As Congress meets today and tomorrow to grill the principals before Friday’s vote on the $700 billion “emergency” Wall Street bailout plan (which has been in the works for months but strategically dumped on us all as an “emergency”), oil companies have instituted “rolling shortages” all over the Southeast. Some areas have been out of gas for more than a week and a half, and the situation is not expected to ease until Monday at the latest. Some gas – a single tanker at a time – is being delivered to stations along the Interstates and is being strictly rationed unless it’s diesel, one station per county.

State police are managing the gas lines to prevent violence, which did break out last week in the Nashville, Tennessee area when people started cutting in line. Food prices are rising so fast the stock boys at the grocery stores can’t mark up the goods fast enough, and the specter of looming fuel shortages for winter heat – or price increases that will force people to do without – is beginning to look very scary.

Bailout or no bailout – and despite the launch of FBI investigations of Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, Lehman Brothers and AIG – the United States may well be fully in the clutches of major economic depression before winter even hits. Whether or not that translates to global recession isn’t much of an issue to regular people, as we here in our own homes wonder how we will survive. This post and several following posts in a new series will take a look at the steps citizens should take as soon as possible to ensure their families will make it through the next 6 months. If depression goes on longer than that, additional strategies will be necessary, some already compiled as series in this blog and available under the “Our Most Popular” header on the left side of the page.

Here in Part 1 there are two broad categories of concern citizens will have to work around in order to do for themselves, particular to not freezing, not starving, and not getting indefinitely detained or killed. Considerations must start NOW.

Things to Plan Around:

1. Availability of home heating fuel/gasoline.

It is quite likely that there will be rolling gas shortages throughout the next year. We can also fairly assume there will be drastic fuel oil shortages in the northern tier of the country, and that many will unfortunately freeze to death in their homes or die of carbon monoxide poisoning from kerosene heaters, or fires from badly planned fireplace/wood stove installations.

If you live in an area with ample woods with standing or down dead or a brisk firewood market for purchase, or availability of wood stove pellets, get yourself a wood stove. These come in all sizes and thicknesses, some need more protection to floors and walls than others. You will also need stove piping and must plan a way to get the smoke outside your house (can be through a removed windowpane if necessary). Stoves are often available reasonably cheap and in good condition through Craig’s List or other re-sale sources. Do your homework, install it correctly. If the electricity goes out or fuel oil is unavailable, your family will still be warm. AND you can cook on it!

Resource: NASD: Proper Installation, Operation and Maintenance

2. Deployed Troops, Curfews, Travel Restrictions, Rationing.

Beginning on October 1st – next week – the US Army’s Third Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team – all 6500 to 8000 troops – will be re-deployed within the borders of the United States for various police functions. Regular police forces are being deployed for crowd control and peacekeeping functions as well, in managing protests, gas lines and runs on banks, grocery stores, etc. Expect to be challenged every time you go out, be thankful when it doesn’t happen.

Important: In case of travel restrictions, try to gather your immediate family in one place, preferably the place among your extended network best situated according to all considerations. Schools may be shut down due to lack of fuel for transportation and/or heating, if you have college-bound offspring, consider taking a couple of semesters off unless things at the college look stable. Don’t be afraid to call the admin and ask pointed questions, either. You won’t want anyone near and dear to you to be stuck someplace where they have no resources.

What this means is you need to do what stocking up you can immediately, and plan for obtaining the rest of your needs in possibly creative ways. If you have money socked away, withdraw enough to get you through if the bank goes under, all of it if they’ll let you have it. Store ready cash in freezer bags in the freezer. Purchase as much staple supplies as you can possibly afford, NOW before there are serious shortages and before the prices double or triple.

What food supplies you will need to obtain, along with other tools and supplies, will be supplied in Part 2 of this series. Please stay tuned!

Links:
Southeast Gas Update
FBI investigating companies at heart of meltdown
Long Term Capitol
Craig’s List: Great Resource or Scary Place?
20 Ways to Live on Almost Nothing
It’s Better Than Cheap… It’s Free!

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Roadblocks and Interference
Part 2: Food: Eating What You Can Get

The Sunday New York Times offered an in-depth analysis on August 3 by Larry Rohter entitled, Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization.

