By Nick Mottern, Director, Consumers for Peace
Earlier this month I attended a meeting of the Post (After) Oil Solutions group meeting in downtown Brattelboro, Vermont.
Over the course of the evening, about 10 people attended to talk about a wide range of concerns and plans to try to respond to rising oil prices and the prospect that oil may be extremely scarce and expensive.
Tim Stevenson, who headed the meeting, explained that in crisis times and possibly catastrophic times, people in Brattleboro need local solutions, noting the Katrina failure of the Federal government: “We obviously cannot depend on large government doing this.”
Outside, the night was clear and a little chill came and went, giving a real fall feeling to the brilliant one-day-short of full moon that was highlighted by passing black, silver-lined clouds. The air in Vermont at this time of year, and even in August, begins to warn you with nipping zephyrs that you might want to buy a new knitted hat to replace the one you lost last spring or that you need to check your fuel oil tank or get more firewood.
The Post Oil folks in Brattleboro are preparing for dramatically less oil as they would for the gradual seasonal change from fall to winter.
For the last 14 months since the group formed, that have been working primarily on encouraging the development of more local food production, looking toward the time when it will be extremely expensive to ship food in from places like California.
They have created one community garden and they hope to create more. They have promoted an “Eat Local” campaign to try to get consumers to support local agriculture and encourage farmers to grow a greater variety of food, a return to pre-World War II. They advocate agreements between farmers and consumers that guarantee production and purchase of certain amounts of food. They organized a Localvores Challenge in August in which people ate only regionally-grown food for a week or a month.
They are trying to find a location for a winter farmers’ market in the downtown. A winter marketplace is essential to providing a larger constant demand for locally grown food that will be sufficient to encourage local farmers to grow more varied crops. The group is encountering resistance from the local Chamber of Commerce, which sees the market as a threat to local retailers rather than something that will help consumers and thereby help the overall business community. And the local politicians are apparently too worried about tax rates to want to subsidize the market in any way.
The Brattleboro organizers are representative of their fellow Vermonters in their desire to purchase locally grown food. David Timmons, a researcher at the University of Vermont, in an article appearing in Vermont Commons website, reports that Vermont leads the nation in direct sales from farmers to consumers at 5.5 times the national average: “Vermonters buy more food from local farmers than do most Americans.”
But can Vermont feed all Vermonters? Mr. Timmons reports that Vermont once produced a varied food supply including beef and pork, potatoes, wheat, oats, corn, apples, chicken, eggs and fruit. Vermont now produces less than it eats in all food categories except dairy, he says, but Vermont has enough available farmland for producing the old-time diet choices: “Vermont is clearly capable of feeding itself.”
An increase in food transportation costs, Mr. Timmons says, would be a major factor in returning “an historic advantage to Vermont farmers and result in more local food production and consumption.”
But higher transportation costs are going to mean higher food prices before the agricultural transformation happens. This raises the question of what will happen in the lives of low-income Vermonters either in a gradual shift in oil prices or a dramatic spike such as might be experienced if the United States attacks Iran, the world’s fou largest oil exporter.
The U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey found that Vermont was one of three states (Alaska and South Dakota the others) experiencing the largest jumps in poverty between 2004 and 2005, to 11.5 percent. Vermont experienced the largest jump in the rate of childhood poverty during this period, rising from 12 percent to 15 percent. The rise in the number of people without health insurance rose in Vermont during this period faster than all states except Arizona, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and Utah.
This suggests that many, many Vermonters are particularly vulnerable to dramatic oil prices increases, not only with respect to food, but home heating oil. The Alliance to Save Energy estimates that heating oil prices for Vermonters would increase by about $330 between 2005 and 2006, to just under $2,000 a year, based on current oil prices.
Vermonters spend on the average about $2,750 on gasoline, the Alliance reports.
But a spike in petroleum prices into the range of $100 or more a barrel, such as is expected if there is an attack on Iran by the United States and/or its allies, would likely create a huge economic crisis for low-income Vermonters facing the triple punches of leaps in food, gasoline and heating oil prices.
A dramatic jump in oil prices could bring an economic Katrina to Vermont.
Depending on the costs of heating oil, some Vermonters who could not pay their oil bills might have to move out of their homes into the homes of family and friends or into public buildings.
Food could be so expensive that people would have to be given public subsidies to feed themselves or be supplied from food stockpiles, not yet created. Public transportation might have to be rapidly expanded with jitney services to get people to work.
I asked whether the Post Oil group had considered how to deal with this kind of emergency, and Mr. Stevenson said that there had been some discussion awhile ago, but that there are no specific plans for it. He said it is something that the group needs to examine.
Given the liberal orientation of Vermont politics, it seems likely that an “Iran Winter” in Vermont would grind forward with little notice from Washington.
Fallujah Says it all
FALLUJAH - In 2004 the United States destroyed Fallujah. It was a war crime and a crime against humanity. This action typifies the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. This video shows what happened, and what continues to happen daily if on a smaller scale.
Watch the video preview of
"Caught in the Crossfire".
ConsumersForPeace.org, through the ExxonMobil War Boycott, is working to stop the killing in Iraq; to end the United States' occupation of Iraq; and to bring the perpetrators of the war to justice.
To assist you in boycotting ExxonMobil and firms connected to it through its board of directors, you may wish to have Democracy Dollars.
You may wish to write to the ExxonMobil Board of Directors
