Visual Guide to the Financial Crisis

I found a great visual guide to the current financial shake up. It doesn't include everything (it stops going down the rabbit hole at 'falling home prices') but it does illustrate the amount to which a flawed narrative can cascade through the system, causing a illusion of prosperity. I call this system the 'free market' in all of its iterations, both up and down

Click here for the link

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/

I think what we're seeing a two-fold development: the (potential) on-going failure of narratives that don't include or take into account peak oil. And two, (potentially) the beginning of the failure of our cultural narrative of progress. I don't want to sound the funeral bell for this idea of 'progress' quite yet, but overall its not looking good. The market will probably rebound at some point, and the economy as well. The question is what ceiling of economic activity will cause energy prices to skyrocket again? In the coming decades that ceiling will be getting lower and lower, and the lowest price of energy will get higher and higher.

Solar Panelists for December

The December 10th meeting will feature a discussion on Solar Panels. We'll have Solar Panel Installers presenting, as well as someone from Austin Energy talking about the solar energy rebate.

Looking ahead to January, we'd like to invite neighborhood and local action groups into our meeting. Our goal is find out where our interests overlap and what action can be mutual action. Certainly, there is power in numbers.

Speaker Michael J Osborne of Austin Energy

Michael J Osborne, of Austin Energy, was kind enough to stop by our monthly meeting and say a few words about Austin Energy's efforts to lead the way in energy efficiency, and how the organization is charting its way into the 21st century - a century sure to be marked by energy scarcity rather than abundance.

I thought the most interesting part of his presentation was talking about a vision of replacing the current 'base load' of energy - the fraction of power plants that are always 'on' - with renewable energy. Slowly, of course and perhaps that base load will always include a fraction of traditional energy. This to me really seems to be moving past the rhetoric, moving past the ideals espoused by so many in the peak oil movement, and getting down to brass tacks -- exactly HOW we are going to make the transition from traditional energy into renewables.

Talking about wind and solar power in Texas, this is a reality happening NOW. Of course my belief is that renewables will NOT allow us to live as we are right now ... conservation and 'cutting back' will HAVE TO be a part of our future energy use. But the future won't be the dark ages, we will use some form of energy to heat our homes and to power mechanical devices -- as humanity has always done.

I think the choice is between saying the future will be awful, which inspires fearful complacency -- and saying that we can use our immense bank of fossil fuels to build an infrastructure of renenwable energy - wind farms, solar panels etc.

The peak oil movement needs to take a cue from Al Gore - that narrative MATTERS. Immensely. The peak oil movement needs to coalesce behind a narrative, not for the sake of conformity, but for the sake of DOING SOMETHING rather than simply being helpless seers of an energy-poor future.