A decade ago oil was going for $10 a barrel and “outsourcing” manufacturing facilities and jobs to low-wage regions of the Third World began to hit American labor hard. We were all told we must simply adjust to a whole new, world-wide way of doing things, and damn the torpedoes that were decimating labor unions and sending millions of skilled Americans into the minimum wage ranks of burger-flippers and WalMart greeters just to (not quite) get by.

Oil is trading today [Aug. 4] for just over $121 a barrel, down quite a bit from just a month ago when speculators bid it up to $138. The drop is attributed to falling demand as conservation kicks in on the user front. $4 a gallon gasoline and $5 a gallon diesel has cut into fuel consumption big time this summer as regular people choose not to drive if they don’t have to, and transportation fleets pool schedules to ensure their trucks, trains and ships aren’t wasting a drop. According to Rohter the big ocean-going container fleets have slowed down 20% to save on fuel costs, which translates into substantially slower turnaround on the goods.

We all recognize that greatly increased shipping costs as reflected in the upside-down cost of diesel fuel (remember when diesel was always a dollar LESS than gasoline?) must translate into an increase in the price of everything that moves by means of diesel fuel. This means inflation in every sector, at a time of stagnant wages, joblessness and increasing costs of basic transportation, heating and cooling for the average citizen.

A study in May by Canada’s CIBC World Markets investment bank showed that the recent increases in shipping costs amounts to a 9% tariff on all trade. All without governments having to do a thing. Their report concluded that…

The cost of moving goods, not the cost of tariffs, is the largest barrier to global trade today. [This situation] has effectively offset all the trade liberalization efforts of the last three decades.

Many things contributed to the decline in demand, including Americans choosing to stay close to home this summer, and/or trading in their gas-guzzling SUVs for more fuel efficient vehicles. GM is in trouble for betting on the wrong market, and other American automakers who could have beat the Japanese at the MPG game but didn’t bother to do so are also taking a hit. Union busting plays a role as well, as corporate job losses rose 33% over last year.

Some corporate jobs, however, are doing just fine. Seems that corporate number-crunchers have figured out a way to convert the pension plans of their workers into retirement benefits and ‘golden parachutes’ for executives. The Wall Street Journal offers Companies Tap Pension Plans to Fund Executive Benefits. If you’re still counting on that pension, you’d better start doing something about this before you find yourself at age 65 having to try and live on $1,000 a month in raw Social Security.

Also in the news, the FDIC took over yet another bank on Friday, as Florida’s First Priority becomes 8th bank failure this year. Once again, the good and the not-so good advice of financial pundits should be taken seriously by all who can put away some cash just in case their bank shuts its doors.

Links:

Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization
The End of Globalization?
Globalization begins the great unwind
Companies Tap Pension Plans to Fund Executive Benefits
Florida’s First Priority becomes 8th bank failure this year

As the ever-rising price of fuel puts a serious dent in consumer budgets (and summertime vacations), it’s a good time for remembering good advice from the past as well as new advice for the present on how to keep your shoestring budget from being hopelessly busted.

1. Mass Transiting
If you live in a city or suburb with access to mass transit, USE IT. The cost of bus, train or subway fare is less than the cost of gasoline plus wear-and-tear on your vehicle for those same miles. Plus, if you can test on the means criteria, you can get subsidy for mass transit to and from work every day.

Plus many cities offer “express” transit from suburban hubs to the inner city (bus main depot and transfer station). This means the bus doesn’t stop every 4 blocks along the way, and you can get to work or home often in about the same time it takes to commute in your car during peak traffic hours (the express buses generally use less congested routes).

2. Carpooling
Carpool to and from work if you can. Big employers often have bulletin boards in the break room where people can request for carpooling, and many metropolitan areas provide relatively ‘safe’ long-term parking lots along freeway entrances reserved for carpoolers or express mass transit. This means the people you’re pooling with don’t have to pick everyone up at their homes, but can just pick up and drop off the participants at one location. Regular buses stop at these locations as well, so you can bus to the pick-up and home again.

Carpooling requires out-of-pocket expense just like mass transit does (unless your employer happens to provide the van and gas). It is as cheap or cheaper than driving yourself, as everyone shares the costs. Even if you share a ride with a single co-worker living nearby your costs go down by half.

This requires firm work-scheduling so your participation doesn’t get screwed by your petty tyrant middle-management boss, but many workplaces are beginning to understand that unless they want to give employees a big enough raise to cover transportation inflation, they’d better be accommodating. Some localities offer municipal bulletin boards on the ‘net that allow you to hook up with others who live and work in your area (but not the same place) for carpooling.

