Biomassacre

One of the withered carrots being dangled in front of the addicted car driver is 'biofuel', a fuel derived from biomass or, in plain English, plants. 'This will save us!' scream the Lemmings of new labour, even as the cliff advances towards them with increasing speed as it erodes under the assault of fiercer storms in a rising sea.

It won't save us, in fact it's already making things worse. The Lemmings' News tonight (BBC, 22.00) had a report on the damage being done to the rainforest of Borneo (Indonesia) as it's replaced by palm oil plantations. Ecosystems being ripped apart, species (the Orang-Utang in particular) being pushed to the brink of extinction in the pointless and feverish quest for a new oil fix. Land degraded in the process is now more flood and landslide prone than ever, in a part of the world famed for its tropical downpours. How much fossil fuel is being squandered in this pointless publicity stunt? How much fossil fuel will be wasted transporting this muck around the world? It's window dressing, nothing more. Why the hell should the orang-utang or indeed the Indonesians suffer to salve the anachronistic addictions of the rich West?

We can tick biomass off the list of 'things to do'. The land ain't there, the inputs needed to produce it often outweigh the outputs proving this is a false dawn, and climate change will make growing anything more marginal in any case in the future. We need the best land for food, fools.

Perhaps it's time for Head Lemming Blair to get on his bike, not to find work (who would employ him?) but to save us all from biomassacre ....

Lament for the Boy Racer

They are the twenty-first century's equivalent of the 1960s trainspotter - but with less cool. Addicted to the fading glamour and nostalgic regret of a soon-to-be-gone transport mode, they linger round shopping centres in the early evening, pumping out the latest cover CD from Mixmag, showing off the latest free gift from Max Power, wearing their Peacock's hoodies (made in Slovakia), their Matalan jeans (made in Belarus, £5 a pair) and their Woolworth's trainers (made in Malaysia). Their lower-middle-class angst directed at anyone that resides outside their peer (pressure) group, they sullenly crowd around their 17th birthday present 'customised' Ford Focuses, music turned up to 'almost loud' whilst doing wheelies round the car park on their Kwikfit tyres, yelling 'whatever' at each other, before checking their watches to make sure they get home before nine. This is the face of rebellion in 21st century Britain. Cars! Aren't we cool pretending to be interested in cheapo chunks of characterless metal and plastic, leering at the girls who would rather be home watching the Antiques Roadshow, swooning over Hugh Sculley, a real man.

As hoodies morph into anoraks, customised morphs into practical and young men morph into premateurely balding and flabbing 23-year-old middle-aged junk food junk telly addicts, we cool types will be planning for a post-oil world, sans cars, sans boy racers.

A Very British Eclipse

Apparently today there was a partial eclipse of the sun 'visible' over Britain. We have to take the scientists' word for it because, as always, the eclipse was a total one here - the sun being completely, totally, luxuriously, exclusively, malevolently covered by the clouds ....

Just like the total eclipse on 1999, the first in mainland UK since 1927. It was August 11th if I remember rightly. The day started cloudy, and cloud persisted all day, except for one magical minute when through a gap you could see it! Not total, because we were just outside of the zone of totality, but a strange sun-moon, a crescent sun eerily peeping out from between the clouds. I ignored the warnings, rather liking the idea of the eclipse being burned on to my retinas for all eternity, and looked directly at the sun. I blinked rapidly, minimising the damage to my retinas. I don't have the image burned into my eye, but into my memory.

Soon the summer day grew dark and still as the eclipse, still hidden from view, reached its maximum point, leaving me to reflect on the extraordinary cosmic coincidence that renders the disc of the Moon exactly the same relative size as the disc of the Sun, a coincidence even the more remarkable because it occurs on possibly the only planet in the universe that harbours life able to reflect on the coincidence in the first place.

Or perhaps, bearing in mind the two main players in this drama, silver and gold, Moon and Sun, it is one clue that the Goddess gives us to remind us of Her existence?

What will we do for cash in the future?

One thing is clear - once Peak Oil has passed and the world descends into post-plenty decrepitude none of us will want paper dollars, pounds or Euros. They'll be meaningless. We'll want and need something solid, representing real value (through scarcity and usefulness), not flimsy pieces of paper showing dead leaders of the old order. Gold and silver will be the currency of the future. The value of both is already rising, and are likely to continue to do so. Canny buyers will purchase in the small troughs, and store them away somewhere well hidden - in the garden, in a wood somewhere. Don't shove 'em in a bank, as you'll never see them again. Banks will be one of the first victims of PPO (post-Peak Oil), as economies falter. Most 'money' these days are streams of binary code rushing around in the ether doing nothing but bad. This 'money' will vanish like snow on a spring morning once things really start hotting up.

Those of us with the foresight to hoard gold carefully will hold the whip hand in the future. British gold sovereigns are good, as are half sovereigns. Good silver coins are the big Britannias (nominally £2) as they are clearly recognisable and state the quantity of fine silver they contain (1 oz). Krugerrands do the same for gold. Avoid the issues from minor countries unless you live there. Quite what we'll use for small change I don't know - precious metals are too precious to use. Perhaps we'll return to barter, or cut small pieces off bigger coins?

If you're serious about surviving PPO then start getting your financial act together now. Gold and silver are instantly recognisable, easily transferable and have an intrinsic value. Gold can be buried in earth for a thousand years and still come out as bright as new.

And in a lovely Pagan touch gold represents the sun and silver the moon. There must be a message in that!

The Nine Best Excuses for not Doing Homework

The Nine Best Excuses for not Doing Homework

• My dad was sick on it
• I got an octopus stuck up my nose and had to be rushed to casualty
  A squirrel run away with it thinking it was a nut
  My mum used it to bury the goldfish in
  Dad couldn’t do it so Mum belted him and he lost an eye
  We had Jehovah’s Witnesses around until three in the morning
  I couldn’t find a pen
• I'm not the person you think I am
• A zookeeper stole it

Tales from the Sussex Woods

Hmmmmm. Been one of these for about six hours now and it doesn't seem to have changed my life. I must be impatient.

(Eddie Izzard style link) Films. Yes, mmm, films. The best, very best film ever made is The Moon and the Sledgehammer. You probably haven't heard of it. It was made in 1971, filmed in a Sussex wood with a family that seemed to eerily belong to 2071. They (will) live(d) in a shack without electricity, ex-fairground types, work on steam engines (steam will make a comeback), are the most profoundly gifted visionary bunch of chav pikeys the world has seen or will ever see, and anticipate post Peak Oil with a frisson and a sense of purpose and fun that had me shuddering and wetting myself simultaneously. And who says blokes can't multi-task? Don't bother searching Amazon for it 'cos it ain't there. There is a DVD of it somewhere as I have a pirated video taken from it. You're not having it, not even for a thousand quid.

Hail the all-conquering Sea Scopiom!

Take Care of the Future and the Present Will Look After Itself

You'll hear the expression 'Peak Oil' regularly on this site, alongside more familar terms such as 'global heating', 'Paganism' and 'organic'. You'll also get tangential stuff from the far corners of my mind, gossip, tips on good music and writing, rambling irrelevant nonsense and, occasionally, writing that will make you cry your eyes out.

Stick with it. I'm a professional writer who prefers mixing with real people rather than chinless, protected middle-class wimps (otherwise known as poets). I don't write a lot 'cos it doesn't pay and it's so distant from ordinary people's idea of how to make a living that I prefer getting my hands dirty laying railway track or my brain dirty inventing new ways of using capital to develop worthwhile projects.

That's it for now. I've been writing and I feel I should do something more worthwhile. I'll be back.