100 Things You Can Do to Get Ready for Peak Oil - Discussion
Check out the great season-by-season checklist of preparations by Sharon Astyk at http://www.energybulletin.net/23645.html. The whole list forms a gestalt that is very well worth considering in detail, but here are a few snippets selected at random:
Spring:
3. Order enough seeds for three years of gardening. If by next spring, we are all unable to get replacement seed, will you have produced everything you need? What if you can't grow for a year because of some crisis?
15. Now that warmer weather is here, start walking for more of your daily Needs. Even a four or five mile walk is quite reasonable for most healthy people.
18. tore the components of some traditional spring holiday foods, so that in hard times your family can maintain its traditions and celebrations.
Summer:
1. If you don't can or dehydrate, now is the time to learn. In most climates, you can waterbath can or dehydrate with a minimum of purchased materials, and produce is abundant and cheap. If you don't garden, check out your local farmstand for day-old produce or your farmer's market at the end of the day - they are likely to have large quantities they are anxious to get rid of. Wild fruits are also in abundance, or will be.
10. Don’t go on vacation. Spend your energy and money making your home a paradise instead. Throw a barbecue, a party or an open house, and invite the neighbors in. Get to know them.
12. Practice living, cooking and camping outside, so that you will be comfortable doing so if necessary. Everyone in the family can Learn basic outdoors person skills.
Fall:
1. Simple, cheap insulating strategies (window quilts and blankets, draft stoppers, etc...) are easily made from cheap or free materials -goodwill, for example, often has jeans, tshirts and shrunken wool sweaters, of quality too poor to sell, that can be used for quilting material and batting. They are available where I am for a nominal price, and I've heard of getting them free.
15. Most cold climate housing has or could have a "cold room/area" - a space that is kept cool enough during the fall and winter to dispense with the necessity of a refrigerator, but that doesn't freeze. If you have separate fridge and freezer, consider disconnecting your fridge during the cooler weather to save utility costs and conserve energy. You can build a cool room by building in a closet with a window, and insulating it with styrofoam panels.
16. While I wouldn't expect deer or turkey hunting to be a major food source in coming times (I would expect large game to be driven back to near-extinction pretty quickly), it is worth having those skills, and also the skills necessary to catch the less commonly caught small game, like rabbits, squirrel, etc...
Winter:
1. Your local adult education program almost certainly has something useful to teach you - woodworking, crocheting, music training, horseback riding, CPR, herbalism, vegetarian cookery... take advantage of people who want to teach their skills.
4. Now is the time to prepare for illness - keep a stock of remedies, including useful antibiotics (although know what you are doing, don't just buy them and take them), vitamin C supplements (I like elderberry syrup), painkillers, herbs, and tools for handling even serious illness by yourself. In the event of a truly severe epidemic of flu or other illness, avoiding illness and treating sick family members at home whenever possible may be safer than taking them to over-worked and over-crowded hospitals (or, it may not - but planning for the former won't prevent you from using the hospital if you need it).
8. Get together with neighbors and check in on your area's elderly and disabled people. Make a plan that ensures they will be checked on during bad weather, power outages, etc... Offer help with stocking up for winter, or maintaining equipment. And watch for signs that they are struggling economically.
9. Work on raising money and getting help with local poverty-abatement Programs. After the holidays, people struggle. They get hungry and cold. Remember, besides the fact that it is the right thing to do, the life you save may be your own.
URL: http://www.energybulletin.net/23645.html
Sharon's list reminds me of something I have noticed before: When times get hard it is it is the small-scale, gentle and practical skills - almost always traditionally women's skills - that hold communities, neighbourhoods, and cities together.
Pleaase add your own recommendations and share specific suggestions that you think relate to our local constraints and opportunities here in London.
Post Carbon London (Ontario)
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March 6th, 2007
100 More Post-Industrial Household Hints...
Here are the first few items in another good checklist from the author of the above hints...
The Next 100 Things You Can Do To Get Ready For Peak Oil (And Whatever Else Comes Down the Pike)
1. If you live in a place where it gets hot in the summer, consider building a screen room (a room with screened windows all around or almost always around), either attached to your house or seperate. You can put a wood cookstove in the screenroom and use it as a summer kitchen for cooking and canning, avoiding adding heat to your house. You can also sleep in the screenroom when it is too hot to sleep inside, and reducing or eliminating the need for air conditioning. The room can double in the winter as a woodshed. If you cannot build on, freestanding screenrooms are also a possibility. For sleeping even a mesh camping pavilion or tent under the trees will be better than many houses.