3. AC is for Wimps
When you do drive to and from work (even with a pool), turn off the AC. If you don’t live someplace where it’s 80+º at 8 in the morning and 80+º at 5 in the evening, you don’t really need it. Use the interior vents instead to circulate outside air. You’re all sitting down, you can handle less than 80º in comfort with some moving air. Keep the windows up on the highway too. These both reduce drag on the vehicle and its engine.

4. Drive Slower
Drive 55 on the highway rather than 70 (or more). The bad old double-nickel does consume a lot less gas.

5. Limit Acceleration
Unless you’re merging into at-speed traffic, watch your acceleration and braking. Acceleration consumes the most gasoline, and quick-braking (unless necessary) shifts the burden to acceleration later. When you see a need to slow down, take your foot off the gas. Slow braking often helps you avoid having to stop altogether, or accelerate fast (such as at stoplights).

6. Cruise Control
On the highway, use your cruise control. It saves quite a bit of gas and reduces heavy acceleration as well as heavy breaking.

7. Hot Gas
Don’t buy hot gasoline. Purchase your fuel during cooler times of the morning or evening, you’ll get more for the bucks. Always pay attention to the sign price, you can save up to 5¢ per gallon just by buying across the street instead.

8. Buy Less
Don’t “top off” your tank, it’s a waste of gas. Plus, less weight equals better mileage. If you fill up, stop at the first click and don’t keep pumping. If you’ve a 15-gallon tank and need just 10 for the week, only buy 10 gallons during the week. Park in the shade when you can, as heat will expand the gas in your tank. If you can’t park in the shade and don’t want to use the AC (less gas mileage), open your car doors or windows for awhile to let the heat out before driving off.

9. Don’t Be Idle
Limit your idling. You must idle at stoplights, but not in the drive-through at Taco Bell or bank. If it’s going to take more than a minute to conduct your drive-through business, turn off the ignition and restart when you’re done.

10. Get Some Exercise
If you live within a mile of your work, walk or ride your bike. You’ll get good exercise (and only slightly wet when it’s raining if you’ve a raincoat, galoshes and umbrella) and not use any gas at all. A bicycle can be reasonably ridden 5 miles to work in a reasonable amount of time, especially if you have to ride through town (lots of stoplights) or have a particularly lovely road between here and there.

11. Have Some Fun
If you live 5-20 miles from your work and can’t regularly carpool or ride mass transit, consider purchasing a motor scooter. There are some really nice ones on offer these days, can be had for not too much money if you can justify the costs, and often get 75-120 miles per gallon of gas. Plus, they’re fun!

12. Move On
You could consider moving closer to your work or getting a job closer to home. Of course, this presumes that you are job-secure enough to make it worth your while to sell your house at a loss and buy another, and/or employable enough to get a well-paid job anywhere, even in a recession-to-depression economy. In which case you can probably afford to drive yourself to and from work all by your lonesome and wouldn’t have to consider these options.

Once you’ve figured out a way to save on gas and car expenses getting to and from work every day, consider how you can save on other trips in your vehicle…

13. Keep a List
Get a dry-erase board and put it up somewhere right near the ‘fridge. Whenever someone in your family notes that some regular foodstuff or extra (paper towels, toilet paper, shampoo, facial soap, whatever) is running low or you’re out, they can write it down. Then make your list before you go to the store. This will avoid frequent ‘hops’ to the store at odd times just to pick up an item or two.

14. Shopping Day
Plan your meals weekly. This means sitting down and figuring out what your family will have for breakfast, lunch and dinner for a full 7 days. Will that box of cereal last that long? Have you enough ingredients for eggplant parmesan as well as burritos and Spanish rice? If everyone takes their lunches (saves lots of money!) to work and school, make sure you’ve got all the ingredients for everyone every day for the week. This means keeping the kids from eating the “Lunchables” for snacks at home, so also make sure you’ve after-school snacks in stock as well. If you only go to the grocery store once a week, you’ll not be wasting half a tank of gas during the week ‘hopping’ to the store.

15. Group Shopping Day
If you plan ahead, you can do all your grocery store shopping and general running-around errands on Saturday. If you’re sociable, you can probably find a neighbor or two who will think your plan is brilliant, and who will plan ahead too. That way you can share the Saturday run-around duties, as well as vehicle and gasoline costs. Plus, you’ll only have to do the driving once every two or three weeks!

