Well I have been inspired by the world with out oil community and after reading for a couple of weeks I decided I ought to jump in with an update from Tampa, Florida. Things sound bad everywhere and Tampa is no exception. One reason I haven’t posted anything until now is that it has taken a few days to get the patience to try to post again. Every time I sit down and try to post the electricity goes out and I loose my work. We are having rolling blackouts all the time here now because the electric company can’t get enough coal to power all of the power plants. Unfortunately with summer well underway and temps pushing up towards 90 during the day it’s getting hot. And just because we live in Florida doesn’t mean that the population is use to heat. People are still trying to crank up the AC to keep their house cool. Apparently everyone simply leave the AC on so when power is restored it causes a surge from millions of AC units clicking on and click, off goes the power again! The Electric company has been running add of all sorts begging people to turn off their ACs, but people here don’t usually do what’s in the common interest. I haven’t had the AC on for a month now, and to be honest, I’m totally use to the heat now.
Lets see, the economy here is in can, I mean really. The state raises revenue not through income tax but rather tourist tax and property tax. No surprise that tourism is in a major slump, I heard that Disney is only opening on the weekends because no one is coming through the gates! So with out the ability to tax tourists the state is in a major crisis because the government has no real revenue, they are estimating that the state will be bankrupt in a couple of weeks. That should be interesting… Oh and if that wasn’t bad enough, the Tampa area for one has a pretty weak public transit system, no rail, few bus routs and they almost all burn diesel. Busses are overflowing at almost all times and people simply can’t get to work if they still have a job. Most of those in the service industry are unemployed now, which if your an optimist, really helps with the public transit problem!
I can say that it is wonderful to ride a bike around here these days, there are still cars running, plenty of people here have more money then scene, but there is little need to worry about avoiding busy roads because there aren’t any. When I go to the office I ride my bike because it’s only 7 miles away, but I only go in once a week and work from home other days. It’s hard to do much work when I’m home though, there is so many more important things to do such as taking care of and expanding my garden and putting in a rain water collection system. I’m not sure how much longer my job will be around anyway, I work for a bank and most of the banks loans are being defaulted on because so many have no job, eventually they wont need me I fear.
Speaking of rain, we have been in a drought for well over a year hear and the state is a nice tidy pile of kindling, I think I heard that we have over 200 wild fires burning right now and the ability of firefighters to fight these things is monumental because fire trucks and support vehicles all need gas! The whole region has been blanketed in San Francisco like fog for many days thanks to all the smoke. If that isn’t bad enough, hurricane season is upon us. All its going to take is one level 2 hurricane and things are going to look like Katrina. Half of this city would have to evacuate and there isn’t enough fuel to get all that many people out of town. I’m not in a flood zone, and I’m well to the east of the coast, so I am less worried, but simply put, one major storm here and many will die. I’ve got a full tank of gas in one of my cars and we don’t drive it, its waiting just incase we need to flee.
Wow, so there is the state of things here in Florida! It isn’t pretty, at least there hasn’t been any large amount of violence, at least no greater then anywhere else. Tampa is a car culture though and the lack of gas is really slapping people in the face. Fortunately we have one thing going for us, the ability to grow food all year long, and lots of people have been planting victory gardens. We also have many farmers markets, and let me tell you farmers in Florida are getting rich these days because they tend to have more food then the stores, the trick is getting there very early in the morning!
Hang in there folks! And my advice, plant a garden, even if its in big buckets on your apartment balcony.
