Chopping To Keep Warm  

VillageSoup has a report on record firewood demand in Maine courtesy of high oil prices - Chop, chop: Firewood dealers struggle to meet demand. I hope people start to realise that well-insulated houses are the most effective way to stay warm in the longer term - before the east coast forests start to shrink again (and "peak wood" becomes a new catch-phrase).

Local firewood dealers say demand for their product has never been higher, and they cannot keep up with orders coming not only from locals, but from Southern Maine and out of state as well.

Rising heating oil prices, a shortage of loggers and increased demand for wood by the paper industry have driven up the cost. In addition, residents who used to wait until fall to order their firewood started buying it up in May or June this year.

"I've sold every stick coming off the machine," said Fred Lemon, owner of Four Seasons Firewood Co. in Searsmont. "I can't keep up with the demand." Lemon said he won't be able to sell seasoned (or dry) wood this year because people are buying his entire supply while it is still green. "I've got a feeling there isn't going to be a lot of seasoned wood on the market this fall," he said. "If you wait till the last minute, you won't have any wood at all."

Lemon said the people who used to use wood, but changed to oil, have gone back to wood, giving him new customers. In addition, people who have never used wood before are looking to it as an alternative to skyrocketing oil bills.

Lemon's company delivers wood from Belfast to Rockport, and sells as far as Thomaston and Winterport. He said he has received calls from people in Connecticut and the Boston area looking to bring a tractor-trailer truck to Searsmont and load it with his firewood. Lemon said he turned them down, saying he would serve his local customer base first.

"People are going to decide whether to eat or freeze this winter," he said. "It really is that bad."

On a related note, Businessweek has a look at the frozen economy and difficulties residents of the US north east face affording heating oil.

The polar ice cap may be melting, but the U.S. economy is frozen, starting right here in my small town. Gradually rising levels of dismay at the gas pump and in the supermarket gave way to paralytic shock last week when "lock-in" notices from the local fuel company arrived. This year's advance price for home heating oil is nearly twice what people paid last year. A collective gasp of disbelief from my tough, resourceful Maine neighbors echoed across the meadows and up the rocky coast. Many claimed they would never sign the contract. "What's your alternative?" I asked a friend.

"I don't have one," he muttered.

In the days that followed, a new quality of dread settled over the place like soot, as people weighed their options. Heat or food? Gas or electricity? Medicine or mortgage payments? What to give up? What to cut back? The conversations were everywhere. In the supermarket, I heard one man tell another: "When I was a kid, you woke up, went into the bathroom, and broke up the ice in the toilet. Now my kids will have to do the same. America is moving backward."

My neighbors are like deer caught in the headlights: frozen in fear as something sinister, implacable, and wholly unanticipated lurches toward them. A reckoning has begun to unfurl like a dark flower, slowly at first, then gathering urgency and force. This is not a short detour after all, but an untraveled road to an unknown place from which there is no return, no escape…and we are not prepared.

The economic crisis has been triggered by what economists call "structural shifts" in the global supply and demand for commodities, coupled with the meltdown in the mortgage markets and the ensuing credit squeeze. But this crisis is now moving into a whole new gear, creating a new set of economic conditions that have yet to be named. Call it "the frozen economy."

As pain reaches deep into the daily lives of ordinary Americans—irrespective of their creditworthiness—it will trigger unforeseen consequences for every corner of the marketplace. Nearly two-thirds of Americans already say they are cutting back on nonessentials, according to a new survey by Information Resources. But what's nonessential? Heat? Asthma medication? Shoes for your kids? A new yoga mat? At the same time, 57% of Americans interviewed last month by the Survey of Consumer Confidence reported that their financial situation had worsened—the poorest response since 1946, when the survey began. More than two-thirds of gross domestic product depends on consumer spending. But when the grass roots are frozen, nothing can grow. ...

Moody's welcomes us back to the world of childhood, of Grandma's kitchen, when all was innocence and order. This is no postmodern nostalgic wink, just the healing comfort of a nearly complete absence of change. Only the Support Our Troops in Iraq poster, with photos of local boys, suggests a new century.

At least, that's what I thought until the other day, when I sat down at the counter. Three working men in the booth behind me wondered about alternative energy. Wind? Solar? Pellets? The very notion was mysterious, and it wasn't clear how to figure it out. "We have to do something," they said. "But what?"

Next to me, Shirley and Irene recalled how their parents coped the last time no one could afford heat, during the Great Depression. Back then, three generations moved into Grandma's farmhouse for the winter. "It was the only way they could survive. Now it looks like we may have to do that again." Irene looked dazed. "I feel sick about it. We don't know what to do."

Seventy-three-year-old Arlie Fretner sat in his usual spot, the last seat at the counter, with his back to the wall. "I don't know what to do, or what to think, or what direction to go in. It looks like those folks in Washington don't know, either. The whole system has just seized right up. There's nothing I can compare this to, except how my people talked about the Depression."

"What about the next President?" I asked. "Will he be able to help?" They all looked at me with a mix of tenderness and pity, as if I had just spit up on my clean shirt. "The government should assist us," Arlie said, "but we've given up on that. They want to pacify us, not help us."

Robert had been listening quietly. For decades, he taught shop at the local high school and trained many of the skilled carpenters around town. Now he runs a small power-products business and helps out his son's logging operation. Few men are more respected in this community. "People are asking themselves, 'Will things go back to the way they were, or is this a fundamental change?'" he said. "Everything hit us at once. Now we are running scared for the winter. My business is off 75%. People want the products, but they're afraid to make a move, because they have to save everything to heat their homes. We have to choose between heat, gas, food, and medicine. Most of us have never lived through a time like this, where we can't afford the basics of a decent life. It's hard to believe that this is America."

Maybe if the 2000 election hadn't been rigged, and $3 trillion hadn't been spent trying to steal Iraq's oil - instead being put to more useful purposes - we'd still be looking at the old America today.