A psychological issue I’ve found with this planning ahead stuff is that some people fool themselves into believing they’re NOT spending much money if they drive to the store once a day to pick up an item or two or three, instead of going once a week and spending what can amount to $200 at a time. It’s a quirk of numbers that should be examined closely for all factors including gasoline, because in the end, that daily trip for this-n-that can add $100 to that weekly expenditure.

When you make plans with the kids to see a movie or do some other worthy and fun thing on the weekend, you can consider proximity. Share rides to the mall with other families in your neighborhood. Do Dollar Movie & Pizza Night on Friday instead of Saturday. Sign up for a video/DVD rental service, have the kids invite their friends, cook up some popcorn and have sodas on hand, arrange the chairs and hold “movie night” at your house! I’ve found it fun to do all-day (or all-night) spectaculars – all the Rocky movies, all the Star Wars movies, all the Arnold movies… whatever you like. One right after another with intermissions. For the all-nighters I put the eldest in charge of snacks and programming, move the equipment to the garage or basement, throw in lots of pillows and blankets, let them have a fine sleep-over.

The best bet for the cash-strapped or just the thrifty person is either to garage your vehicle or share the costs with others. The money you save might pay for this month’s grocery price-hikes! And remember to buy local whenever you can, particularly produce in-season. You can go to the area farmer’s market BEFORE going to the grocery store that week, and any neighbors you share the ride with will learn what’s cool about farmer’s markets.

The cost of living won’t be going down, even though our incomes may not be going up. If you’ve good ideas for saving money in these areas, please contribute in the comments, there may be some truly great ones out there!

Useful Links:

FTC: Saving Money at the Gas Pump
Edmunds: Gas-Buying Strategies
How to Save Money on Gas
43 Gas-Saving Tips

Last month I asked the question, Is It Depression Yet? and linked quite a few opinions of economic pundits about when the recession no one in DC cares to admit we’re in will turn into a full-fledged depression.

In going down the list of ominous signs that we’re going down for the third time, the key ingredient apart from a burst credit bubble was rising oil prices. Well, this last weekend gasoline went over $4 a gallon, and diesel was pushing $5. So while families and workers in cities can start taking mass transit to work and school and just stay home this summer instead of driving to the Grand Canyon, the price of diesel – which runs all our shipping fleets, trucks and trains – is going to cause swift inflation in the price of food as well as everything else that is transported from here to there. It is no longer a wild conspiracy theory that oil will go to $200 a barrel, now projected by the end of this year and possibly right around election time. It could hit $150 this month and no one will be shocked.

Thus I read with interest an article in the June 9 New York Times entitled Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average. A survey by the Oil Price Information Service did a survey which showed that the price of gasoline has its biggest impact on rural areas, particularly in the Southeast, and that for the people euphemistically called the “working poor” the cost of just getting to work and to the store is quickly eating as much of their income as food and housing. Since their incomes are not rising and aren’t likely to rise, the situation for people in rural areas of the south, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas will soon become a choice between food and transportation.

In that previous post asking what signs will tell us we’re in a depression (since our dear leaders in Washington will never admit it), the moment that transportation becomes effectively unaffordable for people who have no other transport options, depression is upon us. Now, the millions of rural or suburban Americans who have to quit their jobs because they can no longer afford to get to work will not show up in the unemployment figures the government releases each month. Because if you quit your job rather than getting laid off, you won’t be getting any unemployment insurance payments. So the government figures – always low by a large factor due to not counting anyone not receiving benefits, will be low by much larger factors. When we can safely multiply the government figures by tens (where 300,000 lost jobs really means more like 3 million jobs lost), denial among the political class won’t be fooling anybody in the real world.

Mine is a rural family. Worse, we live in the hard-hit Southeast. Even worse than that, we live in Appalachia, which is and has always been an official “economically depressed region.” Jobs are scarce and getting scarcer, and commutes can be long. Outside actual cities of 100,000 or more mass transit is nonexistent. I work from home (which is nice), but daughter works in retail, grandson will be starting college this fall (and must drive unless he can share an apartment with a friend close to campus), and hubby’s job involves considerable travel in the region. The boss tells him that if gas goes to $5 a gallon he’ll have to simply close it down.

