Those of us in communities planning for the transition encourage everyone to get to know their neighbors well, share strategies, grow are much food sustainably as you can and encourage your farmers to do so as well. Those of use living in the southern Willamette valley in Oregon contend with the fact that although we have vast acres of farm land, most of it is used to grow grass seed. We are looking for incentives to encourage those farmers to grow more food such as modifying the tax structure. You may want to look where your own food comes from with your neighbors and see what needs and can be done to encourage more local food production. Our county only produces about 5% of what we eat here. That is going to really hurt as the oil prices rise. Unless we change it. Good luck to us all.
Face-Off: Over A Barrel
Oil prices are heading up. After hitting $145 last summer, then falling to $33 in February, a barrel of oil is now more than $60. How long until it's back above $100?
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Jeff Rubin: Very soon. "We'll be back to triple-digit oil within 12 months. As soon as a recovery begins, very early in that cycle I think we'll see the return of $100 barrels of oil. It's inevitable. We can only hope it doesn't have the same devastating impact on the economy, and the only way to prevent that is by going back to local economies and away from globalization."
Daniel Yergin: Not for a while. "The only way we'll see the return of triple-digit oil in the next year is if there's a very dramatic event. The reality is there's a tremendous overhang of supply. We have 6.5 million barrels of spare production capacity. Compare that to the 1 million we had in 2005. Global demand remains well below its peak in 2007, and I think will stay that way for a while."
The Verdict: The price of oil is notoriously hard to forecast, but the consensus estimate of experts is that it will average $58 a barrel in 2010 and won't go above $100 until 2016, according to the Energy Information Administration.
Rubin is an economist and author of "Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller." Yergin is chairman of IHS/CERA and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Prize: the Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power" out in a new updated version.
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