The first video clip describes my personal journey in the usual, self-indulgent manner, and the program allowed no time for subsequent questions. The second clip humorously describes the efforts we’ve made at the mud hut, and the formal presentation is followed by my answers to a few softly spoken questions.

Also on 13 November 2011, during a break from the conference, I was interviewed by KMO along with Kurt Cobb and Henry Warwick. The resulting audio file is posted at KMO’s C-REALM radio.

Finally, my monthly essay for Transition Voice was published a few days ago: Is terminating the industrial economy a moral act? The latter essay is permalinked at Counter Currents.

Also, as I’ve indicated many times, there are a couple general approaches one can pursue along the path of climate change and simultaneous collapses of the industrial economy and the living planet. You can hit the road, or you can mitigate in place. Either way, you’ll need to secure clean water and healthy food, maintain body temperature, and create and maintain a decent human community.

I recommend a life of travel for most people, although I’ve taken a different route for personal reasons. Either way, an adventure-filled life awaits. On the road, you’ll need quick wits, good interpersonal skills, and astonishing amounts of creativity, compassion, and courage. Ditto for mitigating in place. In this post, I’ll address the primary concerns associated with mitigating in place, with a particular focus on me and the mud hut (my favorite subject and my favorite location, respectively).

If you’re staying put, I suggest you pay attention to the 3 Rs of the future. No, not the educational ones from years gone by. And it’s far too late for the three Rs targeting reduced consumption in a nation build on consumption, two of which we have ignored because there is no financial profit in reducing and reusing. Recycling — the only one of these three relevant actions fascist Amerika promotes — is like an apology after a punch in the face (credit Mike Sliwa). We punch the planet in the face with every cultural act, and then we apologize by sorting plastic and aluminum into separate bins.

The three Rs of interest in this post are relocalization, resilience, and redundancy. We’re headed for a severely constrained future with respect to transport of materials and humans. The days of the 12,000-mile supply chain are nearly behind us. Forget about cheap plastic crap from China, expensive watches from Switzerland, and decent hand tools from the Sears Roebuck catalog: We’re going to have to make do with what we’ve got in the very local area. Before the supply chain breaks, we should work toward building a resilient set of living arrangements steeped in redundancy. After the supply chain breaks, it’ll be a little late to start digging a well and learning how to grow food.

Here at the mud hut, we pay serious attention to multiple sources of water (two solar pumps, hand pump, rainwater harvesting from two rooftops, and the nearby river), food (wildcrafting, orchard, gardens, goats for milk and cheese, eggs from ducks and chickens, and in the future, hunting relatively large-bodied animals), body temperature (well-insulated, passive-solar house, multiple awnings, proper clothing, and abundant water and firewood), and human community (abundance in this category exceeds my patience to explain again, but search the archives for a few hints). I’ve no doubt we’re missing some things that will ease our lives in our post-carbon future. Some of these items will remain unknown, even to us, until it’s too late. I’m already missing a few things, even before the impending big crash leads to “lights out.” (As Dmitry Orlov uncharacteristically suggests, the day draws near. As “Tyler Durden” characteristically suggests, the day is near enough to be seen by a blind man.) And as I’ve mentioned a few hundred times, skyrocketing greenhouse gas emissions, along with wholesale destruction of the living planet, will seal our fate as a species unless we crash this luxury ship, and soon.

I know you’ve read this one before, but I’d love to have a solar ice-maker to cool our drinks and our bodies. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect we’ll muddle through, until we don’t. I’d love to have more time to convince my human community to climb aboard the collapse train. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect we’ll muddle through, until we don’t. I’d love to make a few more trips to discuss the dire nature of our predicaments with people who are aware and interested. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, I won’t. And I suspect I’ll muddle through, although I’ll miss trips tentatively scheduled to Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, New England, and various places nearer the mud hut.

