Would be hard to do in LA -- premium rent or not. :(

Lots of good thought-provoking comments. The responses indicate this has struck a nerve. Good. Harold is correct that the focus of US media on WTI is very misleading. Brent has actually set a record high in Euros. Not sure about Tapis, which is Asia's standard.
Scott is on the right track. James Howard Kunstler has a great Monday column and Thursday podcast in which he regularly explains the benefits of walkable, well-designed communities and the challenges places like Phoenix and LA will be facing because of their dependence on cars.
Oil, because of its unique properties of energy density, portability and versatility is literally the lifeblood of the global economy. We should be preserving a future supply for future generations. To simply burn it in the way we do ... not cool.
A few key aspects often overlooked that help explain what is happening:
1)Energy Return on Energy Invested: Sure, there is a lot of oil in tar sands, but it takes a tremendous amount of energy to get out. As we use more and more energy to get energy, the surplus amount available to the rest of society decreases.
2)Problem is cheap liquid fuels, not energy per se. Can't run cars or trucks on solar panels, wind mills, or other alternatives. Things like bio fuels don't scale well.
3) Export Land Model: The key number is how much oil is available for export on global market. Getting squeezed by two factors a) Production falling in most countries, b) Domestic use in exporting countries increasing.
Regarding those people with six-figure incomes who "aren't affected" by rising gas prices, I would counter that their salaries are ultimately paid by those below them. The crisis in finance and debt is likely to supercede the liquid fuels crisis in the short term.
And yes, taking advantage of public transit to hike is a smart move, where available.
I'd guess more than 90% of cars I see are single-occupant vehicles, so conservation is our best oil supply for now.
One more thing worth mentioning is that the price of oil and gasoline have been quite stable in terms of gold and silver for the past 35 years.

Edited by Winterland76 on 02/24/2012 22:25:31 MST.

There's two ways of approaching living in LA, or any other similar and totally non sustainable cities along the soutwestern/eastern sunbelt, one is to use the wealth there to save up money to move, the other is to just get out now before it's too late. Sort of the old rats leaving a sinking ship idea. Any city that is totally non sustainable and which cannot really function without reasonably cheap and readily available gas has very little future. And that's not even thinking about water issues.

I solved the problem of living in LA very easily, I left. One of the easiest decisions I ever made I might add, and one I have never regretted for a single second, something about a wall of smog blocking view of the nearby mountains from the freeway made that such an easy decision to make. Or downtown barely visible from the 10, and of course, the constant traffic jams that appear for no real reason, like, that, oh, yes, that's the normal pre lunch freeway traffic jams, let's take surface roads to get there.

If you own property, then the smart thing to do is sell it now, to some sucker, while the market is a bit up, and use that money to relocate. While maybe not as dire as Phoenix or some of the Texas mega cities, LA has very little future in it current form, but if you make good money there, saving it to leave is another good option. Just staying to stay, or spinning wheels and making no financial progress would be low on the list of good plans. No future is a more long term comment, like 10 years, but it's best to get out early generally, that's what smart money does.

added: since Kunstler was mentioned, I have always liked his defining the entire US suburban development model as 'the biggest misallocation of resources in the history of humanity'. I'm not a huge fan of him though, like his urban planning and histories, but he's a bit overanxious to see the decline, that tends to cloud his judgement a bit too much I think. But for new urbanism, ie, livable / walkable / workable urban development, he's really good.

ELM and EROEI might be pushing the learning curve a bit too much, plus those are starting to appear in the mainstream, finally, so I think those concepts will start to trickle into people's awareness, certainly is happening with ethanol and other non viable bio fuel options.

Edited by hhope on 02/24/2012 22:05:02 MST.

I don't miss my 8 mile 50 minute commute in San Diego that I left behind. I do miss the better job opportunities that the city provides easier than here in the country. But I have more free time to enjoy the free things in life. Cars will be around for a loooong time yet. Look at all the infrastructure.

cars will be around for sure, the usa still produces some 50% of its fuel domestically, and it consumes far far more than is needed for most stuff. The production is declining overall exept a few blips, but they are good at keeping the flows flowing here.