2. For those in cold climates, consider a four poster bed. These were once not merely decorative - with heavy coverings for the top and the sides, they could be heated with your body heat, and provided a cozy sleeping space in an era when bedrooms were unheated. A frame can be added to many existing bedframes if you are at all handy, and curtains are easily made. You can also add wall hangings and tapestries as cheap forms of insulation to existing walls. They can be made from old blankets and cheap fabric, or can be as artful as you like.
3. Clean and organize your house, and get rid of anything you don't need. Time is at a premium, and will only be more so in the future. For things that you wish to keep for the long term, pack them up and keep lists of where they are. You may need to find things quickly. Make sure emergency supplies, such as medical items, flashlights, etc... are readily available and can be found in the dark and under stress.
4. You'll save yourself trips in the car and problems in the future if you stock up on fasteners of every kind - commonly used nails and screws, pins, hinges, latches, shoelaces, twine, rope, tacks, you name it - if it holds one thing to another, you'll want it and running out is a pain. Stash a few extras of everything, and make sure you know where they are.
5. Expect if times get hard to consolidate housing with friends and family. Make sure you can live fairly comfortably. Yard and rummage sales are excellent sources of extra blankets, towels, and pillows. Fold up futons, tatami mats, even rolled up carpets make excellent emergency guest beds, and can be stacked and stored pretty easily. It may get crowded, but it doesn't have to be miserable.
Full list at: http://groovygreen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=347&Ite...
January 18th, 2007
Say what?
"When times get hard it is it is the small-scale, gentle and practical skills - almost always traditionally women's skills - that hold communities, neighbourhoods, and cities together."
What bunk. In pre-industrial societies, each sex had its functional roles to play, the removal of either one of which would threaten the survival or continuity of the community. "Gentle" skills? How about the "gentle" skill of bleeding and butchering a hog to salt and smoke the meat for winter and using the lard for soap-making, and the skin, etc, etc. I notice you mention game and meat in your points, which is why it amazes me that you state how it is only the division of labor on the female side that keeps people together. Those gentle, lovely skills and traits are only made possible because robust, steeled men are willing to run out the door and form brigades to risk their lives and defend the community when naughty people with naughty intentions come knocking. Pacifists like Quakers and Amish only thrive in regions where 1) No genocidal threat has yet arisen to force them to choose fighting or dying or 2) Where an army defends the outside borders of the nation they live in, giving them the luxury of living as pacifists. And don't give me Gandhi. Gandhi went up against England, with a huge middle-class back home who gave their politicians hell whenever the military acted too nastily abroad, alot like American forces fighting on pins and needles now. I would like to see Gandhi go up against the Taliban or Al Qaeda, not against a Western Empire with some semblance of shame and higher moral strivings (not necessarily accomplishments).
That said, good recommendations. I agree with the rest.
January 23rd, 2007
The smell of irony in the morning… and more for the to-do list
A footnote for gmellis1: The soundtrack for my little epiphany – that traditional 'women's work' makes community – wasn't "Give Peace a Chance". It was the cyclic slap-slap-slap of Kalashnikovs in a small Nicaraguan town under siege during the Contra war in 1987.
It was the very work of the steely-men that first informed the observation.
However, perhaps we can skip to the open thread if we want to pursue that discussion. Not that I'm keen – gender generalization is a slippery slope, and I've never found one yet that does not break down under close examination. Thus the 'traditional' qualifier.
Here are a couple of clips from a mainstream 'energy efficiency' checklist to add to the mix:
- If your water heater is old enough that its insulation is fiberglass instead of foam, it clearly will benefit from a water heater blanket from the local hardware or home supplies store. (To tell the difference, check at the pilot light access (gas). For electric water heaters, the best access is probably at the thermostat, but be sure to turn off the power before checking.)
- Seal up the largest air leaks in your house — the ones that whistle on windy days, or feel drafty. The worst culprits are usually not windows and doors, but utility cut-throughs for pipes (plumbing penetrations), gaps around chimneys and recessed lights in insulated ceilings, and unfinished spaces behind cupboards and closets.
Source: http://www.aceee.org/consumerguide/chklst.htm
Familiar ground for many, but still worth checking out.
If anyone knows of other good peak oil preparation and energy efficiency checklists to add to the mix, please post a link to this thread... and contribute your own suggestions. If we come up with enough tips, we could create a peak oil 'Tip of the Day' application to put on the www.postcarbonlondon.ca web site.