So what I’ve been doing is looking at some possible alternatives that don’t involve selling the property at cut-rate price and moving to some dingy city we’ll hate. My ‘vintage’ diesel Mercedes has been parked for months now, is probably going to be the first vehicle to go. Daughter’s will be second. We have to keep the pickup truck because this is a rural homestead and we need it. We’ll just have to keep it parked most of the time.

I’m thinking our best bet is some motorcycle type of thing. Because while a bicycle would be a healthful alternative, this is the mountains. No one in their right mind wants to bike 15 miles to work on steep mountain roads (where you’d end up walking it instead of riding it). So it looks to be your basic Barley Harley scooter or glorified Moped that gets about 100 miles per gallon. With that sort of mileage you can put up with some rain and wind, and spend a bit more time getting to and from (can’t use the interstate!). Turns out that you can buy a used scooter for a few hundred dollars, but it may need repair and that’s usually a few hundred dollars too. Yet fairly reliable transportation for under a thousand dollars is a pretty good deal, and the cost of running it saves a lot on gasoline. There are also brand new scooters for under a thousand dollars, which might be a wiser investment.

I’ve discovered that you can also buy saddlebags, trunks and baskets that would allow me to use the scooter to do minor grocery shopping or carry some things while traveling. This is quite a plus. A good ski outfit and well-styled rain gear will get me through rough weather, but do they make any helmets with windshield wipers?

So if rising prices are cutting deeply into your way of life, you might want to check around your area and some of the information and supplies sources listed below to see if there’s a good alternative for personal transportation in your future. Or, I suppose, we could spend the money on a horse and convert the little Honda into a carriage. How about a donkey and cart? I figure that if America wants to be a Third World country (parts of it already qualify), we might as well look like one.

Links:

Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average
Go Motor Scooter Blog
Motoscooter Muse
The Advantages of Scooters
Motorscooter Economy

As we start moving into summer I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some economic predictions made way back in 2007 by an “informed” opinionator over at Sustainable Living’s Natural Hub, a Q&A piece entitled Timing of a depression triggered by high oil prices.

An Overview of unfolding recession as the oil economy fades was published in 2006 explaining the various factors that would mark a worldwide recession due to increasing oil prices. Some of its indicators have long since come and gone, others have been with us for years already, and some of the predictions have come true in these last few months. For those of us living in the real world, recession and ‘stagflation’ have been facts of life for years despite the mainstream news media’s reluctance to actually use the word when reporting on where speculators have taken futures on oil and food supplies lately. They won’t use the ‘D’ word either [depression], but here’s a list of signs that it’s already upon us.

Sign 1. “For there to be a deep recession, there first has to be a credit bubble – a high level of personal indebtedness in the community.”

Well, this one’s sure a no-brainer! Hopefully most readers of this blog have made real efforts to minimize or get out from under personal debt over the past few years (exempting mortgage issues), or were never deeply in debt in the first place. Those who consolidated credit card and other installment loan debts by refinancing when the mortgage boom was on may be facing serious issues with that mortgage now, but that’s such a huge issue that if mortgage debt is the biggest of your worries, you’re doing pretty well.

Sign 2. “Will the collapse of the housing bubble trigger a depression?”

The speculative real estate frenzy was maintained by artificially low interest rates maintained by government need to sell federal junk bonds to overseas investors (mostly China) in order to finance oil imports and maintain massive military costs for its 2-front wars. The “housing bubble” has officially collapsed.

This expert claims that the collapse is enough to trigger deep recession, but not enough to trigger a depression. For that, you need something more…

Sign 3. “Will rising oil prices trigger a depression?”

Short answer: Yes. The expert opinion prognosticating how this would work is positively eerie looking back from here inside the deepening worldwide depression (complete with global food crisis). Check it out…

“First, the credit bubble has to collapse [done]. Next, oil has to become structurally expensive [done]. A reasoned guess post-credit-collapse would be when oil both reaches and maintains a price of close to $US80 a barrel [it's at ~$120 a barrel now and still rising]. …At the point of oil settling at or over $80 for a year or longer there is likely to be structural (oil component of goods price adjustment) inflation of 10% – 20%. At this point, if price movements in 2005 are a guide, petrol may reach close to $US4 a gallon at the pump [it's well over $4 a gallon for diesel with no indications it will ever come down]. This will make petrol effectively unaffordable for many low income people who have no other transport options (chiefly a USA condition).

