Sponsors and Hummer Dummer in the Summer

Week 9 notes:
First is good news: we DO have a sponsor. We received a grant from our company that allowed us to substantially cut the coop debt. We therefore reduced our monthly membership fee somewhat, and we're taking the rest and putting it into a maintenance fee. Everyone still has their jobs so our group is still 12 strong. We've talked about expanding it but some folks wouldn't be guaranteed a seat and would have to ride without belts.

Second: I personally witnessed a rather disturbing incident at the pumps. It may be two-faced of me to discuss this given last week's reports of my OWN hoarding of food, but the most disturbing aspect of this incident I saw was how quickly things got out of hand. Some clown in a HUMMER (yes a hummer!!) was filling up and he seemed to be really familiar with the guy behind him, a teenager in a Cherokee. Everyone seemed to notice them too, and when Hummer finished and pulled up Cherokee guy called him "Dad". Well some big guy in a Silverado started screaming at them, as it looked like they'd brought their family guzzlers down and were tanking up. The lady behind Cherokee guy (driving a YUKON) started telling Silverado to mind his own business and I realized...she was MOM! Things kind of got out of control then, because one of the other pumps went dry and several people told the family to get out of there, they had their gas and other people were getting deprived on account of their selfishness. Somebody pushed the dad, then the kid tried to help but someone else pushed him, and then several people marched in and broke it all up. Finally the dad split and mom & kid did also (without getting any gasoline). I don't know what kind of household has 3 SUVs but I doubt they are as unusual as you may think. For their sakes I hope they have something smaller that they can siphon the Hummer gas into to.

I managed to get gasoline for our van. The cost to fill up (1/2 tank)... $49.80

Third: the worldwide incidents of infrastructure attacks are sick and will only make things worse for everyone, even the perpetrators and their "cause". Middle Eastern countries per-capita usage of oil is even worse than the USAs although I guess you could argue that some of that was due to their government subsidizing cheap petroleum. But even high oil prices won't help much if you cannot get your oil out of the ground and into the proverbial pipeline. Finally, if our troops really DID invade the oil sands I'd have to say it would be one of the worse strategic moves EVER. Not only was it a clear violation of our numerous treaties with Canada, the oil sands aren't that great an asset as far as I've read (see http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/9/21/1156/96411 ) especially in terms of EROEI.

Spam me, please

(Late week 7 post)

with the gas shortages looming I tried to think about the impact down the supply line, and I think it would be prudent to score as many canned goods as we can at this point. I asked for extra spam, too, which people make fun of all the time, but I like it frankly, and we may not be able to be too picky in the future. Also, non-perishables in general - toilet paper, soap, shampoo, diapers, etc. most of which we can save in the attic. So we dumped an extra $1000 (YOWZA!) on these things, which are currently not too scarce. We did it in shifts and tried not to draw attention, which may be paranoid but you gotta be careful too. We need to evaluate how long this will last us but hopefully we won't have to depend on it.