 Most of us are unaware of the fragile inter-dependent systems that support our housing infrastructure. We take for granted the flip of a light switch, the turning of a faucet, the casual flush of a toilet, and the comforting roar of a basement gas furnace.
However, all of that convenience depends on hundreds of thousands of miles of aging gas, water, and sewer pipelines inter connected to a fragile and undercapitalized national electrical grid fed by fossil fuels that are rapidly approaching the point of peak production. Once these resources “PEAK”, we will all be forced to adjust to their relentless and irreversible decline as shortages follow today's price shocks into an uncertain energy future.
Chill in the Living Room, describes our fragile housing infrastructure in detail and offers homeowners real world strategies that they can use to prepare for the coming painful transition from a fossil fuel dependent world to a more sustainable and hopeful energy future.
John Van Doren
June 2008
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The oil boom is over and will not return.
All of us must get used to a different lifestyle.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, 2007
When the King of oil rich Saudi Arabia tells his subjects to prepare for “a different lifestyle” you can bet that the oil importing countries are in for a very hard time. Although he didn't say so, King Abdullah was talking about the imminent peaking and subsequent decline of oil production in both Saudi Arabia and the world.
Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking a crash program action would leave the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.
U.S. Department of Energy, “Hirsch Report”, 2005
Such a peak would require sharp reductions in oil consumption, and the competition for increasingly scarce energy would drive up prices, possibly to unprecedented levels, causing severe economic damage. While these consequences would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be especially vulnerable.
GAO Report on Peak Oil, 2007
...world oil production has already peaked [in 2006] and...production levels will fall by half as soon as 2030
Energy Watch Group, 2007
For the millions of North American homeowner's who depend on oil, natural gas, and coal fired electricity for heating, cooling, hot water, cooking and all the convenience's of a 21st century lifestyle we are not only facing the painful reality of peak oil today, we will soon be facing peak gas, coal, and uranium. CHILL in the Living Room describes our fragile dependency on fossil fuels for our residential energy needs and provides survival strategies for dwelling in a post peak world. It is not about some hypothetical future, it is about a $100+ per barrel NOW, and time is NOT on our side.
Our view is that oil production will peak in the near future. We need to develop power train(s) for alternative energy sources, [to] move beyond petroleum.
Katsuaki Watanabe, President of Toyota, June 2008
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We are already experiencing the early price shocks and life style changes of Peak Oil yet very few realize that the coming crisis of Peak Natural Gas is just around the corner.
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The North American outlook for natural gas production is not good. Mexican production has been in decline since 1999. U.S. production has been in a plateau for some time. All the big finds have been tapped and are in decline. Currently, we are bringing new wells online at a maddening pace just to keep our domestic production flat. And the new wells are declining at rates as high as 80% in the first year. The size of the new finds is also diminishing. Over the past decade, the amount of gas found per foot drilled has declined by 50%.
Dale Allen Pfeiffer, The Natural Gas Cliff, October 2005
Natural gas is used to heat over 60% of the homes in America and about 70% of new homes. The equivalent of 500 HP forced air furnaces lumbering away in the basements of our poorly constructed and insulated homes will no longer be sustainable in a world of rapidly depleting natural gas resources. In many ways the inertia of transforming over 100 million existing homes will be more difficult than transforming our transportation system and onus and urgency for change will fall directly on the homeowner.
“Conventional, easy-to-get natural gas in the U.S. has already peaked and natural gas from all sources will peak in North America around 2010 and globally between 2030 and 2035.”
Dr. Michael Smith, Energy Files Ltd., 2004
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"At first higher natural gas prices will cause demand destruction in the industrial sector and manufacturers will convert to other energy sources like coal or move production to locations in the world where natural gas is still plentiful. Eventually, because modern agriculture is heavily dependent on fertilizer, and natural gas is the primary fertilizer feed-stock, we may be faced with the dilemma of either heating our homes or putting food on the table."
from CHILL in the Living Room
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The peaking of oil and natural gas and the resulting price shocks and shortages will have a cascading effect on our already fragile and vulnerable national electrical grid.
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 High Voltage Power Line
The real energy crisis may be happening on the nation's aging power grid. Getting electricity from here to there over high-power transmission lines is becoming more unpredictable and difficult.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2002
...most of the equipment that makes up the North American grid is reaching the end of its design life after nearly three decades of under investment.
Peter Asmus, energy issues journalist, 2006
If present trends continue, a blackout enveloping half the [North American] continent is not out of the question.
