http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/07/beating-high-energy-and-food-prices.html

Energy and food prices will keep going up (due to the printing of gzillions of dollars by Helicopter Ben to pay for the Iraq war and the bailout of Freddie, Fannie, Bear et al, the biofuels subsidies, and other idiotic financial policies).

How can we protect ourselves against this threat to our wallet?

Perhaps by producing more of our own energy and food. Now, this article is not about getting back to the land and singing Kumbaya. I'm writing simply on how to stay afloat financially in a very unstable economy.

Energy

Due to high oil prices, major breakthroughs in energy production are happening every day.

For example:

• A new generation of highly-efficient wind turbines (and see this) is being invented which can produce much more energy

• And new approachees to solar energy (see this, this and this)

The ability for individuals to produce energy is called "micro generation" or "micro power"

If we get together with some of our neighbors and pool our energy, so we can distribute it where and when it is needed, then we can save tremendous sums of money.

With high energy prices, micro generation will become a huge trend, neighborhood energy storage facilities, according to one of the world's leading experts on trend forecasting.

Engineers will, in the next couple of months, design breakthrough energy storage methods which will make it cost-effective for neighborhoods to pool resources and buy energy storage units.

If you have any spare cash lying around and don't know where to invest it, look into micro generation. See this , this and this.

Food

You don't need a huge backyard to grow alot of your own food. There are ways to grow food even in small spaces.

For example:

• You can grow vegetable gardens vertically (it doesn't look that great, but it works)

• You can get chickens and buy or build a chicken coop for eggs and chicken meat (my wife got 4 chicks a couple of weeks ago; I thought at first she was nuts, but they are actually easy to keep)

And see this.

You can also join or start a farming cooperative in your area, so that you have access to food in return for a contribution of money or labor (see this, although the farms mentioned don't seem very economical).

Silver Lining?

My wife, who often has a more positive attitude about things than me, says that maybe the economic crash will bring Americans closer together as neighbors, and will remind us of what's really important.

I hope she's right . . . In the meantime, I want to invest in micro generation and micro farming, to get control of our family's spiraling energy and food costs.

And wars are being fought in our name over oil. Fascism is being implemented to stifle dissent to these imperial wars. 9/11 was carried out, partially, as an excuse to launch the imperial campaign to go steal other people's oil.

Our economy and savings accounts are being decimated by high energy prices.

What's the connection?

Centralized energy production. Huge energy companies -- some with earnings bigger than many countries -- are calling the shots. As long as we rely on them to provide our power to us, we are buying into the imperial wars, injustice and destruction of our liberties.

If people install solar, wind, or whatever other micro equipment we can in our homes and offices, then we could decentralize power-generation -- and thus -- decentralize power away from the energy giants and their imperial political allies.

Indeed, there is arguably something patriotic about this. The Founding Fathers sung the virtues of "citizen farmers". Don't quit your day job . . . but if we become citizen energy-and-food farmers in our spare time, the self-sufficiency and sense of responsibility might help in some small way we to restore true American values.