Huh. This expert put off the scenario in his own mind until 2015, but we already know that expert economists like to pretend things are always better than they really are. So for a final sign of depression…

Sign 4. “How many months or years will a deep recession last before it becomes a depression?

Most of us at the lower end of the economic scale know by our own community and regional experience that the government isn’t reporting real unemployment figures, and isn’t even counting most of the people who are unemployed at any given time (number-fudging, basing reports entirely on who’s getting unemployment money this week). This expert suggests that when we reach 25% to 30% unemployment, when part-time workers have less work than they want, when there are “few business start-ups,” when tax take no longer equals expenditures, when food prices have doubled and when the trend is “no end in sight” for those conditions, we will be in a depression.

It is very difficult to find real figures for unemployment and underemployment in the U.S. these days. TNTalk figures that rates are routinely underestimated by 150%. Which as of April 2008 would put real unemployment at very nearly 15%. Another source places the total defacto unemployment rate at a firm 13.3%. If we add those part-timers (people who have gone from full employment to inadequate part-time jobs), we may already be at 25% for all practical purposes of making ends meet in working class America.

We are there, despite government figure-fudging on unemployment. The trigger events this expert cite will be; a) when oil is so expensive that most low income earners can’t afford to run a car, b) when food and retail prices in general have risen by 20%. These conditions – if they do not already prevail in your locality – should affect a majority of the population by summer. 2008, not 2015.

The whole essay is worth reading for its historical value if nothing else. The wildly errant projections of when all this may come to pass seem positively infantile considering this was written just a year ago. Gold has risen, the dollar has fallen and keeps on falling, oil is over $100 a barrel and NOT coming down, the credit bubble has burst, millions are threatened with immediate homelessness, oil is too expensive for truck fleets, trains, shipping and home heating, and jobs are few and far between.

It behooves concerned citizens to ignore what government Pollyannas are telling us month to month, instead arranging our affairs as if reality on the ground is the reality we must deal with. Because it is. We cannot expect experts in or out of government to tell us the truth, or to help anybody out of their increasingly untenable situations. Further postings to what people can do while living inside a real world-wide economic recession will be forthcoming, so stay tuned!

And don’t forget to plant some ‘maters and peas, even in patio pots if that’s all the room you’ve got. Nobody will be able to afford those at the grocery store this year!

Links:

Is It a Recession? Or a Depression?
Overview of unfolding recession as the oil economy fades
Timing of a depression triggered by high oil prices
Sustainable Living: The Fading of the Oil Economy

The market news reports that consumer spending is up again this month. The problem is that this is not as a sign of possible economic recovery from the deepening recession we find ourselves in. It’s a reflection of the fact that people must spend more on basics like fuel and food – prices for both rising much faster than regular people can keep up with – thus must spend less on all that consumer junk our capitalistic system expects us to buy with our overrated “disposable income.”

If you’re reading this blog, chances are you’re like me – I have no “disposable income” because all the income we have must go to simply pay for the necessities of life, and there’s hardly enough even cutting corners. Food, clothing, shelter, transportation, utilities. I have previously posted about the clothing thing, as I haven’t actually purchased new clothing for at least a decade. Used clothing is good enough – even suits and formal clothing – though I don’t dress up much. But the mortgage is what it is. Gas prices are what they are, they cannot be bargained down. And as the price of fuel rises, so does the cost of food and electricity. Thus more of our money must be spent on necessities, even if we never had any left over for junk in the first place!

It’s spring, my tiller should come back from the shop Saturday, and all my garden terraces will be put into production this season. Of course that also means I must purchase seed and starts that I haven’t grown in flats, but all that will pay off as the food comes in. Spinach, lettuce, collards, kale and peas are all up, the asparagus (a perennial) is coming in rushes, and the strawberries will ripen if the nights ever stop dipping into the 30s.

Even if you live in a cramped apartment, you can grow a few tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers in pots on the patio or porch. Buy into a CSA for fresh produce as your share of a local farmer’s crops, or plan a weekly visit to your area farmer’s market and buy fresh produce in bulk. That supports local farmers, lets you get to know the people who can keep you from starving, and saves real money over the whole supermarket system where locally grown tomatoes compete with tomatoes grown in Mexico or Guatemala and they all cost way too much.

A series in the Washington Post examines the issues in depth and is worth a read. The final installment appeared today (May 1) and deals with the American consumer’s issues. Clipping, Scrimping, Saving takes a look at how people are coping with the rising price of food.