Closer to home, and closer to my heart, I’d love to have time for my parents — and the thousands of other winter immigrants descending on this area — to make the return trip to their northern homes. But if the industrial economy reaches its overdue end within a few weeks, or even within a few months, they won’t. And I have no idea how we’ll muddle through.

All things being equal, I’d rather have the solar ice-maker in a community fully on-board with collapse. All things being equal, I’d rather make a multitude of excursions to exotic places. All things being equal, I’d rather my parents experience collapse in their own home. But all things are not equal and, more than all these things, I’d rather have a planet marked by much more abundance and far fewer extinctions than we’re currently witnessing.

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I’m scheduled to speak at several events during the coming week or so; (1) On Wednesday, 9 November at 7:00 p.m., I’ll address the Atlanta Beyond Oil Monthly Meetup, 657 Rosalia Street SE, Atlanta, Georgia; on (2) Saturday, 12 November and Sunday, 13 November I’ll deliver two, 18-minute presentations at the International Conference on Sustainability, Transition & Culture Change in Bellaire, Michigan, and (3) on Tuesday, 15 November at 6:30 p.m. at 5885 M 115 Frankfort Hwy, I’ll speak about developing a durable set of living arrangements in Benzonia, Michigan (sponsored by Grow Benzie). I hope to meet you at one (or more) of these events.
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This post is permalinked at the Refreshment Center and Island Breath.

I’ve embedded one of the thirteen presentations I delivered over a span of eight days. It’s my final presentation, excluding Q&A (which might come later), which partially explains my on-and-off incoherence (the remainder is inexplicable, as usual).

The presentation includes a half-hearted pitch of my final book. The book is available, a couple months earlier than anticipated, and can be found at this link as well as the usual online outlets. If all goes according to plan, I’ll receive a few copies later today. The book has already been reviewed by Sandy Krolick, the kulturCritic and Cameron Conaway, the poet. Krolick’s review was picked up by Transition Voice, and Conaway’s review was run by Examiner.

I’m trying to produce video from my presentation at a Harvest Gathering Festival with a barn as venue. I may post it at a later date, if all goes according to plan. It includes no slides, and the material differs considerably from the one above.

Reaction was mixed, as usual. Some people, such as this college student, found my messages unbelievable. Others quibbled with the timing of the sources I presented (I carefully avoided pushing my own predictions). Standing ovations were rare — even though I begged for them — but in the end several people understood the importance of collapse if we are to extend our run as a species.

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Huge thanks to Shelley Youngman, who facilitated, organized, chauffeured, and hosted. A kindred spirit, Shelley was kind enough to make many of the arrangements and also to spend large blocks of time with me. Voluntarily, no less.

Thanks, too, to my many new friends and hosts (in the order I met them): Mike Draney and Vicki Medland (University of Wisconsin-Green Bay), Steve DeGoosh and Brooke Isham (Northern Michigan University), Sarah Redmond and Dan Redmond (Alger Community Transition), Shelley Youngman and Frank Youngman (Transition Cadillac), and Kimberly Sager and Aaron Wissner (Local Future).

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This post is permalinked at Plan B Economics and Survival Acres.

“We’re different.”
“We’re special.”
“We’re too intelligent.”
“We’ll find a way out. We always do.”

We’re humans, and therefore animals. Like all life, we’re special. Like all organisms, we’re susceptible to overshoot. Like all organisms, we will experience population decline after overshoot.

Let’s take stock of our current predicaments, beginning with one of several ongoing processes likely to cause our extinction. Then I’ll point out the good not quite so bad news.

We’re headed for extinction via global climate change

It’s hotter than it used to be, but not as hot as it’s going to be. The political response to this now-obvious information is to suspend the scientist bearing the bad news. Which, of course, is no surprise at all: As Australian scientist Gideon Polya points out, the United States must cease production of greenhouse gases within 3.1 years if we are to avoid catastrophic runaway greenhouse. I think Polya is optimistic, and I don’t think Obama’s on-board with the attendant collapse of the U.S. industrial economy.

