There are a number of factors that effect Americans’ daily lives becoming unstable and the near future is becoming more and more unclear. Peak Oil is starting to have its predicted effect on the everyday, and I’m not just talking about $4 plus at the pump.
I’m talking about food.
As many have been lecturing us for a long time, we are a civilization made possible by cheap petroleum. I was listening to the PTB’s apologist/chief spinologist Rush Limbaugh a few days ago as he was attacking Obama’s statement about “failed policies of the past,” translating in the way only el-Rushbo can, saying that the Democrat’s nominee is calling the development of petroleum a “failed policy.” Once again, Limbaugh evades the point. The failed policy isn’t the development of petroleum, but rather the continued reliance on cheap petroleum as the foundation of our civilization. Rush is wrong when he says that America was built on petroleum. It was built on cheap petroleum, and our failure to wean ourselves from the stuff and use our great ingenuity and the wealth that temporarily inexpensive resource made possible, is indeed a “failed policy.” (ed note: I used to be a Rush Limbaugh fan. I’m a basically conservative American who feels that Limbaugh and the Republican Party no longer speaks for me)
Most people think that petroleum only goes in your car’s gas tank and oil reservoir. That’s only the beginning. Cheap petroleum is the very foundation of the cheap consumer culture that is most garish in the Wal-Mart, Costco and Sam’s Club culture. From the packaging to the physical store construction to the semi-trailered transportation system, everything you see stocking the 3 storied Sam’s Club warehouse is made possible at ridiculously low prices by…You guessed it, cheap oil.
But that ship is sailing. Fast.
There have already been spot shortages of staples, and as the long, hot summer continues into fall, I predict we’re going to see more and more of that. Prices are already climbing, and that’s only going to accelerate. It’s going to be along time, if ever, until prices are at the level they were a couple years ago again. Sadly, or maybe predictbly, the biggest factor in this equation working against us, is the fact that the people running things – baby boomers – have never experienced shortages, scarcity or anything resembling what their parents lived through in their younger years. And the generation who lived adult life in the Depression? Those of them left are 100 years old. There aren’t many of those still around and writing of their experiences and sounding warnings about today, which is why even though the smart ones among us can show us charts and equations and historical parallels, few are listening to them.
We’d better start. Shortages are coming. You may experience difficulties in finding food to buy at any price. I can’t repeat this enough. The era of cheap oil, and the bounty it has delivered to us is over. Get used to it, if you can.
Posted in
Economy,
Peak Oil,
Society Tags:
Economy,
Famine,
Food Shortage,
Peak Oil
Financial Armageddon today points us toward a Washington Post article The housing bubble, in four chapters, a really well distilled look at what will go down as the biggest financial debacle in history. Tulip Mania and the tech bubble of the 1990s will be seen as mere wanna-bes when the history of financial inflations and crashes is written.
Reading this again shows not just how gullible people can be, but how many people in our society grasp on small incidents of luck and success and quickly assume they represent hard, long-term reality. I’ve been preaching Peak Oil, housing bubble and the long-term non-viability of the subprime mortgage market for quite some time. Those who I used to preach to (I save my breath these days) considered me at best, misguided and at worst, a paradoid, delusional crank.
I must admit, it’s a difficult thing to hold my tongue when I hear someone who was so quick to dismiss my ideas 18 months ago now crowing about “these problems they’re starting to read about.” It further illustrates that most of us in this society are born suckers, walking around with big signs that point to their wallet and say “pick here.” I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who a year and a half ago were convinced that home prices will always rise, pausing only momentarily for thought when I asked “is everyone’s income going up to match real estate prices? And if not, how will people continue to pay ever-increasing prices for homes?”
Well, it’s all crashing down now, and sadly, many are losing those homes they mortgaged everything for, then second-mortaged again for boats, vacations, vacation homes, pools, plasma TVs and more. I can’t imagine anything sadder than loading the kids into the car as you leave your home, moving into a smaller rental house, or apartment, and then getting up in the morning to go to your job. What a heartbreak.
But it’s happening every day, in increasing numbers. If there was ever a time to get debt-free with money in the bank, and a house that could lose 25% of its market value and still show equity, now is that time. I’m happy to say your editor has been blessed enough to get there.