Roger Anderson, Columbia University
With power out beyond a day or two, both food and water supplies would soon fail. Transportation systems would be at a standstill ... natural gas pressure would decline and some would lose gas altogether (not good in the winter time) ... Communications would be spotty or non-existent. ... All in all, our cities would not be very nice places to be... Martial law would likely follow.
Paul Gilbert, National Research Council, 2003 Congressional PanelTestimony
The August 2003 blackout in the Northeast, that left 50-million people without power for up to 3 days, was a preview of what's to come. The lack of investment in our electrical grid has driven reliability to its lowest point in history. Blackouts that affect at least half a million homes now occur on average about once every four months. The latest NREC 2007 Long Term Reliability Assessment reinforced the long standing and urgent need for investment in our national grid and identified several critical weaknesses in the system. The report stated that:
- Significant investment in transmission is still required in many areas of North America as projected transmission additions lag behind demand growth and new resource additions in most areas.
- Canadian natural gas imports into the U.S. are expected to level off and decline overall as early as 2010 due to increasing demand in Canada. This will expose Florida, Texas, the Northeast, and Southern California to potential interruptions in natural gas fuel supply to power plants [and cause power blackouts and brownouts].
- New England, Texas, California, the Rocky Mountain states, the Southwest and Midwest will [all] likely face capacity shortages in the next few years.
- An aging workforce will soon impact reliability. With some 40 percent of senior electrical engineers and shift supervisors eligible to retire in 2009, the industry will be faced with a significant shortage of experienced, knowledgeable workers.
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CHILL in the Living Room is an eBook secured by Secure-eBook and will only work for Windows computers equipped with the free Adobe Reader. If you are new to buying and downloading eBooks, don't worry! We have detailed instructions, including a checklist, that make it easy. (Note: You do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the eBook once you have installed it on your computer.)
Phantom Creek Publishing
$24.95, 160 pages, 8-1/2 x 11
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Our declining underground aquifers, combined with a growing population, and a crumbling water infrastructure will soon cause the equivalent of a Peak Water event in the America.
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 The Governor of Georgia leading prayer vigil for rain on the steps of the state capital building, 2007
The U.S. story line of crumbling infrastructure, groundwater depletion, and surface water pollution paints a picture every bit as disturbing as peak oil and gas.
- Over 700,000 miles of pipe deliver water to U.S. homes and businesses. With a lifetime of 50 years and an average age of 43 years an investment of approximately $1 Trillion over the next twenty years will be required just to maintain our current water distribution system. That represents an increase of more than 150% over our current annual spending levels.
- Water mains break 237,600 times a year in the United States
- Cities lose as much as 30% of their clean water supply to leaks alone. These same underground leaks cut both ways and can draw arsenic, human waste particles, chlorine, and other pollutants into our drinking water
- Local and state governments issue as many as 900 "boil your water" alerts every year
- Of the 619 waterborne disease outbreaks the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracked between 1971 and 1998, 18% were due to pathogens in our water distribution system
- Our aging and overburdened sewers are pouring 860 billion gallons of raw and partially treated sewage into our rivers and streams every year and we spend as much as $4 billion every year on medical costs from swimming in sewage-contaminated waters
- The U.S. Geological Survey has reported that streams nationwide are laced with prescription and over-the-counter drugs
- The nation's largest underground aquifer, situated beneath South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas is being drawn down at up to one hundred times the natural replacement rate. Based on the current trend, the Ogallala aquifer could be depleted as early as 2020 putting thousands of farms and ranches out of busines
- A recent report by the Scripps Institute predicts that the Lake Mead reservoir that sustains cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas may become unusable as early as 2021 due to climate change in the Colorado river drainage
 Lake Mead Nevada, 2007
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Water forms the nexus for many of the interdependent systems that support our housing infrastructure. A secure supply of water depends on electricity to power the pumps that move water through hundreds of thousands of miles of pipes to our homes. It depends on electricity to power the water and sewage treatment plants that we depend on to purify our drinking water and safely dispose of our black and gray water wastes. In turn, 48% of our water is consumed by the same electrical generation plants that power our water infrastructure.
from CHILL in the Living Room
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We know the worth of water when the well runs dry Ben Franklin
This is NOT the book I set out to Write
I am an architect and engineer by training. When I first conceived this book I thought it would be Sustainable Design Handbook about energy efficiency, indoor air quality, water conservation, and “green” material choices.
I was well down that original path when I began to seriously question the current course of the green building movement. It began with a few innocent questions.
