the duchy of hetkettle trophish

following the morning’s post on the resale value of obsolete cars, and fixing that, then there was a blogpiece, by sharon astyk, called “break up with your utility companies — or get dumped!” (via). about getting off the grid for home heat.

of merit, with a ton of good comments and some troubling aspects.

By fall … heating oil is likely to rise to between $5 and $6 per gallon. That would make even a bridge delivery of 100 gallons cost much of the monthly paycheck for a working class family. Hell, it would pretty much all of our discretionary income. And since most families use about [100 gallons] a month, that’s going to be a big deal. Already, 16% of all Americans plan to use their tax rebates to pay utility bills. Stephen B. reports over at ROE2 that 10% of all National Grid customers are presently more than 3 months behind on electric bills, and natural gas is in similar shape.

What that means is that the 8% of Americans who heat with oil are likely to be casting around for options to allow them to both eat and keep tolerably warm. That probably means electric space heaters and wood heat. But with wood up at $250 a cord or more in many areas, electric prices rising steadily as well, and capacity tight, tens of thousands of new high demand electric heaters are likely to present problems — both for the private users and for the electric infrastructure as a whole. As Gail Tverberg’s article suggests, particularly in areas like the Northeast corridor where the grid is already vulnerable, the addition of these loads may represent a real threat to grid stability. Any modernization or added capacity will likely bring prices higher.

The cost of natural gas has also risen over the last few years, with mild winters helping to keep this from entering a crisis situation. But North American gas is already past its peak according to Julian Darley, author of High Noon for Natural Gas, and over the coming years, there are likely to be sharp price rises and competition with Canadians, who, not unreasonably, would like to use their gas for home heating too. Trade requirements now have Canada selling most of its natural gas to the US — but one cold winter in which Canadian needs can’t be met is likely to lead to a change in that situation — and if Americans have to rely on their own natural gas, prices will be vastly higher and supply much lower. It is also worth noting the vast rise in proposed new natural gas electric generating plants — we are building our electric capacity based on gas supplies that aren’t terribly secure.

Meanwhile, as people turn to other utilities, replacing their oil bills with natural gas or electric bills, the number of people who are struggle to get by is set to rise for a whole host of reasons — higher food prices, rising unemployment, the stripping of benefits from jobs, rising medical costs for aging baby boomers — the whole shebang. And that means less ability to pay new bills. And that means indebtedness to utility companies. And that means shut offs. This is likely to be especially acute in cold climate areas, but the American South uses more energy than the North does, and is generally poorer, so this is pretty much an equal opportunity problem, with different periods of seasonal crisis.

Getting shut off is easy. Getting put back on is hard — there are hefty fees from your utility company. Some places charge interest on overdue accounts. There are a whole host of ways that once you are in the hole, it is very, very hard to climb out. Many of us will get into the hole, and some will come out, while others will be stuck there.

What we are seeing is the beginning of the end of many American’s relationship to public utilities.

are you with this so far? ok good.

in sum the situation is: nobody has any money except the oil companies and speculators, who are not just dirty rotten criminals but spoiled rotten criminals. one winter of murderous heat costs was all anybody could barely afford and oil prices are going up. but where else can the poor rich invest safely, except in things people literally can’t live without?

now. let’s get on to sharon’s expected responses and proposed answers. sure, you know i’m going to get after them a little but hang on, it might not be how you think.

Some people will leave their homes, and some will consolidate, moving in with family. Lots of people will skip meals — and their kids will go hungry to school. And many will lose the utilities and attempt to compensate — they’ll spend more eating out, because there’s no gas to cook with on the stove, or eat only microwave meals, or things in bags and cold cans of food. A few will get desperate enough to do things like bring in the charcoal grill and asphyxiate themselves. The same goes for heat and light — people will cobble together bad solutions, and some people’s solutions will be bad enough that they do real harm — to themselves, of course, but it won’t be limited to themselves. The fires in urban rentals won’t just destroy the homes of the cold and hungry, but their neighbors too. And the costs of dealing with disaster after disaster will eat up city budgets — there’s no such thing as a crisis without unintended consequences.

this is where i haven’t gone, this place, looking for the ugly. these are the things that i filed under important to avoid — so nasty, so incompatible with the country’s contract to “promote the general welfare,” that any political fashion creating such conditions during a period of relative wealth should be destroyed — not just rejected.

i didn’t make this explicit in my mean game with a northern new yorker’s call to make oil a public utility. but i’ve made the argument since and i’ll say it clear.

when they let american oil companies sell domestic oil at international prices to people trying to heat their homes, our public servants are engaging in treason.

the oil business is stealing the money we need for changing and they know it and so do our elected representatives and there’s nothing else to say, except that we need to get rid of oil and fire anybody and everybody who says otherwise.

this is an election year, the biggest in ages because we don’t have much time left to begin really fighting global warming, and the first presidential campaign without any kind of incumbent in a long time. it’s a chance to get right and so, we need to ask every candidate:

as president, as a member of congress, as a state elected representative, will you lead the greening of america’s home heating systems, and keep the price of oil within people’s budget as we switch?

now let’s look at other solutions, beyond the screamin’ freakin’ obvious.

As more and more of us can’t afford our relationship with our utility companies, we’re going to break up like we’re on a bad date. And since there’s no money in the budget for the mass reinsulation of 90 million homes, or the subsidizing of fuel and electricity on the scale that Americans use it, we have two choices.

no, more than two choices.