Good roads, not so sure about that, the increase in pot holes is already very visible to me. Costs a lot to fund and maintain large scale road/bridge systems, and when the plan is to not fund that, or put it off, you get full on failures. And that is the current plan more or less.

But cars have a lot of use, they just won't be used as thoughtlessly as we use them now. If you ever lived in Europe you know the next step we'll take, they have a lead because they were smart enough to build the next step with income from gas/oil taxes, that's a much better plan than ours, which was to do nothing.

Harald, I don't live in an urban area. I live on the edge of the foothills of the Cascades in a small town. I have hiked everything around here many, many times (we have plenty of rail to trails and regional areas) but we still have to drive to get to them. So while there is local hiking it isn't a huge savings. Going to alpine is 75 to 140 miles rt, although I can do Rainer in under 60.

We both work from home though so we don't commute.

Sidewalks and bike lanes are the fancy of city dwellers....

"1)Energy Return on Energy Invested: Sure, there is a lot of oil in tar sands, but it takes a tremendous amount of energy to get out."

What's crazy is they use natural gas to extract the oil from tar sands.

They could just send the natural gas down to the U.S. instead of the tar sands oil and it would be easier, cheaper, less environment degradation, les air pollution,...

I have noticed over the years every time fuel efficient cars become popular the higher the price of fuel spikes.The same happens in water,electricity,and other commodities we are asked to conserve.

Some electricity companies are now charging surcharges to people who converted their homes to solar power who pay less for electricity. Instead of being happy the solar home is helping make the electricity company power grid manufacturing larger.

I think the reason this happens is because the companies suppling these commodities are so tied in to the stock and commodity market if they don't keep their profits rising every year their stock holder are not happy. The more we conserve the less profit these companies make so they have to raise the prices to keep their profit margin up.

So the fuel companies and other commodities cut back on manufacturing or distribution to artificially boost profit crate a shortage and they show wind fall profits and their stock soars to all time highs.

I really can't wait till the fuel companies cut back on manufacturing fuel so much that we get to go back to the odd,even gas station line several blocks long days of the 1970's to make profits soar.

The only way I can see the basic commodities we need to survive in this modern world is government controlled prices. Pull the companies out of the stock and commodities market so people playing the markets can't drive up the price of these basic commodities we need to stay stable as a nation. IMHO
Terry

"I have noticed over the years every time fuel efficient cars become popular the higher the price of fuel spikes.The same happens in water,electricity,and other commodities we are asked to conserve."

Limited supply. Rising demand. As cheap oil is used up we have to use more expensive oil. Prices rise regardless of fuel efficiency.

If we didn't have more efficient cars, fuel prices would be higher.


"The only way I can see the basic commodities we need to survive in this modern world is government controlled prices."

Haven't we tried that before? During Gerald Ford presidency maybe? Didn't work very well. Doesn't work to regulate prices directly.

And government take over oil companies? What kind of commie are you? : )

Gasoline is my major hiking expense. I'm in Seattle and I can rack up 100-150 mile round trips for day hikes. If I do that once a week I can burn up $100 a month at 30MPG.

Years ago I was in Munich and around midnight I saw many people walking through the city center carrying skis. The city is in a flat valley and everyone was carrying downhill skis and I realized that they were all coming from the train station and had been up in the Alps. I got the idea to have a light rail line go up I-90/Snoqualamie, across Blewett Pass and back on Highway 2/Stevens Pass. That would link up two major ski areas for the winter and dozens of trails, not to mention the transportation and economic advantages for the rural mountain towns along the way. I'm sure there are many areas in the Sierra, Rockies and Appalachians that could do the same.

It's a very serious issue, not to be taken lightly.
For me, as long as after it "cranky", it actually "starty", it's a good day.

LOL @ Kat!