There are some good hints and resources in the Post series. But there is another issue that people who really are having trouble making ends meet must consider as even more important. The diet for poor people in this country consists of worse than junk. We all saw the class divisions during the Katrina crisis, and understand that the shape of poverty in America is obese. I know it’s hard to think that people are actually hungry who weigh twice or three times what a healthy person weighs, but it’s true. They’re hungry for real food, but limited to eating worse-than-garbage.

We could be smug and say that rising food prices might cure that obesity epidemic, but it won’t. The fake grain paste and high fructose corn syrup diet is designed to pack on pounds even as it starves the body of necessary nutrients and energy. The result is crippling obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and a host of cancers. It’s a “killing diet,” not a basic level of necessary nourishment.

Given the even worse health care crisis in this country, we who live on shoestring budgets cannot afford to get fat and unhealthy. If the best thing I could offer my readers is the advice to pay attention to nourishment – buy fresh food, I offer it now. Sam’s Club and coupon-cutting will save you money on junk food, but it won’t help you stay healthy and fit. Do not be fooled – take the time and trouble to seek out healthy food, don’t give in to cheap obesity.

Links and Resources:

WP: Global Food Crisis Series
NYT: As Jobs Vanish and Prices Rise
Food Crisis Hits America
Disappearing Amber Waves of Grain
Where Every Meal Is a Sacrifice

Perhaps many readers have become aware of the looming worldwide food shortage, there was a story on NPR’s The World just Monday night (March 31) about rising tensions in the bread lines of Egypt. London’s Guardian reported this past November that the crisis can be attributed to climate change (crop failures and ag diversion of rice and wheat crops) and fuel shortages – both the increasing price of petroleum fuels for transportation and agriculture as well as the diversion of staple food crops like soybeans and corn toward biofuels production.

Soaring grain prices are now exploding into full-fledged food riots in many corners of the planet, while Americans are stunned by rising prices every time they go to the grocery store. As of December, 2007 the UN Food and Agricultural Organization reported that 37 countries face immediate food crises, and 20 nations had imposed some form of food-price controls. Reuters lays additional blame on panicked speculators trading on global futures markets in the wake of recession fears fueled by the increasing defaults among Wall Street’s investment banks and stock market gamblers.

But there is hope on the horizon, particularly for those of us who were smart enough to purchase diesel powered vehicles, despite the ruinous and increasing costs of gasoline. That hope is a new source for producing biodiesel (which can run the entirety of our transportation system, including passenger cars if GM can be persuaded to come off their new diesel they’ve been sitting on in joint patent with the EPA).

Ride Lust reports that a new process to produce biodiesel from algae – thus leaving staple food crops for people who eat staple foods – may be ready to hit the market. Green Fuel Technologies has begun construction on a “Closed Water Algae” bioreactor facility that will feed from the smoke stacks of a local power plant. PetroSun has also announced that their many acres of algae ponds will be going commercial today – April 1st!

The Closed Water System technology uses energy from the sun and carbon dioxide from industrial smoke stacks to feed the algae growth, thereby ‘closing’ the carbon dioxide loop from fuel use to fuel production. This is an exciting development. Biodiesel is readily available in my locale because the nearest city requires all its mass transit and truck fleets to run on biodiesel, thus it’s available from several area stations. The problem is that it’s still more expensive than regular diesel, and goes up at the same rate as petro-diesel. That is mostly due to greed, of course, since I’m not dumb enough to believe any producers or dealers are actually pouring the excess profits into greater R&D or production. But one day soon regulators will step in, producers will recognize the gold mine doesn’t need seeding, and distributors will remember that they’ve plenty of underground tanks at truck stops that could fuel the shipping fleets. And the price will go down.

If biodiesel development can be made to go with switchgrass, algae and agricultural green-waste instead of actual food humans need to survive, basic staple food prices should go down too. Even if the financial sector goes into deep depression, you can’t have bread lines when there’s no bread. And nobody can make a market killing if nobody’s got any money to spend. So in addition to growing your Victory Garden this year to supplement your own family’s food supply, we should all be cheering these alternative biodiesel sources and technologies, helping to support production and getting in line for demand. Governments aren’t going to fix our problems. We’ll have to do it!

Ford Prodigy, cutaway view of a ‘concept’ car we could someday be able to buy… maybe. Or not.