1. the budget is not being decided on mars.
2. reinsulation and sealing can be done by states, cities, and concerned groups.
3. utilities can be municipalized, or people can form buyers’ groups, such as community choice aggregation.
4. affordable oil can be purchased from venezuela.
5. we can change. try something like plan b.

this is, ultimately, about wanting to live. building the new infrastructure needs to be done. letting your old infrastructure strangle you and destroy your children’s future is not like living.

[We have two choices.] We can break up with our utility companies only when we’re massively indebted and when we’ve already sacrificed dinner and home and other security to try and keep the lights on and the heat running, or we can do it wisely, and break up before the crisis gets acute.

agree.

That means adapting our homes to live without them.

agree. among other things.

It isn’t easy — but for the 2000 bucks I spent on oil, many people could get the basic framework of non-electric living in place. And we could subsidize these things just as we subsidize solar or wind power — instead of giving people tax breaks for buying pv panels, we could give them tax breaks for buying things to enable them to live without them. Because while PV is great, it is demonstrably far too expensive for anyone struggling to pay their utility bills — and a lot of people who aren’t.

no argument on the basics. outlawing inefficient equipment, subsidizing efficient equipment, and not just promoting but enabling conservation are all needed.

$2000 will get you a wood, corn or pellet stove, two solar powered battery chargers and batteries for flashlights and table lamps, and for your CD player or ipod. It’ll get you cardboard and tinfoil enough to make a solar oven for warm weather, and you can put stew on the back of the stove in winter. Depending on the size of your house and your needs, you might have enough left over for long johns, or a couple of personal battery powered fans. It isn’t ideal, but you’ll have light, heat and food.

i don’t know how many people are going to read that paragraph. i hope it’s a lot. this is an insane length to go to avoid collective action on a problem facing millions.

i never looked up the eco-ness of biomass stoves before. they’re excellent, except for the question of how you define “sustainable forestry”; not easy, considering the many ways that forests are needed and endangered at the moment. waste wood, though, and other biomass, are used world-round for home heat and have the third-best efficiency going.

the best is passive home design which is totally out of the question in this case — too late, too late — though — right now — there’s little excuse to build to any standard lower than that, since it pays for itself.

the second best is home solar thermal heating — for spaces and for water. i have to do more research on this in the next couple weeks so i’ll get back to it but i think it’s safe to say nobody’s ready to provide this at full scale of the need for next winter. it could simply be built — take some existing designs, have the government commission their mass production, help install them for the needful at little to no general public expense — but again that’s a question of who in the government belongs to whom in finance and industry.

then there’s the trouble of people’s pipes breaking for lack of properly designed home heat.

there’s really no argument for letting the heating oil thing go, except corruption and cowardice.

Another $40 will get you a tiny washer that you can do easily by hand, but a bucket and plunger will do. If you don’t have water, you’ll need money for a well pump, a cistern, lots of rain barrels or some other water solution — and this will probably cost more. But maybe if money is tight you can work on making the water solution collective — most places around the world have central water, and everyone walks over, chats at the well, and carries their jugs back.

that’s a collective solution? where? in zimbabwe?

Is $2000 out of the question? Well, how about $300 in long johns, battery chargers, down comforters and a few small electric appliances — a tiny efficient space heater to take the edge off of the room you are in and a microwave to ensure copious hot tea? You can live without heating or cooling — no one has to freeze or die of heat stroke. The simple fact is that we’re not going to be able to afford even these preparations once we get further and further in debt to the purveyors of fossil fuels — the abrupt transfer to the low energy lifestyle, without any preparation, is what I’d like to see everyone avoid.

i don’t believe you, ma’am, not when you ignore or dismiss so many possibilities.

The grid may or may not be there. There may or may not be imported heating oil, or Canadian natural gas coming through your pipes. Your utilities company may or may not still be in business. But what is almost certain is that the present trajectory means that more and more of us are going to have to reconsider our usage — and many of us aren’t going to be using any at all.

no. unacceptable. totally unacceptable. even without money, we can fix and build what we need. i think you’re walking away from the problem.

ps. a degree separated from kunstler, via his blog links, is charles hugh smith, who wrote today about possible future prices of oil, when mixed liberally with world downturn. smith has also never written about lester brown’s plan and has an equally just-you-wait approach toward peak oil. the likelihood of things predicted is high — particularly overproduction to meet promises, something that ails our own policy establishment with “growth” — but that doesn’t excuse the absence of positive contribution.

“sit around and watch! then die!”

yeah, great. oh, and — what the fuck is your problem.

pps. never seen so many eager for depression.

i like to prove myself right by losing debates with myself in front of a mirror. saves on misery for others, it does.

after a good night’s sleep. a couple more things.

our gasoline use. if we go on a national gasoline diet, turning to smarter driving (with help) and switching to smaller cars and plug-in cars as fast as we can, we can bring food and gas costs down. our gasoline use is the biggest single oil demand in the world, affecting the price of nearly everything.

the plain fact is we need to get rid of gasoline, heating oil, kerosene, coal, and natural gas, regardless of supply. they’re not safe.

our disaster preparation. we also have very good ability to deliver services to those in trouble, no matter how the gulf coast hurricanes made that look. it would be better to use lists like sharon’s, of things people forced off the grid will need, to build care networks for making sure those things are available. blankets, heat, basic electrical supply, clean hot water. we know what’s on it.

if we don’t already know, we have all summer to figure who’s most vulnerable next winter and draw up plans in the event lawmakers and administrators continue to fail to do their most basic job responsibility. recently, a little before katrina, the international aid organization oxfam wrote a report on disaster prevention in cuba, considered to be among the best in the world, aiming to help other gulf coast countries build better safety and security for their people. it shows how one island country, without much oil or money, makes sure nobody dies in a hurricane.

it’s not rocket science.…

continued…

and discussed…