The Contraction of American Cities

If you’re serious at all about trying to figure out what the future will bring, you must read this essay by James Howard Kunstler.

I’m going to tell you right now, though, it’s not a pretty picture that Kunstler paints. Of all the possible futures, this one absolutely glows with real potential for becoming our reality. It’s amazing to me just how in denial our culture is about the coming effects of Peak Oil and the Housing Bubble, both terms that have become, for the masses anyway, memes of apocalypse and not taken seriously. But how can the problems be argued with? I know people who will tell me that real estate values will always go up. They always have and always will. In this conversation, I will ask "how much did your house appreciate last year?" In Phoenix, it’s not unusual for someone to answer "$100,000."

"Okay," I reply, "Did your income go up by that much?"

"No! I only got a 3% raise last year."

My final question then, is "so how much does real estate appreciate before no one can afford a house?"

On Growth

The danger inherent in the Peak Oil situation we now find ourselves in, is that our way of life demands constant growth. From PeakOil.com:

Growing an economy is like increasing the energy in the system – it can’t just spring forth from nowhere; it has to come from something. You can do more with what you have by using it more efficiently, but this places an obvious ceiling on growth.

We in the U.S., and as a result around the world, accept a future that’s not only no less, but actually much more, than we have today. Growth is seen as necessary and normal. So is inflation. These are dangerous paradigms, as they can’t be continued indefinitely.

Running Out of Beer?

Now this peak oil thing is getting serious. according to a post on The Oil Drum, we may run out of beer before we run out of oil. Funny headline, but a serious situation underneath, thanks to our appetite for an endless supply of cheap fuel.

The Fallacy of the Bleedout

The United States is in a tough place. We invaded a sovereign country for oil, and it’s not going so well. As this from the Atlantic Free Press points out, there were no terrorists in Iraq before the war. Sure, there are many there now, but most of those probably weren’t terrorists before the war. Our actions have undoubtedly created many more terrorists than we’ve killed.Anyone who doubts we’re in Iraq for any reason other than oil just isn’t paying attention. As for the assertion that "we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here" is looking at the world through a pair of spectacles better suited for the 19th Century. There’s no front line that the terrorists have to pass to get to the U.S. All they have to do is get on a commercial flight, or if they are on a terrorist watch list, travel to Mexico or Canada and walk across the border. Our fighting them in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t keeping them away from our homeland. They are most definitely coming for us here, in part because of our troops’ presence in the Middle East, not despite it.

What Created the Modern World

In a word? Caffeine. That delightful and most necessary drug (for most of us, it seems). National Geographic has a look at caffeine’s role in building our civilization.

For most of human existence, your pattern of sleeping and wakefulness was basically a matter of the sun and the season,” explains Charles Czeisler, a neuroscientist and sleep expert at Harvard Medical School. “When the nature of work changed from a schedule built around the sun to an indoor job timed by a clock, humans had to adapt. The widespread use of caffeinated food and drink—in combination with the invention of electric light—allowed people to cope with a work schedule set by the clock, not by daylight or the natural sleep cycle.

Your faithful Editor at What Comes Next? is an avowed user of Monster Energy (Lo-Carb). Easier on the system than a double espresso, missing a morning doesn’t seem to carry the consequences of missing the double-espresso (extra hot).

The Reality of Global Warming

It’s interesting talking about Global Warming to people of conservative opinions who haven’t really thought the issue through, instead relying on the rhetoric of the leaders of their faith political party. It usually takes a few minutes of saying "let’s not talk about whose fault it is – that’s not important. Let’s talk about whether global warming is real." I’m amazed at how often they’ll then shrug and say "of course, the science shows it’s getting warmer and that’s bad." But getting over that initial hump of whether human activity is causing the problems attributed to global warming is very difficult. Who cares whose fault it is?

Talking to a couple of supporters of "President Bush, right or wrong," yesterday reminded me of this. Once I happily agreed that mankind didn’t cause global warming, probably just hastened the cycle we’re in, they were fine and interested in talking about it. If only our leaders were that easy.

Iran Plays Down War Fears

Showing once again that Iran really doesn’t understand how serious the West is about them not having nuclear weapons, they’re talking like they’re not terribly concerned about war with the Unite States. They should be. Americans are.

Iran’s foreign minister played down the possibility of U.S. military action against its nuclear facilities, saying Saturday that the United States is in no position to impose another crisis on the region or its own citizens. From Washington, VOA’s Margaret Besheer reports, the Iranian comments follow remarks U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney made about options for dealing with Iran’s unwillingness to halt its nuclear activities.

VOA News – Iran Plays Down Threat of US Military Action

Why Some People Deny Global Warming

Or Peak Oil, or anything that might happen in the near or distance future. It’s all about the “discount rate.” No, not the financial kind, but the human kind. Tremendously interesting post on The Oil Drum that lays it all out.

Australian biologist Tim Flannery has called the human species “The Future Eaters”. Indeed, paleo-anthropology suggests many historical societies collapsed due to resource depletion even though they must have been aware of it. The example made famous by Jared Diamond is ‘what was that Easter Islander thinking that chopped down the last tree’? The best documented recent mass extinctions of flightless birds and other large mammals from New Zealand and Madagascar show that humans were to blame. Though Neandertals and early Homo Sapiens did hunt game without hunting it out, upper Paleolithic hunters were more numerous and better equipped for mass slaughter – 100,000 horses killed at one site, a thousand mammoths at another. Given the millions of years of shaping of our neural circuitry, it is hard to imagine that our mental structure has changed that much in the last few thousand years.

What’s great about this post is that the comments are as engaging, intelligent and thought-provoking as the article. Read and save.