Apparently — too little, too late — a couple people have noticed a few facts about Obama. This “awakening” might explain why his political support is headed south at a rapid clip.

But back to climate change, one of three likely extinction events. Well, three I know about: I’m certain there are others, and any number can play. With four months remaining in the year, the U.S. has already tied its yearly record for the most billion-dollar weather disasters. Russia is headed directly for loss of 30% of its permafrost by 2050. Tundra fires could accelerate planetary warming. This year, the Northeast Passage was open as of 27 July. This is a massively dire situation for the Arctic. In fact, we have passed a de facto tipping point with respect to Arctic ice. This latter outcome is stunning, but only to those who follow the horrifically conservative and increasingly irrelevant Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Nature is responding with hybrid bears, suggesting the near-term loss of all polar bears. Indeed, all Earth’s systems are rapidly declining. Many organisms can’t keep up as they try to stay ahead of an overheating planet.

As the living planet decays, we keep piling on. Examples abound. Here’s one tiny example among thousands, from that pesky BP well at Deepwater Horizon. It’s out of the news cycle, but it’s not done destroying life in the Gulf of Mexico. But perhaps this tidbit belongs beneath the heading of …

We’re headed for extinction via environmental collapse

Nature is bankrupt, just like Wall Street and the USA. Thanks for playing, but you lose. The banksters on Wall Street “win.” But only in the short term. In the long run, we’re all dead (as first stated by John Maynard Keynes).

Among the consequences of taking down more than 200 species each day: at some point, the species we take into the abyss is Homo sapiens (the wise ape). The vanishing point draws nearer every day. Our response, in the industrialized world: Bring on the toys. Burn all fossil fuels. Harvest the rain forests and strip-mine the soil. Pollute the water, eat the seed bank.

And, most importantly, figure out how we can make a few bucks as the world burns.

We have our hand in a monkey trap, and we can’t let go.

We’re headed for extinction via nuclear meltdown

Safely shuttering a nuclear power plant requires a decade or two of careful planning. Far sooner, we’ll complete the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy. This is a source of my nuclear nightmares.

When the world’s 442 nuclear power plants melt down catastrophically, we’ve entered an extinction event. Think clusterfukushima, times 400. Ionizing radiation could, and probably will, destroy every terrestrial organism and, therefore, every marine and freshwater organism. That, by the way, includes the most unique, special, intelligent animal on Earth.

Ready for some good news?

Meanwhile, back on Wall Street

The Securities and Exchange Commission is busily covering up Wall Street crimes, just as they did during the last presidential administration. And, as it turns out, they’ve been performing this trick for two decades. Finally, though, the S&P is taking the U.S. to the woodshed.

The S&P knows what the media and politicians know: U.S. national debt isn’t really $14 trillion and change, as we’ve been led to believe. In fact, it exceeds $200 trillion. And, back when it was a mere $10.5 trillion, it exceeded the value of all circulating currencies as well as all the gold ever mined. It cannot be paid off, ever. The response will be default. With luck, it’ll happen quickly and completely, thus sending us directly to the new dark age (with the post-industrial Stone Age soon to follow).

The ongoing crash of the stock markets differs from prior events because, for one thing, the Fed is about out of ammunition. At this juncture, there are no easy solutions. In fact, there are no solutions at all. We have just about used up all our “rabbits in the hat” as far as fiscal and monetary policy are concerned. Economics pundit Graham Summers agrees: The Fed is about to find itself completely powerless as 2008 redux appears. The great collapse, for which 2008 was merely a warm-up act, is under way.

Think of 2008 as an economic teddy bear, and 2011 as a grizzly. And I think I mentioned this one already: The hunters are out of bullets.

The all-too-expected political response from the final remaining superpower: ratchet up covert wars. Maybe, while we’re at it, launch another World War.

