I took a few random pictures of the sunset Thursday evening as my wife cooked dinner and I was out on the porch looking west and east and up at the half moon. It was a gorgeous evening, not too hot, not too humid and as my street has no lights I get a clear view of the night sky. I stood outside listening to the sounds of domestic science going on inside and as I did my mind wandered...far from Niles Channel Bridge.
It is shaping up to be a pleasant summer in the Keys, the weather is the usual sunny and warm and the rains are staying away, bad for the plants good for me and my Bonneville. Crowds were down for Fourth of July, according to people in charge of number counting, good for me at work, bad for the shopkeepers on the island. I wonder what the Keys will look like with fewer visitors over a long stretch of time, inevitably smaller incomes, restaurants closing, lighter traffic on the highway...? A lifestyle change for us all perhaps. I know my wife and I are cutting back our travel plans, one can hardly blame others for doing the same. I worry about the future.
I have been a wanderer all my life, with itchy feet, always anxious to get over the horizon. Now that has changed and I am happily settled in my work, my home and my marriage and I find that paradoxically instead of the world around me being stuck in its routine with me buzzing around like a restless bluebottle on a windowpane, I am now settled and the rest of the world seems off kilter and tilting a bit further every day. We live in interesting times, as the old Chinese curse has it, provoked most immediately by the cost of a gallon of gas, between $4.30 and $4.60 depending on the grade. Most people think its some sort of sleight of hand by unnamed speculators and Big Oil and ultimately things will level off. Global Warming doesn't even rate much of a mention anymore these days and Middle East wars past and future seem obscured by the big black blot of the oil slick.
I see a lot of hardship building in the Keys over the coming months. Home values among lower cost homes (especially "dry lots"
ie: homes not on canals) have dropped and county and city incomes will thus drop too as Florida has no state income tax and relies on sales taxes and property taxes. Services will degrade. The City of Key West has cut 34 positions and has fired some two dozen people and won't fill the other open positions. Monroe County has laid off dozens of people. The city Police Department is going through a reorganization to get more officers on the road without having to reopen the hiring process. Efficiency is the watchword and that is all to the good. Unfortunately I see a future where efficiency won't be enough. If we lose tourism to the high cost of fuel we lose employment in the "hospitality industry," and we start to tear the fabric of our little community.
I feel like we live on a knife edge, there's a possibility of war with Iran, and the ethanol mandate has simply sent the price of food skyrocketing but our leaders are unable to rescind the mandate and release corn for food instead of fuel. Global Warming hasn't gone away with the recent report about the north polar ice cap probably melting entirely this summer. That and Peak Oil make me wonder what weird shit is coming our collective way in the next few years. I see no reason for oil to drop in price, because demand is increasing and neither wells nor refineries can keep up. Its not speculators, its supply and demand at work and there isn't enough cheap easily available oil to satisfy world demand. Therefore the price will continue to rise until we cut consumption enough to create what economists call "demand destruction" when the high price forces people to stop buying. A gruesome prospect. I always wondered if I would have seen the Great Depression coming, as my grandfather failed signally to do, but I never wondered if I would have known what to do had I did figured it out ahead of time. I've seen this economic downturn coming for several years, and I had no idea what to do. I still don't. So I just keep on keeping on. And I bought a house in 2005! Duh! But it gives me nice views of the night sky!
A lot of people who eagerly anticipate their annual trip to Key West may have to submit to petro-reality and not come on vacation, while people thinking about moving here may have to postpone or cancel. There was a lot of grumbling in Key West during the boom years, but I for one would like them back. Too much construction, too many cruise ships, it seems like a mirage now when we face shrinking funds everywhere in the public and private sectors. I've seen these islands cope with devastating hurricanes and we seem to be endowed with people who are for whatever reason more resilient in tough times, similar I'm sure to outlying communities all round this country. It's hard to ignore the need for self reliance when there is but one road and 42 bridges to the mainland. I think that if we had to go back to the Depression Era diet of "grunts and grits" collectively we would manage. Photographs of me cleaning small fish and frying them will make you, I'm sure, glad not to be sharing my hardship!
Hurricane Bertha is wandering the Atlantic as I write, a Category One storm that previously got as high as Category Three, unlikely at the moment to hit land and ruin someones life. Yet this economic outlook is a bit like storm season in that hurricanes manage sometimes to bring out the not-so-great in us. It's unfortunate but when a storm threatens one's first instinct is to wish it would go somewhere else. It's an instinct that grows stronger the closer the hurricane gets. Yet by wishing for a change in direction one is wishing the storm misery on someone else. By the nature of our geography that means wishing storm force winds onto a community in say the Yucatan, Cuba, Jamaica or the Bahamas. All our neighbors are economically weaker than us, yet we essentially wish them harm when faced with catastrophe ourselves. So it is with Peak Oil. I'd rather see China run out of economic steam and their need for oil collapse, than give up riding my Bonneville. I know that the Third World is going to be wrung dry by the oil crisis but I worry about my mortgage! These are times that demand heroes and I don't feel so heroic. They also demand strong thoughtful leaders and I don't see too many of them at any level. We seem singularly ill equipped to face our difficulties.
I've traveled a great deal and I've seen true human misery. I was 12 when I watched medieval ox carts load up dead bodies each dawn, from the sidewalks of Calcutta, their feet stuck out like cords of wood. I have seen war and I've seen refugees and I didn't like any of it one bit. I don't like the prospects of seeing people in this country reduced to the black and white photographs of Frank Capra, Dorothea Lange and Margaret Bourke- White. The dust bowl is best kept in the history books as far as I am concerned. I hope that our resilience and ingenuity, the flexibility of our economy and our collective ability to take on extraordinary technological challenges (A compressed air car in every garage and a grunt on every grill!) will sort out the gremlins. I'd just like to see the odd ray of sunshine at the end of the tunnel. Is that too much to ask?
Meanwhile I plan to keep on taking pictures of these islands, and as I do, please don't think for one minute things are rosier than they are in your neighborhood. Its just easier to put a grin on your face when the sun is shining and the grunts are biting.
