Day 4: In which I discover a suitable meta context

I reach a deal with my producer that I will work one more day - today - and then I have to beat it, even though there is a lot of turmoil going on. The commercial we shot keeps coming out to be any between $40k and $55k over budget, based on $106k estimated. So I try one more time to provide him with a breakdown of actual costs that he can take to the mucky-mucks and plead for mercy. As far as I'm concerned, it's no one's fault except the client's whose neurotic changes of mind kept the Art Department from settling on set designs until the day of shooting.

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But back to my so-called vacation.

I want to elaborate on something I mentioned the other day. There was more going on when I stopped at the Fruit Barn in Gilroy than a taste for apricots. A couple of days before I left, when I was still in production and realizing I didn't know when I'd able to go shopping for the trip, I started fantasizing about driving across the country and stocking up on food bought only at farmer's markets. I could use them as little oases of resources, fresh, organic and local. I could be a food tourist, sampling the tomatoes grown in say, Newburg NY or the zucchini in Louisville KY and never have to step foot in a Safeway or Food Lion. I still think it's doable, and maybe even feasible.

The reason I mention this is because I think I've found not only the title for this blog, but also its theme. Spending any time with my brother and brother-in-law means having to explore every possibility of armageddon. Or at least the collapse of civilization. And one of their favorite indicators of cataclysm is peak oil.




Peak oil as a concept developed when M. King Hubbert, a geologist for Shell Oil in the mid-1950s, drew a bell curve to describe the ramp up and then diminishment of each oil field exploited. But he then extrapolated that the same simple bell curve could predict America's oil production overall. The tail of this bell curve touched down somewhere between 1965 and 1970. And at some point in 1970 or '71, American oil production hit its peak.

Theories like peak oil are at their most robust when their implications start unfolding like a pop up book. One implication of peak oil is that peaking happens underfoot and unnoticed. In 1970, who in their right mind would say, well it's all downhill from here? You think instead, this is great, I'm rolling in oats! Oil's never been more plentiful than now and last year it was never more plentiful either. Oil is so abundant, in fact, and so easy to get that every contraption should run on it. It's foolish not to use oil simply because the system works so superbly. When the trends start making the downward slope recognizable, it's a profound shock.

Unfold another implication. Abundancy means automobiles can push people out of the cities and onto farmland outside of cities, which in turn pushes farmland further and further away. A highway is built to ease the travel from suburb to urb which increases the cost of housing, making it cheaper and easier to build further away, onto more farmland. It also means that the growth of these new towns is tied to roadways rather than railways, what were once the existing, previously indispensible infrastructure. We have to use trucks because the railroads aren't anywhere near our new homes and businesses, but who cares? They can use gas and the highways we've built. The system is there, so use it. Until the people who rely on this infrastructure can't afford to commute to the job whose salary is not tied to the price oil can't or won't make that drive any more. Unfolding these implications is almost a progressive's jolly good parlor game.

Growing up when oil was abundant means I've inherited and been spoiled by this lovely delusion. My family went on a road trip almost every summer in our spacious, olive green Galaxy 500, with its corinthian chrome grill and lumberingly smooth handling. Relocating from one coast to another never involved anything but a car, and though daily errands in my truck push the limits of my patience and commuting to work is the ball and chain most people suffer with every day, an open road and a distance to cover with the radio on is a certain answer to the question what is liberty?

This is a trip planned with several features built into it, from researching a script to seeing my folks to making time to go camping to cutting loose and hitting the road no matter what the cost of gasoline is. And believe me, the weeks leading up this trip have been fraught with news and analysis on the costs of gasoline. Apart from the weather, it's what people talk about.

So when I ask myself (not to mention hearing other people's own incredulity), why would you pick now of all times to drive across the country? and being a person blessed with the mental slight of hand to repurpose any activity with a new interpretation, it's not hard to add another feature, a meta context, to the trip: why not travel across the US when gas is at its worse? See for myself all these little local instances of a crumbling paradigm.

The fantasy of hitting one new town after another to stock up at its farmer's market while on a 6000 mile gasoline bender is one of those awkward readjustments I'm looking for, not only in other people but inside my own mid-century habits. Farmers' markets are sprouting through the cracks of peak oil because no one wants tasteless food fertilized (with hydrocarbons) within an inch of its life and trucked or flown to them any more. So, I'm off, at $4.85 a gallon in an American car that gets 25 miles a gallon. Let's GO!

"Our ignorance is not so vast as our failure to use what we know." M. King Hubbert

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Needless to say there are numerous citations and points of interest on the information superhighway regarding peak oil. Here's a few of them:

http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_Oil

http://www.peakoil.com/