Another way to conserve is more walking, since most of us are hikers (assuming safe neighborhoods). It will not work for multiple bags of groceries but to pick up some milk or a loaf of bread, why not jog, hike, or bike it with a small UL pack? After recording my own driving patterns, the odd daily errand really adds up in terms of city mileage.

Get everyone in shape for that next hike.

As to government rationing energy supplies, I think the American people on average are wiser than that. We now export gasoline, jet fuel, and (iirc) diesel. It will not be long before we export natural gas and eventually oil. After the gasoline spikes of 2007-2008, everything I have read points to most Americans reducing their consumption (though as pointed out, some utilities are fighting back since they have to worry about their capital investments, the marketeers are fighting against bicycle riders, etc...). Still like getting on the open highway for a road trip, however, like a Patagonia-clad "Mad Max". I think some sporty cars like the forementioned CRX, that are also fuel efficient would be a big hit IF they could fit the modern American. Detroit and Tokyo are trying but I do not believe they are giving most Americans what they want.

HK, make sure to read the entire stories before concluding we actually are a net exporter of any energy resource. The US media has gotten incredibly lazy when reporting such matters, it's not just the Cushing price being used, they will report that export of gasoline has risen x percent, with no backstory on that at all to explain why that number has zero meaning, it's a just a function of how oil is produced and refined in this region, and of percentages of various liquids produced in each refinery.

We import roughly 50% of our petroleum, period. Before the 2008 price hikes, that number was around 60%.

When the media reports some increase in exports of refined product, that number is totally meaningless out of context. It could, for example, be Venezuelan owned Texas refineries 'exporting' refined Venezuelan crude back to Venezuela (because venezuela has no refineries to speak of, or few). Or sometimes the percentages of the refining cracks (the percentages of each substance created from the raw crude) lead to surpluses of one refinery product, like diesel, on a local level. For example, sometimes Europe exports gasoline to the US because they use a lot more diesel, and we export diesel to them, because we use a lot more gasoline, but that doesn't mean either has a surplus of petroleum, it's just hte physics / chemistry of how a specific refinery refines a specific type of crude, and what percentages of gas/diesel/heating oil/jet fuel/asphalt/bunker oil are created. Each refinery is usually tied to refining a specific range of crude, mostly sour crude now because the world is largely running out of sweet light crude, the stuff of dreams. What's left now, and being brought online, is the garbage crudes that were considered not worth pumping 40 years ago. And now we are scraping the bottom of the barrel even further, going into really poor quality sources like shale and tar sand oil, the latter of which can't be used without mixing it with real oil prior to refining. That's all that Venezuela has left at this point, for example. Shale oil is one of the bigger scams out there, as you'll learn over the next few years. The real story on that is interesting, just avoid reading the marketing spin designed to pump up the stocks until they can sell them off, right before the hype bubble pops, as it is doing now with shale gas.

It's downright comical in this election cycle to see right wing alleged free marketeers promise 2.50 a gallon gasoline, which could only happen if the US totally nationalized all oil production and refining and retailing. Why? Because oil is bought and sold on a global market, not a US market. US oil companies compete on the global market, they aren't charities. So the only way prices, which already reflect the cost of oil on a global level, could be dropped, would be if the country nationalized every drop of production, then forced that oil to be sold at x price to the consumer. You know, the way Saudi Arabia does, or Venezuela, where gas costs about 20 cents a gallon. That costs the Venezuelans billions by the way, but it's one way they buy off the population. What actually happens to any increase in production is that it might slightly drop the amount we import, assuming it gets sold here, which is not at all guaranteed, anyone can buy crude from US oil companies in most cases, it just happens that it's cheaper to sell it here since they don't need to ship it as far. But this level of total incoherence in political rhetoric is what happens when you pretend finite things are infinite.

There are some excellent books out there, as well as good web sites, that explain all this clearly.