The 100 miles per gallon car. One that carries four adults, has all the safety features that protect in accidents but weigh a lot. Peter Diamandis’ X Prize Foundation has turned their focus from space travel to automobiles. The automotive X Prize went live in April of 2007 at the New York Auto Show with a $10 million award to the winning designers of a production-ready vehicle capable of exceeding 100 mpg.

It’s not that hard to get 100 miles per gallon if you don’t mind a seriously “minimalist” vehicle. Heck, if you make it lighter than a motorbike and gin it up with solar cells, it’s not that hard to get 1,000 miles per gallon (downhill, with a tailwind, driver lying flat). But the solar cell idea isn’t that bad, now that we hear there are new plastic coatings that will generate even in low-light situations. And what about a hood scoop to use the wind of forward motion to help charge those batteries too?

Here’s hoping that a 100 mpg production vehicle that meets all safety and practical criteria does get invented. That of course won’t necessarily convince Detroit to actually make any of them, and it’s a sure bet that any designers who use the $10 million to gear up their own factory will be held to a strict quota on how few of the vehicles they’ll actually be able to produce per year (corporate welfare to Detroit). Heck, GM is still sitting on their new diesel engine (joint patent with EPA) developed years ago, that can get 60+ mpg on biodiesel. They’ll never deploy it until America demands it.

Meanwhile, Toyota’s selling more hybrids than Detroit is selling anything, though the tax incentives have sunset and the import lid is still screwed on tight. What does it take to convince these old robber barons that we need the technology they’ve been sitting on just so nobody can have it? When do we get our 100 mpg hybrids? At what point do we taxpayers quit bailing them out of their stupid decisions and let them die the death they’ve so richly deserved since the 1970s?

Other sources tell us 100 mpg hybrids already exist – but you have to build them yourself. Guess I need to get me and my ‘vintage’ diesel Mercedes into an auto shop class down at the local community college, see if I can’t convert it into an SVO-Electric hybrid using that hood scoop idea and some nice new solar cells the college can probably order at cost… we could all learn the mechanics and details, open a conversion shop, and have about half the locals in 100 mpg’s before 2010!

Links:

Progressive Automotive X PRIZE
Popular Mechanics: 100 mpg Available Now!
Edmunds: Automotive X Prize Seeks 100-mpg Car
MSN Money: 100 mpg Car is Coming

I’ve added a new blog to my blogroll, Save Fuel – Save Money today. I don’t know about your locality, but gas is pushing $4 a gallon right here in my neck of the woods right now, and will probably go to $5 a gallon before summer tourist season hits. Or, more likely, doesn’t hit this year due to the prohibitive cost of gasoline. Which as of this morning, March 11, 2008, is trading on the futures market for $109 a barrel. It probably won’t be coming down.

Sure, Europe has had $5 gasoline for years now, but Europe’s not all that big. One can drive from one end of a country to the other in a few hours, and most European countries have reliable and comfortable mass transit systems. Things we don’t have in the U.S. if you don’t happen to live on either the right or left coasts. Worse, it takes me as many hours to drive to my own state’s coast as it takes me to drive to Florida and visit relatives! It takes two long driving days to visit Mom in Oklahoma, and I’ve friends in Arizona and California I haven’t seen in years because it’s just too far away.

I bought a well-kept almost-vintage Mercedes sedan a couple of years ago for less than $2,000. It needs some rear end work, and we’ve had to replace engine parts here and there, but its biggest asset (to me) is that it’s a diesel. I can buy biodiesel in my nearest city because they run all their city buses and truck fleets on biodiesel. Unfortunately, it still costs a full dollar more than petroleum diesel. Why is that?

In our attempts to reduce our dependence on foreign supplies of fossil fuels, biodiesel seems like a pretty easy fix. I live near a rail line, over which I see literally hundreds of tank cars a day moving thousands of gallons of vegetable (and sometimes animal) oil per car. We can recycle old engine oil, used fry grease, even rendered road kill (and slaughterhouse leftovers, and animal shelter victims) to make biodiesel. But who will use it – or ethanol, which isn’t such a great environmental deal – if it consistently costs a lot more than petroleum? Doesn’t that defeat the whole plan?

We’ll be taking a closer look at fuels over the next few months, but in the meantime readers will get a lot of good information on trends and technologies from the Save Fuel blog. Check it out!