I borrowed a friend's car not too long ago, just for a few hours. I think gas was $3.65 or thereabouts at the time. To thank this friend for his generosity, I decided I was going to fill his tank. There was a line at the station; this particular chain of stations offered the cheapest gas in Burlington at the time, and I sat and waited for my turn.

Ok, this week I'm cheating a little.

I wrote this piece a few years ago while taking a class on peak oil with Annie Dunn Watson, founder of the Vermont Peak Oil Network, an internet resource for Vermonters concerned with our growing energy problems.

But honestly, it's a good piece that I'm proud of, and I think it fits in well with the theme of my blog, although perhaps it is a tad bit more satirical than what I tend to write for Shift Happens.  I think it's important, though, to find the humor in what could otherwise depress us deeply.

Adopting the Stance of Pooh

Visible Hands

by Annie Dunn Watson

by Jane Dwinell and Dana Dwinell-Yardley

So often people rely on "experts" of every kind — to tell them what to do, what to buy, what to eat, what to worry about, what to fear, and what to do to protect themselves and their families from all of the above. We think that reliance on all these "authorities" certainly does one major thing — suffocates all common sense! Here are ten things we think everyone should know, ten things that can help restore common sense to our society:

1. Know your food

by Jane Dwinell and Dana Dwinell-Yardley

Well, with holiday baking slipping quickly behind us and 2008 approaching in a matter of hours, we decided to hold on to our local recipes for later and start thinking about New Year's resolutions. Forget the dieting and exercise — here are three resolutions for 2008 that will really make a difference for us and Vermont (and may be easier, too!).

One: Stop shopping at corporate/chain stores

by Jane Dwinell and Dana Dwinell-Yardley

The December holiday season is upon us. Shopping, parties, family get-togethers, office bashes, religious services. Too much food, too much debt, too much stress—not enough time and energy to enjoy the true meaning of the season. No matter our faith, December can be tough, instead of miraculous. Here are some Green-Mountain-based things our family does during the holidays to help break the American mold of spend-eat-rush.

Thanksgiving Day is a special day for those following the peak oil news. Geologist Kenneth Deffeyes, author of Hubbert's Peak, predicted that Thanksgiving Day 2005 would mark the peak in world oil production. When he made the prediction, in January the year before, his tongue was only slightly in his cheek. Deffeyes was not quite right, but he was close. Current data put the peak (so far, at least) 6 months earlier or 8 months later, depending on how you measure it.

So while Thanksgiving Day is not, in fact, the anniversary of peak oil, we can still give thanks in the way that Deffeyes encouraged us to do so that year: Thanks for the services of the first half of recoverable world oil. "Thanks for the services of the first half of recoverable world oil. Thanks for the automobile, the airplane, diesel trains and ships, two-lane blacktop, warm houses, plastics, [nylon and polyster,] and a huge range of petrochemicals. [The Thanksgiving dinner itself] was produced with fertilizers, tractor fuel, pesticides, and transportation provided by oil and natural gas." And 38 million of us in the US will use oil to travel 50 miles or more to eat that Thanksgiving dinner.

Of course, oil has been a mixed blessing. The age of oil has also brought the age of World Wars, poisonings from pollution on an unprecedented scale, destruction of cities for parking lots and ugly suburbs, and habitat destruction, climate change, and other pressures that threaten most species on the planet, including ours.

As we give thanks for the blessings of oil, let us us keep in mind the curses of oil, and let us ask for the wisdom to use the remaining half of the world's oil reserves more for useful, durable products than throw-away plastic cutlery, more for insulating homes and constructing wind turbines than for heating drafty homes and generating electricity, and more for medicines and food production than for guns and warplanes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

People must first be made to give up on the existing system before they will become receptive to fundamental change.

Michael Byron, Ph.D.

Author of Infinity's Rainbow: The Politics of Energy, Climate and Globalization

Last week a review of the documentary "What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire" was posted on Energy Bulletin and sub-titled "a review of a new doomer cult classic." While the review was favorable, I must state that as someone who has seen the documentary dozens of times, who consistently shows it to my history classes, and who is a personal friend of the film makers, I was appalled at the use of the word "doomer" to describe the film. The reviewer's use of the term was the culmination for me of the inappropriate use of "doomer" to label individuals who have rejected the soporific of "hope" with respect to the terminal state of planet earth. I am equally unnerved by those who consistently describe me as "negative" and obsessively attempt-almost beg me-to offer them "something positive." Hence, the inspiration to write this article.

In my recent article "The End Of America: The Police State Is Right Here, Right Now" I included experiences of escalating intimidation on the part of law enforcement in the United States within recent months. I must confess that when I cite such incidents, I fear that in a few days or weeks, it will all go away, and everyone else, myself included, will begin to question the validity of the examples, breathing a heavy sigh of relief and rejoicing that the situation isn't nearly as dire as I'm asserting it is.

This time, however, I have nothing to fear because since that article was posted, the ante of out-of-control law enforcement in America appears to have been upped with a rapidity that I could not have imagined just a few weeks ago.