But the basic numbers are very simple: we import 50% of our current petroleum consumption. So there's no scenario where the US will magically override geological reservoir depletion realities, that's must magical thinking , which is still being promoted by a non critical US media. Same goes for relatively tiny amounts of shale and tar sand oil, sure the total of THOSE might increase by 50%, while the overall US daily production continues its steady decline, which was only briefly interrupted by the one time giant Alaska discoveries. The new alaska fields promise no more than 6 months of global consumption at very best. The alleged mega find in deep sea waters off Brazil will come online slowly, and are unlikely to ever do much more than cover the decline in Brazilian oil production in other regions, along with expanded Brazilian consumption in the meantime. That's what the Export Land Model referred to above means, increased consumption in the producing nation leads to decreased export, that's happening almost everywhere now. The UK now imports oil, for example, the North Sea peaked years ago, and has declined massively, until the UK has to now import the stuff.

Much as with coal, we used the best and easiest to extract stuff first, now we are bringing online the stuff we have known about for decades but which was regarded as too low quality to use in the past. That's what it looks like when you have extracted too much of any given commodity. The last part left is harder to extract, lower quality, and less energy yield. That's why they left it in the ground in the first place. So when that's what we are using, you can totally ignore the happy talk from the mass media, and just note that we are in fact reduced to using that kind of junk. It's like needing a sleeping bag, walking into REI< but finding that all the good stuff is gone, leaving you with choices like Coleman. That's literally where we are. You can still get good oil, but it's getting much harder to find, and in places that are extremely dangerous, like Nigeria, which were considered not worth the risk before, for the simple reason they weren't. Things change at 120 a barrel however, people will take bigger chances for it, like risk Nigerian pirate attacks 100 miles offshore, or drilling in iceberg territory.

I find personally the notion of driving 150 miles round trip to do a day hike, and considering that to be a normal thing to do, to be the exact nature of the problem of US consumer expectations and blatant waste of this resource, that's something that will be viewed with stunned amazement in the future here by those with the luxury of studying their past. These types of behaviors would long ago have been altered had the government instituted forward looking gas taxes like they did in much the rest of the world. That is, 8 to 10 a gallon will make people treat the resource with a bit more respect, 5 seems to be a cut off point from what I saw in 2008, but it's still too low to make people stop doing things that are blatantly wasteful.

But to be very clear, it has long since stopped mattering if we save anything as individuals, when production levels reach a peak level, as they have now, all of it gets used, as it is being used. That means if you don't use it, someone else will. And we'll use it all, to the last drop we can extract at a profit, any chance of that not happening vaporized when China and India entered the car market. So that ball is already rolling down then hill at full speed, can't change it at this point, we won't be saving anything for our kids because we are a selfish culture, deep down. People might talk about not doing it, but all you have to do is see what real people are willing to stop doing to change this outcome, which is not much in any significant sense.

The countries that start bringing government controls into resource allocation are already here, China is doing that big time, Russia basically does it although they have that weird thug culture in the leadership that makes it hard to tell the thug private market from the thug public sector. But they do basically decide on the Federal level how to allocate these resources. The US is going to discover that the free market, so called, does an incredibly poor job allocating finite resources, it's only designed for basically unlimited resource exploitation. You can easily see this in the idiotic statement from economists, who actually believe that money produces oil or any other resource. But there's nothing to do now except adapt, my choice is to unplug from cars on an individual level, and to not be a big part of the problem, that's all I can do as an individual. That entails some sacrifice. Re backpacking, I am thinking about trying to organize car pools via rental cars to spots not accessible by public transit, I'll see if there's any interest here in such things over the coming year. Such things are not the same as using your own car, but it does start showing you how much we have come to expect in terms of ease and effort, vs what's actually needed. If you car pool, for example, you can't leave early, you can't bail because your sleep system was too light, or your shelter didn't shelter you, you have to stick it out. I'll be curious to see how many bpl members are willing to make even such a small sacrifice in consumption patterns.