The bottom line

You’ve been warned repeatedly in this space, and the Guardian finally joins the party: The industrial economic system is about to blow. This burst of hope, our remaining chance at salvation, will undoubtedly be greeted with the usual assortment of protests, ridicule, and hate mail I’ve come to expect from planetary consumers who want to keep consuming the planet.

The underlying predicament — reduction in available energy — is described graphically by Gail Tverberg in this essay. She then tacks on fine analysis in this subsequent essay. Jared Diamond adds a dose of complexity, as described by Erik Curren at Transition Voice.

But these warning shots are only the most recent in a rich history dating back to Marcus Aurelius (and probably further). For materials only slightly older than me that focus on our energy predicament, take a peek at M. King Hubbert’s 1956 paper and the text of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s 1957 speech.

And then, let go.

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This essay is permalinked at Seismologik, Max Keiser, Conchscooter’s Common Sense, Counter Currents, Speaking Truth to Power, Seemorerocks, Jackpot Investor, eWallstreeter, Stocks that Pay, Intelwars, Tov Hazel, Equity Help Desk, InvestmentWatch, Gold & Silver Mashup, Singstock, a few dozen other sites, and Zero Hedge (comments at the latter site echo my opening paragraphs).

Meanwhile, on the all-important oil front, Saudi Arabia cuts output, claiming the market is well supplied. I guess the price of oil pushing industrial economies into the abyss indicates adequate supply. Or maybe the kingdom is lying, and their fields are in precipitous decline.

Declining oil extraction at the world level and ongoing money printing by King Ben are, unsurprisingly, raising the price of oil. In response, Barack Obama is demonstrating the type of leadership I’ve come to expect from national politicians: He’s blaming speculators for the high price of oil while expanding military operations in oil-rich countries (e.g., Libya is the new Iraq quagmire). This failure of leadership should no longer surprise anybody, but it should disappoint everybody who claims to care about human life.

The war to nowhere continues in Afghanistan while the occupation of Iraq, intended to allow American access to oil (as I’ve been writing for years), continues to strengthen the hand of Iran. The latter country — the world’s third-largest oil exporter — is threatening to tighten oil supplies, thus driving the price up to $150/barrel. Bombing Libya was intended to alleviate this problem, but Libyan oil is in limbo. Perhaps the IMF forecast of a 60% increase in the price of crude within a year is right on the mark. If the forecast is even close, the industrial economy is done within months thereafter. The IMF is joined in the forecasting game by the ever-clueless folks at CNBC, who foresee $6 gas at the pumps this summer and also by John Mauldin, who predicts $8 gas this summer (we’ll never reach the requisite $180 oil associated with the former forecast and keep the pumps … well, pumping).

Graham Summers points out the U.S. dollar is falling off a cliff, and he worries “the Fed will push into a full-scale inflationary collapse within three months.” While I doubt hyperinflation trumps ongoing deflation that quickly unless China dumps the U.S. dollar as threatened promised, Summers’ argument might explain why the Federal Reserve Bank has upped the ante even as the industrial economy hovers on the brink because the Fed has lost control of the monetary system. In addition, hyperinflation is the only governmental solution to overcome the problem of handouts exceeding taxes for the first time in 75 years.

As we continue to trade in tomorrow for today — that is, as western civilization continues to destroy the living planet — every energy “expert” in the world pines for civilization, thus carelessly wishing for continuation of the ongoing planetary omnicide. This makes as much sense as longing for intelligent design and suspension of the Laws of Thermodynamics, and is equally effective. The times are changing, and we can hope they change rapidly enough to save the final remnants of the living planet that support human life.