It is a nice place to be. Come join us.
Here’s a couple places to start:
Trapped by debt? Free yourself in 7 steps from MSN Money. A possibly outdated article, but some good ideas nonetheless.
Live on Ten Thousand Dollars a Year by George Ure of UrbanSurvival.com gives with some great ways to cut costs. If you bring home more than $10K, you can then put the surplus to work elminating your debt.
Posted in
Economy,
Housing Bubble Tags:
foreclosure,
Housing Bubble
Nine Meals From Anarchy is the article on the website of the Daily Mail today. It’s a look by a mainstream news organization at the many levels of trouble rising oil prices will force on us. Though the article discusses the Britain’s perspective on the problem, the same economic catastrophe is bearing down on us in the U.S. right now. Maybe even more difficult.
Britain is a smaller company geographically, with a well-developed system of public transportation. Americans have no such system. The article on Mail Online however, is about food transportation, not about public transportation. A great bus and rail system doesn’t mean a thing if there’s no food.
If the trucks stopped moving, we’d start to worry and we’d head out to the shops, cking up our larders. By the end of Day One, if there was still no petrol, the shelves would be looking pretty thin. Imagine, then, Day Two: your fourth, fifth and sixth meal. We’d be in a panic. Day three: still no petrol.
What then? With hunger pangs kicking in, and no notion of how long it might take for the supermarkets to restock, how long before those who hadn’t stocked up began stealing from their neighbours? Or looting what they could get their hands on?
There might be 11 million gardeners in Britain, but your delicious summer peas won’t go far when your kids are hungry and the baked beans have run out.
If only these problems had been taken seriously several years ago, when only the “cranks” and “conspiracy nuts” were talking about Peak Oil and the trouble we’ve created along with our society’s cheap oil foundation.
If only.
Posted in
Economy,
Peak Oil Tags:
Peak Oil
Democrat Obama-supporting Jim Kunstler has an excellent column debunking the “we were lied to” based criticism of the U.S. response to 9/11. He’s right, and illustrates the point that Western subtlety isn’t something that is appreciated elsewhere in the world.
There’s a common belief that the rest of the world doesn’t love us as much as we’d like them to because we’re heavy-handed and brutal. They don’t like that we send our armies to their lands and waterboard their people and stand around checkpoints with automatic weapons. That’s bunk. The rest of the world doesn’t love us because we’re not them. That’s the issue.
I believe that no matter what we do, the rest of the world will never love us and put little pictures of us on their mantles. When we’re weak, we just invite attack. When we attack them, and then display weakness, we invite justifiable (at least in their minds) attack.
The solution? I think we need to make it clear to the rest of the world that we might just be crazy enough to get really medieval if need be. Let’s face it, there was the thought in the 80s that Ronald Reagan was a crazy-enough anti-Communist that he might let some nukes fly if someone looked at him funny. So they didn’t. Did we get the same fear-based respect when the ever-reasonable, obviously fair and humanitarian Jimmy Carter was in charge? Hardly.
If anything, the attacks of 9/11 were attacks on a seemingly weak-willed nation. Never forget that the George W. Bush who looks like an uncaring invader today, in the beginning days of September 2001 was a recently elected, not very successful (on his own) guy who mostly avoided military service. Who could blame Islamic militant whackos for assuming he’d be a weak-willed adversary?
As Dennis Miller said on the Tonight Show (and elsewhere) in 2002:
“I don’t even understand why we’ve taken nuclear weapons off the table. I mean we treat them like our mother’s good china. We never use them. I think you’ve got to pick a day where there’s no wind, in a desolate part of the Earth, just blow off a bomb just to let them know we’re sitting on a nice hold card, okay?â€
He’s right. When there’s a guy in the bar who has a crazy look in his eye and you just know is spoiling for a fight, you don’t flip him off, go outside and tip over his motorcycle.
You try hard not to attract his notice. We need to buy a motorcycle, get a tattoo and when we need to, work up a good “crazy” look.
Posted in
War Tags:
Bush,
Dennis Miller,
Iraq,
Kunstler,
Nuclear Weapons,
Peak Oil,
Terrorism,
War