"It was obvious to everyone that the timber is disappearing"

US Diesel oil stocks at record lows

A record seasonal low of fewer than 27 days of demand of diesel stock left in October 2022.

Without diesel, the trucks literally stop running. So does rail, shipping, manufacturing, farming, mining and the oil and gas industry itself. Food stops getting delivered, pharmacies and hospitals start running out of medicines and supplies, factories stop.

Consumption is strongly influenced by the economic cycle, so demand destruction from the cat 5 economic hurricane inbound may slow the time till diesel stock are exhausted.

An article on ZeroHedge by John Kemp, Senior Market Analyst at Reuters on the 29th of October said diesel stocks were at their lowest levels since the EIA started collecting weekly data back in 1982 got my interest:

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-diesel-shortage-increasingly-likely-until-economy-slows

Considering this, I thought it may be a good time to revisit this excellent 6 year old podcast as I recalled Alice literally wrote the book on this kind of scenario.

Alice J. Friedemann is the author of “When Trucks Stop Running: Energy and the future of transportation.”

One of Chris’s many superpowers has been being able to see “infinite growth on a finite planet” was not sustainable, so change was inevitable.

A huge, interdependent global system of which energy is the master resource has become fractured in 2022. Financial systems requiring infinite growth face serious contractions ( although just hovering at the same level is also fatal for them).

Alice talks about “peak food”, how by the time of the interview in 2016 she believed we were already past “peak food”, (a family member of “peak oil”) she said we were past peak in meat, fish, milk, eggs, dairy, wheat, corn, rice and soy.

Past peak crop land, and peak nitrogen fertilisers (which peaked around the same time as conventional oil). I’m glad she highlighted energy efficiency.

The talk of reducing the population hasn’t aged well for me, especially, in the light of my experience of the last 2 years.

Nonetheless, this point about civilisations rising and falling when they used up their forests did invoke memories of the big stone heads of Easter Island, especially because we can already see the timber disappearing.

“Back when civilisations rose and fell when they used up their forests…………………Maybe it’s because oil is underground and you can’t see it, but it was obvious to everyone that the timber was disappearing”

Some solutions:

Grow your food within your local community

Move to a more sustainable region (if you can)

Invest in real things, permaculture, knowledge, and soil farming.

Consider buying me a coffee, I go through plenty!

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/LkRNpg8ydW