The planetary death wish on the part of energy gurus is one of many examples of partial understanding of the interconnected nature of our predicaments. Other examples abound, even though I’ll ignore the teeming masses of neoclassical economists who have no clue where are, how we arrived here, or where we’re headed. Jeff Rubin, called by Nicole Foss an economist who doesn’t understand economics, seems to believe the industrial economy can endure oil priced at $225 with a little attention to relocalization. And he describes how traders can makes tons ‘o money in the casino. Foss, a peak oiler who doesn’t understand peak oil, claimed the price of oil would never exceed $100/barrel after 2008 and predicted the 2-year bull run in the stock markets was done at the 6-month mark. She ties every thread to the ever-falling ball of string that is the housing market and she and her partner at The Automatic Earth continue to insist we’re headed for oil priced in the low double digits), albeit with the industrial economy Disaster As Usual (DAU) continuing for decades. I’ve no doubt deflation is under way, or that it will take another big bite after June if Benny Bucks cease to flood the markets. But it’s a good bet the shelves turn bare, the fuel runs out, and the water stops coming out the taps when banks and other companies are perceived as financially worthless (instead of horrible, life-draining monsters financial bargains).

Other pundits exhibit similar bias toward civilization extinction of every species on Earth, including Homo sapiens. Chris Martenson stresses the importance of accumulating and protecting financial wealth, especially his, as he charges $500 per hour to chat with people. The normally sedate Martenson, who indicated it was time to head for the hills a couple months ago, is calling for a big breakdown within a year. Is he just shaking us down for cash silver? And, as we head for the hills, should we pack our silver into our bug-out bags? Won’t owning precious metals make us targets, if only because industrial humans love shiny objects?

Similarly, “Tyler Durden” and his fellow traders at Zero Hedge are all about making money as the world burns. James Howard Kunstler longs for walkable cities served by railroads and sailing ships. Michael Ruppert is trying to save his own ass, apparently unconcerned about who or what comes in the wake of civilization. The list goes on. And on. The blogosphere is bursting at the seams with people who believe the industrial economy is more important than environmental protection, and that future generations of humans don’t count as much as the current crop.

Based on reading these fine folks — much less the mainstream media — you’d never know the mother of all paradigm shifts was under way. It seems nobody can give up their love for money. Obviously, industrial humans are poorly suited for this world, much less the one headed our way.

It’s small wonder the likes of Foss and the gang have as many fans as John Michael Greer. One quick way to increase your fan base is predicting DAU to infinity and beyond while claiming it’s a good thing. Civilized people love planetary destruction, as long as the lights stay on and the municipal water keeps coming out the taps. And especially if there’s money to be made along the way.

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This essay is permalinked, sans hyperlinks, at Counter Currents.

And we might not break the $120 mark, considering the impending hard landing for the Chinese industrial economy (improperly termed a black swan here) and the associated reduction in demand for crude oil. We might see Dow zero before the per-barrel price of oil hits $140. Whether oil soars or China swoons, the race to the bottom is on, with 2011 looking a lot like an ugly version of 2008 for the industrial economy.

Even the vaunted killing machine known as the U.S. military, with its essentially unlimited budget for bodies and technology, cannot maintain the flow of crude oil into the country. Military and political constraints are slapping the U.S. around already, and we’ve only begun to fall off the oil-supply cliff. A bunch of those military personnel and contractors are about to find themselves stuck in unfriendly territory without so much as a bicycle or fraudulent passport to aid their escape.

The oil-price trigger on which most folks in the echo-chamber are focusing is turmoil in the Middle East, and the demise of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia certainly could accelerate a price spike. But, as I’ve pointed out before, we’re due for a spike this year even without unrest in the Middle East. That’s what declining global extraction rates (e.g., Iraq) and increasing global demand does to the price, even if our vaunted military manages to conquer Libya for its oil. Even Forbes knows what most media outlets are afraid to reveal: Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest exporter of oil, has no spare capacity.

Or maybe this time is different, and a spike in the price of oil won’t bring the industrial economy to its knees. The ever-clueless cabal of economists at The Economist suggest an oil shock this year will transform the world economy. I agree about the transformation, though not in the direction they think.

