The vast majority of people in the world still do not know about the most important issues in the history of our species. Apparently they prefer to remain ignorant. Not only do they not know what’s coming, they don’t want to know.

These are interesting times for lightening up. Every bit of news about the industrial economy — shockingly to neoclassical economists — is dire and growing worse. The stimulus money has run out, and Obama’s “recovery summer” is a complete bust. The Greatest Depression is proceeding apace, and even the mainstream media have begun to notice the rapidity with which things are falling apart between never-ending worship of their heroes in the fields of athletics and cinema, occasionally mixed with a story about somebody shooting somebody else on an overshot planet. Our immorality has insulted the living planet nearly to the point of complete environmental collapse and my readers are worried I will insult somebody about to toss yet another Molotov cocktail into the living, breathing web on which we all depend for our existence. I wouldn’t be surprised at chaos in the streets of every industrial nation by the end of this year as the economy implodes, and there is no doubt we will continue to foul the air, dirty the waters, and generally destroy every aspect of our planetary life-support system, so it’s difficult for me to understand the rationale behind toning down the message about economic collapse.

But, according to my email in-box, I’m about as sharp as a marble. So there’s a decent chance I’m merely clueless.

If you’re into that kind of thing, it’s hardly the time for thinking about making other arrangements. If you haven’t made the all-important first step of adjusting your outlook about the future, you’re about to become fodder for detritivores. It’s time for action, not sitting on your gluteus maximi, pontificating. If you’re still thinking about which seat to occupy before the movie starts, here’s a clue: the smoke you smell and the flames you see are not part of tonight’s film. The people pointing out the fire in the theater are not extras.

Others are being assailed to lighten up, too, if my email in-box is to be believed. After a little thought, I have a couple responses. Feel free to use them on your friends, and please let me know what I’m missing. Surely we can come up with many more responses to the claims of negativity.

With respect to global climate change, the facts are depressing. The only way around this reality is denial, so I understand why so many people spend so much time there. But for rationalists, the burden of reality is shouldered as one consequence of reason. In short we’re stuck with horrible facts on the climate-change front. However, I have a solution, as I am happy to point out: Terminating the industrial economy will allow the continued persistence of our species and many others. This tidbit of good news — the only solution, to my knowledge, to the global-change predicament — does not instantly convert listeners to my version of happy-talk optimism. This leads to the second side of the fossil-fuel coin, the one on which I’m deemed particularly negative.

The statement, “the end of cheap oil means the end of the industrial economy” is viewed as negative. My initial response requires no passion, except for passion about facts. Any rational person can be convinced of the following facts: (1) We passed the world oil peak, according to abundant evidence arising from models and data; (2) Spikes in the price of crude oil have preceded the last six recessions, with bigger spikes preceding deeper recessions; (3) The world’s industrial economy requires abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil; (4) There is no politically viable solution to energy decline; and (5) Civilizations fall, doubtless including this one. These facts, which are not exactly rooted in faith-based junk science, do not make me pessimistic. Quite to the contrary, they give me great hope for our future. If these facts make you unhappy, or if they make you think I am stuck in negativity, I think this says more about you than it does about me. That is, if you view the facts as negative — and I don’t — I think that makes you negative, not me.

I agree we are headed for a future with fewer luxuries and fewer people. And this poses perhaps the greatest challenge we have faced as a species: Can we muster the creativity, courage, and compassion to see the living world make a comeback? And more importantly, will we?

I won’t even bother pursuing the issue of morality. Anybody who has given a moment’s thought to the issue recognizes the industrial economy is immoral. We have a moral imperative to terminate the industrial economy, the apex of which is city living. But nobody views himself as immoral, regardless of where or how they live, so the moral imperative is ignored, along with the common good, in pursuit of contemporary conveniences for imperialists in denial.

My second and more obvious response to our peak-oil predicament takes us back to paragraph number seven in this brief essay: To my knowledge, only complete economic collapse saves the living planet upon which we depend for our lives. To my knowledge, only complete economic collapse saves our species from runaway greenhouse. To my knowledge, only complete economic collapse allows us to retain our humanity. What’s not to like about that? And what’s so negative about it?

This is by no means a comprehensive account, and the mail continues to come in. My latest essay was headlined in a website dedicated to renouncing the notion of anthropogenic climate change, where I was called a “warmist prof.” Similar silliness fills the blogosphere, as a simple search reveals. At one website, comments include suggestions to kill me.

I try to be kind and rational as I respond to each piece of email I receive. This sometimes proves too difficult for me, in which case I try to be witty. Often, I fail. Usually people give up, finding me senseless, after one message and my response. But an occasional persistent person never lets go. I have received a couple dozen messages from one guy, the last dozen of which I’ve read with the DELETE key.

Without further ado, here they be. I’ve simply cut and pasted into this space, errors and all. I’ve removed names to protect the guilty.

