operate, I have best hone my ability to do without one.  If electricity is going to become more expensive to allow for electric vehicles to become ubiquitous then I had better figure out how to control my electrical usage.  

I think that I need to evaluate/inventory my energy use.  I think that alongside a pantry for a food cushion, I need to figure out an energy cushion. 

Comments

No argument from me😳

[(Anonymous)]

Much as I would like to rail and say "it ain't so," you are on to something. Being more self sufficient is a start, cutting back a bit now will prepare one for avoiding the panic of the future, keep writng, you express yourself so much better than I can.
ps ever think of using beer to leven bread, adds alot of flavor, might go along with beer brewing, just saying.
OL

[ari_ormstunga]

That seems very reasonable. It would be nice if the powers-that-be would just come out and admit it. Sure, it would be political suicide and all that, but it would at least be a refreshing bit of honesty.

[next_migration]

I think your interpretation is correct. Gas stoves do have health risks, but so do many products that we tolerate for their convenience or quality of life benefits. They contribute to climate change, but so does most production of electricity for electric stoves. A desire not to extend, and ultimately to roll back the large, expensive natural gas infrastructure network seems like a plausible motive.

I've personally been working for a long time to make do with ever less, but results are leveling off as I'm reaching an age where it's getting ever harder to do things by hand or on foot. "Die when the power runs out" may ultimately be my final tactic - though there is still more I can do without if it becomes necessary.

Failsafe vs. fail-unsafe

[next_migration]

If you'll forgive me for double-commenting, it occurred to me that there's another reason why some factions might want to throttle expansion of natural gas infrastructure if they secretly understand that we are in for serious long-term decline. When the electrical grid has a failure, people sit in the dark eating cold food. When the natural gas system has a failure, people get blown to kingdom come. (This actually happened to someone near where I live a few years ago.) If the Powers That Be don't believe it will be possible to maintain the infrastructure, it would be rational to try to pressure us towards reliance on infrastructure of a kind that doesn't directly kill the customers if inadequately maintained.