In response to the good news about skyrocketing oil prices, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency finds itself in an uncomfortable position. Seems one of their spooks killed a couple of the wrong people in Pakistan, and subsequently was found with embarrassing documents in his possession. The documents indicate we’re trying to “ignite an all-out war in order to re-establish the West’s hegemony over a Global economy that is (sic) warned is just months away from collapse.” So the best measure we can come up with, in terms of preventing collapse of the world’s industrial economy, is to provoke global nuclear war? That’ll almost certainly slow the warming of the planet, but I’m still unconvinced it’s a good idea. Talk about curing the disease by killing the patient.

Although western pundits have completely misjudged the situation in Saudi Arabia, a big war hovers even without meltdown of the kingdom. So predicts noted trends forecaster Gerald Celente , financier Marc Faber, and former Goldman Sachs technical analyst Charles Nenner. World War III would be quite a sequel to the final Super Bowl.

That big war might take American minds off the ongoing global insurrection, which otherwise is coming to the United States, in part because of our capitalism-for-the-poor, socialism-for-the-rich political system (also see this analysis at Zero Hedge). Alas, that’s one of the many consequences of expensive oil and food, not to mention horrific inequities between the wealthy and the rest of us: riots.

On the other hand, we might not need the war to destroy ourselves. Ongoing nuclear issues aren’t restricted to Japan. Rather, the entire Pacific Rim is vulnerable. This is the stuff of nightmares, and it haunts my waking hours, too: a nuclear event, whether or not it results from war, and the subsequent release of radiation into the atmosphere.

As the industrialized world comes apart at the seams, I’m about done waiting for people to get it. Increasingly, it’s becoming a matter of waiting to see it get them.

Next-day update: Upon request, I submitted a brief essay to Transition Voice yesterday morning regarding the disaster in Japan. It’s on their website today.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.

My monthly essay for Transition Voice, barely modified from an earlier essay in this space, was posted here today.

Already, the crushing of the consumer sector is under say even as the road to madness is paved with King Ben’s $100 bills. To his credit, Bernanke finally admitted that nearly every bank in the country almost failed shortly after the price of oil peaked in mid-2008. He failed to mention, however, that such an outcome surely would have terminated western civilization within a month. Imagine Bambi representing the industrial economy.

Meanwhile, Ben and the boys at the Federal Reserve Bank keep launching new ships in the never-ending fleet of Quantitative Easing. QE II was intercepted by Wall Street on its way to Main Street, so QE III is on the way, undoubtedly destined for the same fate. Like a high-speed, head-on collision, QE III will have quite an impact, but only on those immediately involved. The rest of us will be rubber-necking and wondering what happened as we drive by.

Coincident with the death of the U.S. dollar, the industrial economy is perched on the brink of catastrophic collapse. Or, as I’ve written before, the Great Recession never left us and collapse of the industrial economy is already under way. Most people have simply not realized it yet because they haven’t been told by the media or the completely impotent federal government. Many signs point to 2012 as the year the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy reaches its overdue end, although I’m not yet giving up on 2011. In short, it’s game over for the industrial economy, and soon.

If you prefers charts to texts, try this set for an abbreviated version of the story. In other words, the Keynesian experiment has nearly run its course, so it’s time to get serious about feeding yourself and your community in the near future.

If you think revolution is restricted to other countries, take a look at the gap between the haves and the have-nots around the world. Inequality is far worse in the U.S. than Egypt, Tunisia, or Yemen (in chart form, the story is here): The American picture is truly ugly. Ongoing events in Middle Eastern countries, driven by economic factors, are the canaries in the coal mine of global economic collapse, as intimated by Dmitry Orlov and further explained by noted trends forecaster Gerald Celente. And if you think we wouldn’t use force on our own, then you haven’t checked with the troopers in Wisconsin.