My new idea has been developing over some time, forget about fake stuff like skin out, I'm going from 'front door out'. That means what the trip consumed from your front door and back, including fuel, tires, oil, all the stuff you actually consume on a backpacking trip. Gas weighs about 8 pounds a gallon, for example. Going with 4 people drops that out the door weight by 3/4. Not a bad weight reduction.

Edited by hhope on 02/25/2012 13:00:10 MST.

Excellent post, Harald!!

Front door out? No, most of us would rather just continue on consuming resources and releasing carbon into the air 355 days of the year -- then drive our SUV's out and give other hikers hell the other 10 days for polluting the Earth with their stupid campfires and other imperfect LNT practices! Best of both worlds, really, to enjoy all the material goods and feel morally superior too!

Harold what would be an acceptable distance for people to drive(no public transportation offered) for a day hike in your opinion?
For me it is around 60 miles round trip. 150 for the day? time in car to time on trail ratio is off on that one I agree.

My front door out weight is something I live every day. It's much harder to do backpacking trips, because I can't just hop in a car, but when I make them, they are far more rewarding and interesting.

For example, if I go to big sur via public transit, the last leg only runs on weekends. That means I have to go for a week, there's no bailout. That's during the fall/winter season, labor/memorial day. Spring summer is daily. So I really need to plan it.

I am no fan of the idea that ones abuse of nature magically starts only at the trailhead, try putting your your car's exhaust inside your car sometime, let me know how it feels, I have to breath that stench when I ride my bike, or walk along a road, and I don't appreciate it, nor do any life form out there, including the drivers who thoughtlessly create it.

I do appreciate the lnt concepts in impacted areas that are just too heavily trafficked, but a lot of that mystical treatment of 'wilderness' comes from the total ignorance guys like John Muir had about how the Native Americans had manipulated their ecosystems via large scale fire use. That ignorance sadly has continued in many outdoor type scenes to this day. The books 1491 and 1493 do an excellent job explaining and demystifying this process. What we came to think of as 'wilderness' was in many cases the direct result of the original custodians being wiped out via killing or disease, thus causing the forests to start getting really overgrown, rapidly, until guys like John Muir saw them in their condition which was a weird mix of centuries of burning then suddenly stopping, sort of like a garden that gets really overgrown with weeds.

You can see this totally clearly in Point Reyes for example, I was astounded to see that almost none of nature is really accessible because the forest is so overgrown, especially with poison oak. Back when the Ohlone or whoever lived there ran that area, they would burn the stuff to make the forests more usable. Original comments on the east coast were that the forests were like parks in europe, which they were, they had been burned for hunting/farming for many hundreds of years. We are sort of confused in this regard, I was no exception to this, I found it disturbing when I first started to read about how the Indians burned their ecosystems to make them usable. Now we mystify nature while destroying our actual ecosystem, but nature starts at your front door, like it or not. Natural forests always burn, it's part of the cycle, when you stop it, you build up underbrush until you get catastrophic fires, like Big Sur recently had, that create such a huge heat level that the process is actually destroyed, the cycle is broken.

Ken Thompson, I have no idea. Zero. If a friend wants to go for a hike in the hills, we drive up in his car, that's maybe 5 miles. I'd rather we rode up by bike, but he's always pressed for time, and I want him to hike and stay in shape, it really helps his diabetes. One thing I learned in LA when I lived there was that socal people have a totally bizarre idea of distance re car travel, to them a five hour drive is a local trip, they to me are so far out of touch with reality it's not possible to even really talk to them in general re driving, they are addicted massively to their cars, and can't be unplugged.

Back when I drove, my formula was roughly this: if the road trip was 5 hours, the backpacking trip must be at least 3 days. At an absolute minimum. 4 days was better. I really never drove to do backpacking that was less than 2 nights. 8 hours definitely required a 4 day trip, otherwise to me it was just stupid.