- What is the precise definition of sustainable?
- What level of energy efficiency in a home design meets this definition?
- How well do our current energy codes, Energy Star and LEED for Homes guidelines meet that challenge?
These questions would launch me in a new and unexpected direction.
I would discover The Club of Rome and their work with MIT on the Limits to Growth. Their initial 1972 findings, updated in 2002 would confirm that our current path of development had put us in very real danger of “overshoot and catastrophic collapse.”
I would read the 1987 U.N. Brundtland commission's report on sustainable development and Our Common Future and understand that there were limits to our planet's carrying capacity, and that we were rapidly pushing up against or exceeding those limits.
I would find Dr. Albert Bartlett's Reflections on Sustainability, Population Growth and the Environment and understand that even modest rates of growth over time become exponential and unsustainable in a closed ecosystem with finite natural resources. I would learn from Dr. Bartlett that, Smart growth is an oxymoron...a convenient marketing slogan for developers and politicians.
I would find the pioneering work of green economist Dr. Herman Daly, and discover that the neo-classical economics that guides policy and energy decisions around the world today is based on the fantasy that natural resources are free and infinite, and that our economic status-quo is the equivalent of an ecological ponzi scheme.
I would read the work and findings of Dr. Colin Campbell [founder of ASPO] and the Energy Watch Group and come to the depressing realization that the peak production and resulting decline in the supply of oil, natural gas, uranium, and coal would all happen prior to 2030.
From the ashes of my original “handbook”, Chill in the Living Room would be born. This book explores the historical forces, policies, economic theory, and technical advances that helped to mold and give form to our residential built environment. It also describes in detail the fragile, uncertain, and interdependent systems that homeowners innocently rely on for electricity, natural gas, and water.
In the end, it gives homeowners practical real-world strategies for transforming their homes into some semblance of energy efficiency in preparation for a post peak world and a more sustainable future.
Some will see this book as alarmist and write it off as "doom and gloom". As I watch this slow motion "train wreck" unfold, I see it as both a early warning and a call to action.
John Van Doren
July 2008
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As homeowners we are soon going to be much like a consumer that has tapped out his credit and has to live within his means. We will have tapped out the easy to get and cheap sources of fossil fuel and will have to live within our energy means. As we rethink the American home, we will need to ask what we can really afford.
from CHILL in the Living Room
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CHILL in the Living Room is an eBook secured by Secure-eBook and will only work for Windows computers equipped with the free Adobe Reader. If you are new to buying and downloading eBooks, don't worry! We have detailed instructions, including a checklist, that make it easy. (Note: You do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the eBook once you have installed it on your computer.)
Phantom Creek Publishing
$24.95, 160 pages, 8-1/2 x 11
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The Top Ten Reasons You SHOULD BUY This BOOK
- Your heating bill is already equal to your mortgage payment
- You think that your home energy costs are going no place but up
- You think we may be headed for a national energy crisis
- You know that the production of oil in the U.S. peaked in 1970 and that the world production of oil has either already peaked or will peak no later than 2010
- You worry that countries that we depend on for oil are not our friends or allies
- You want to be prepared for extended blackouts energy supply disruptions
- You're concerned about the security and quality of your home's water supply
- You know that a natural gas shortage would leave you without any reasonable way to heat your home
- You're concerned about potential food shortages in the U.S.
- You want to know how dependent your home is on a fragile and decaying energy and water infrastructure
The Top Ten Reasons You SHOULD NOT BUY This BOOK
- You live in an apartment
- You rent your home
- You believe cheap and abundant gas and oil will be with us forever
- You already live in a Zero Energy Home
- Your home is off-grid and energy independent
- You believe that (fill in the blank with the person or political party of your choice) will solve all of our energy problems with some new enlightened policy
- You believe that we can replace oil, gas, and coal with bio-fuels
- You believe that we can transition to renewable energy sources BEFORE we experience serious shortages of fossil fuels
- You grow/raise enough food on your own property to feed your family
- You believe Big Oil & Gas will unveil a new secret energy source after milking fossil fuels for all the profit they can get
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CHILL in the Living Room is an eBook secured by Secure-eBook and will only work for Windows computers equipped with the free Adobe Reader. If you are new to buying and downloading eBooks, don't worry! We have detailed instructions, including a checklist, that make it easy. (Note: You do not need to be connected to the Internet to use the eBook once you have installed it on your computer.)
Phantom Creek Publishing
$24.95, 160 pages, 8-1/2 x 11
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Still Not Convinced?
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