Even as Middle Eastern puppets for the U.S. are falling like dominoes, despite continued U.S. support, it becomes increasingly clear Obama will be the president who asks the last mercenary to turn out the lights on American Empire. Collapse is proceeding apace, and even Congressional Representative Ron Paul admits the federal government is in the process of complete failure.

Crude oil underlies the entire industrial mess and CNBC admits we need those dictators puppets to keep the oil flowing to the U.S. as the major domestic source of oil in the U.S. continues to falter and past-peak, free-falling Saudi Arabia clings by a thin thread (as recognized by Foreign Policy). When the kingdom falls, it could well take the U.S. dollar with it, and quickly. And contrary to statements from our politicians, “we’re not worried about the rivers of blood — we’re worried about the rivers of oil” coming out of the Middle East. As we’ve been since the 1970s.

If you think we can pay our way out of this predicament, it’s time to pony up. If you pay taxes, you and your family owe more than $1 million en route to saving our monetary system. Small wonder, then, that Tim Geithner foresees imminent default on U.S. debt. Before we get there, Timmy is blackmailing Congress, claiming that failure to raise the debt limit leads to default. But Timmy knows default is right around the corner, either way.

Jeff Rubin explains why oil-price shocks induce recession, and also why there is a lag between the shock and the economic pain. Rubin and an ever-larger choir are joined by Jim Rogers and financier and author Stephen Leeb in the expanding club forecasting oil priced at $150 per barrel in the near term (and Global Research has joined the party, too). That’s what happens when the giant oil fields run dry.

Lest you run out and buy oil futures, bear in mind the other potential outcome to this globalized world: China’s economic bubble could burst in short order. When it does, only one bubble remains: the human population bubble on Earth.

After burying our collective heads in the sand for two years, peak oil has crept back into the margins of the national conversation. But it’s too little, too late. The end of the world as we know it already struck when, in 2008, the price of oil skyrocketed. Keynesian economics forestalled some economic pain in the short term, at huge expense to the living planet, but the music’s about to stop playing. Better grab a chair. And don’t say you didn’t see this coming.

Three of the largest companies in the world — Exxon, Shell, and Aramco — admit we’ve passed the world oil peak. The cat’s out of the bag, though we’re working hard to convince ourselves there are no felines in a world awash with Felis catus while investors are trying to determine how to put some more fiat currency into their safe-deposit boxes as the ship goes down.

To use one example from the big oil companies, former Shell Oil president Jon Hofmeister knows the price of oil is headed much higher in 2011 or 2012. Hofmeister has company, too, in the form of energy guru T. Boone Pickens, who anticipates oil priced at $140/barrel, and soon. Financier and author Stephen Leeb is calling for a bullet train to $150 oil. In a stunning display of journalism based in reality, even Newsweek admits we’re headed for $150 oil, though speculators are held responsible (as is often the case when people are looking to cast blame).

Even the Wall Street Journal, which bills itself as the most important publication in the world (mipw), claims OPEC should be alarmed at the high price of oil. Although mipw will never admit as much, I’d bet OPEC is well beyond the point of alarm and into the arena of sheer, eyes-as-big-as-dinner-plates, crapping-their-pants terror, if only because there is nothing OPEC can do about high oil prices: The price of oil already has risen too high, too quickly to prevent dire consequences for the industrial economy, but OPEC will not respond, because it cannot respond.

Mother Jones has finally climbed aboard the peak-oil ship, although — as with most mainstream publications — it confuses the notion of “no more cheap oil” with “no more oil.” Still, Mother Jones is ahead of Forbes, which is sticking to the absurd claim that there are no limits to growth. It’s as if Forbes is vying for political office in the U.S. Even Forbes’ second cousin, Foreign Policy, knows the global industrial economy is dead and gone.

The occasional right-wing, windbag, talk-show idiot understands slightly more than the editors at Forbes. Sean Hannity knows the price of gas is going up, so he proposes invading (or re-invading) Iraq and Kuwait to “take all their oil.” If printing money is the last resort of an empire, then occupation must be the first.