I am finding great trails right here, I found the same in Portland Oregon. But there I used to hike with a friend in the cascades, we'd drive a bit to get there, but I really hadn't connected the dots at that point yet either, but we did always go together, I never did it alone. If I understood what I understand now, I'd be able to get to the edge of Portland somehow and find a trailhead access to the cascades with no driving. When I think of the lost opportunities in the cascades during the years I lived there I have to really kick myself, but my head was just not in the backpacking space.

I even found trails in Barcelona, up in the hills, I found areas that were basically abandoned housing from some other era, and hilltop goat farms with Gypsy encampments. I found this by walking around and following my nose. Even in LA I found stuff, there are parks there that are ok. In San Francisco I found lots of places too, all walking distance or biking from wherever I lived.

All these discoveries I made in cities I have lived in came about because I walked out my front door and started exploring, either by bike or by foot. Except LA, that was just too walker hostile, even down to not even having sidewalks in some neighborhoods, which I discovered by walking around.

My biggest regret in life is not having grasped some key ultralight principles in terms of learning to see where you are, and how to use that space, and what gear you really need to sleep in some safety and comfort. Had I had some nice daypack/light shelter/sleeping system I can think of many walking day trips I took that could have morphed into truly wonderful multida7y voyages of discovery from my front door. And this is why I really like bpl, it's helping me to open the world right outside my front door. I found a great stealth camping spot a few miles from my house, and I live in the middle of a city. As far as i can tell, nobody has used that spot in years, if ever. That was totally the result of starting to practice front door out methods, including the actual pack.

My current goal is to walk to Point Reyes like someone here did a while ago, they did a 100 mile loop. The problem when you do true light backpacking is you have no exit, you have to commit. So you have to trust you'll find a stealth spot in the time you need to find it. I think that's the greatest trip report I've read so far, they did it all by mass transit then walking, that to me was so cool, and that's a trip I truly admire and find worth emulating.

Edited by hhope on 02/25/2012 14:24:46 MST.

Good points Harald

One thing is that "fracing" technology is improving. We may have a short term increase in oil production, maybe even U.S. will produce as much as we consume.

Hopefully we won't interpret this as the environmentalists were just BSing us. Go back to driving gas guzzlers. Move further away from work. Build bigger houses...

Maybe we'll take this as buying a little time to develop alternate energy and efficiency. We could even pump out the oil and gas slower than the maximum possible to have some for later.

fracking is a blip, and if you follow the reality of production from fracked wells, you'll see the story is VERY different than the mass media portrays.

I follow this stuff very closely, and people in the business have long been crystal clear on what a scam the fracking boom is. It has already worked, a major bought I think it was Chesapeake Energy, a major fracking entity, and now is hitting major losses from that investment. The people promoting fracking make good money as long as they can sell the leases and wells to someone else before the actual facts hit.

Fracking also suffers on a geological level from the same exact problems as other resources, the best is being fracked first, and has been. Leaving the worst to be sold as prospects to suckers. Just like we did in the gold rush days.

This doesn't even discuss the incredibly toxic fracking fluids, which must be disposed of properly, if that's even possible. Not to mention the huge amounts of water that requires, and much fracking happens in dry regions.

Fracking is proof positive we have peaked in carbon based fuel production, we'd never even dream of doing that if we had viable alternatives.

What I see now, in the present, is an increasingly frantic and desperate negotiation on a global level, in terms of denying reality, but each effort is failing more quickly than the one before it. All to avoid the inevitable, consuming less. I prefer to just consume less now, and not have to deal with huge changes in lifestyle when it's no longer under my control. Not to mention that I can actually talk about liking nature and natural systems without destroying it actively by my daily actions. I kind of like that consistency.

By the way, my daypacks vary between a generic large daypack and a zo bags messenger bag. The latter carries up to 50 pounds, with some pain since it uses only one strap. My bike rack carries more if it's bulky. The day pack is good for about 25 plus pounds. In other words, no, you really don't need that car to go shopping, although most want it. Freight bikes will work for a family size shopping trip, they are cool. There's a huge gulf between what we need and what we think we need.