Price-forecasting pros are predicting oil priced at $150/bbl by Memorial Day. Or perhaps that price will hold off until October. Either way, $150 oil puts the final nail in the U.S. coffin. In fact, $120 oil probably does the trick, as I wrote nearly 18 months ago. As with the last trip to $140 oil, demand is being driven by China, rather than by the OECD countries still gripped by an economic recession.

There is an alternative trigger, albeit with the same outcome: China’s bubble could pop, thus bringing the age of industry to an end.

If demand for oil continues to climb, then high oil prices will contribute to high food prices, thus triggering further food riots around the world. Some pundits claim food riots are coming to America, whereas others claim the high price of fuel will break out the riot gear.

I’m guessing we can’t be bothered to tear ourselves away from the television screen long enough to notice increasing prices, much less act. After all, we keep ignoring a federal government that throws trillions of dollars at the giant banks while simultaneously denying support to states and main street. We keep ignoring a Federal Reserve bank that has been laughing at us since 2005, and probably much earlier, while the Fed is busy throwing Americans under the bus.

I am not suggesting the ongoing economic collapse will be complete the day the price of oil rises to $120/barrel or higher. Rather, I suspect we’ll witness a series of convulsions similar to those that transpired in the wake of oil rising to $147.27/barrel in July 2008. In the aftermath of that event, the U.S. industrial economy nearly reached its end several times between mid-September 2008 and mid-March 2009. If we assume a similar series of events in the wake of $140 oil between late May and late October, then western civilization could commit suicide between late July 2011 (two months after late May 2011, analogous to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the associated near-collapse of the U.S. economy two months after oil hit its record high) and late June 2012 (eight months after late October 2011, analogous to near-capitulation of U.S. stock markets in March 2009 eight months after the price of oil peaked). In the middle of these dates lies the 14-month-old forecast of Société Générale, and March 2011 is right on line with predictions from the 60 or so people I cited in my recent presentation predicting complete economic collapse before the middle of 2012. Hofmeister’s most conservative forecast of a spike in the price of oil in 2012 buys a little more time for the industrial economy. And if “no limits to growth” Forbes is correct, western civilization will hang on until we commit suicide by climate chaos. The latter option is the one preferred by the world’s governments and most people I know.

But not me. I’m hoping peak oil and the consequent high price of crude oil will spell the long-overdue death of western civilization and the associated liberation, for the living planet, from the oppression of industry. Call me quirky — the government’s term is terrorist — but I’m a fan of life.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath, Before It’s News, and Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly.

I was shooting video of this presentation, but my camera failed 15 minutes in. So we’re stuck with multiple audio files and the slides in the usual awkward format. And whereas the audio files are adequate during the presentation, the only microphone in the room was near me, so the question part of the Q & A is poor.

You get the original slides this time, along with the audio file. Plagiarize to your heart’s content. Share widely. Spread the news. But please keep your complaints about the quality of these materials to yourself, unless you have suggestions for improvement.

I was speaking in the capital of the state built, economically at least, by oil. As I was speaking, I could see the Capitol, which convened the following day to deal with the state’s $27 billion deficit. Gee, I’d have never seen that coming.

My presentation was greeted with the usual mix of profound denial and fatalistic acceptance. The very few anarchists in attendance could hardly compete with the majority, who could see absolutely nothing amiss with the industrial economy, western civilization, or American Empire.

Powerpoint

Introduction from Gayle Borst, Design~Build~Live

Presentation part 1

Presentation part 2

Presentation part 3

Presentation part 4

Presentation part 5

Presentation part 6

Presentation part 7

Q & A part 1

Q & A part 2

Q & A part 3

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Special thanks to Ken McKenzie-Grant from Shades of Green Radio for the considerable effort behind the audio files and to Gayle Borst for hosting (and all the associated work).