_______________________

> Before further embarassing yourself you may want to become more familiar
> with the climate issue. For starters, here’s a google document, written by
> your humble correspondent:
>
>
> http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddrj9jjs_0fsv8n9gw
>
> There are also references to a number of websites, and books included.
>
> Most of us have no intention of drinking any of your Kool-Aid !

Thanks, sir, for your concern about my embarrassment. I read as much of your essay as I could tolerate.

I suspect you are responding to my essay on Counter Currents, which first appeared on my blog: guymcpherson.com. Comments are welcome there, where your views would have a wide audience. You might want to read this brief essay to gain an overview of the science I cite there: http://guymcpherson.com/2009/10/apocalypse-or-extinction/

Ultimately, of course, my opinion does not matter. The facts are clear, though: western civilization nears its omnicidal end, and anthropogenic climate change will cause our extinction unless the end of western civilization comes very quickly.

Please join the conversation on my blog.

Best regards,
Guy

_______________________

On Thu, 19 Aug 2010, Bert Klein wrote:

> Its a sham that you still have access to the Internet. The fact that the
> 200year old hypotheses of “greenhouse gas effect” has never been proven by
> creditable scientific experiments means nothing to you or any other AGW
> fanatic.
> Its a waste of time to try to tell you any facts because there is no
> inteligence in you head to do any critical analysis of facts.
> Just one bite of information that you have choosen to ignore and would not
> understand the significanc of is- NOAA has acknowledge that 5 of its
> satallite data sets of temperature reading for the last decade is corrupted-
> many of the readings are from 10-500 degrees high. The faulty numbers have
> been averaged in to acceptable readings thus the temperture trends that they
> report are meaningless.

Thanks for your message, Bert, and for your concern about truth. I welcome your comments on my blog (guymcpherson.com), where your views would generate wide-ranging discussion.

You may want to read thie essay and the science underpinning it: http://guymcpherson.com/2009/10/apocalypse-or-extinction/

I agree with you about your opening statement. It’s a shame I still have access to the Internet. I look forward to the day, in the near future, when none of us have access to the Internet. That’ll be a wonderful day for the living planet, if not for western civilization.

Best regards,
Guy

_______________________

> Sir,
>
> I can only conclude that you think everyone is a fool. Sadly, I have had to
> write you and many like minded thinkers on this issue. WE HAD 7,000PPM OF
> CO2 IN THE ATMOSPHERE billions of years ago, and now….390ppm. The earth’s
> oceans suck up co2. Why do you continue to make the false case that the
> earth cannot and will not do the same thing again, on an even smaller scale.
> Do you realize we are below the average amount of atmospheric co2 based on
> earth’s historical average? And no, we are not adding co2 at an
> unprecedented rate. In fact, it was being added much more rapidly in the
> time of the dinosaurs. I am happy to see you continue to burn coal by using
> a computer. This is my favorite part of the article “Increasingly dire
> forecasts from extremely conservative sources keep stacking up.” Are you
> kidding me? Sir, surely you realize we are now more equipped than ever to
> deal with natural disasters? Here is a fine example. Villagers living on an
> island near Hawaii. They have no warning system and no fast transport.
> Conversely, if a volcano is near a city, we have advanced warning systems
> and the capability of massive transport. Having that said, I encourage you
> to stay on your farm and pretend the world is going to blow up, despite the
> fact that temperature has been higher and we have had co2 amounts massively
> higher than what we experience today.

Dear Name:

Thanks for taking the time to send a message.

I do not believe everyone is a fool, or I would not be trying to awaken people to the converging crises of energy depletion and global climate change (cf. global warming).

I use solar panels to run my laptop. Thanks for bringing that up.

As a global-change scientist, I’m quite familiar with the facts and the usual irrational arguments. Your response does not surprise me, but it does trouble me. Clearly, scientists have failed to inform the public about the dire straits we’re in. We cannot persist long above 350 ppm CO2, but we’re committed to at least 392 ppm for the next thousand years. Toss in methane, and we’re at the equivalent of 460 ppm CO2. Earth will survive with high levels of CO2, but we won’t.

It was such a lovely planet, yet we’re such a short-sighted species. Sadly, evolution does that to every species.

I welcome your comments on my blog, which would give you a much wider forum than just me: guymcpherson.com.

Make it a great day.

–Guy

_______________________

> Monsieur Guy r Mcpherson,
>
> After going through your article, it became clear that you interested
> are too narrowly limited to economics and particularly energy. This does
> not give you right to terminate a civilization.
>
> Humanist

Humanist — I do not have the power to terminate western civilization, or I would. Such an act would free non-industrial cultures and non-human species from centuries of oppression. It might even allow our species to squeeze through the global-change bottleneck, barely. I assume you’d rather we destroy all cultures, then all species, including our own? Please drop by my blog to explain that to us: guymcpherson.com. Best regards, Guy

_______________________

> Dear sir,
>
> Re.: http://www.countercurrents.org/mcpherson180810.htm
>
> Ref.: Quote, “It’s time to terminate western civilization before it
> terminates us.”
>
> Can I assume that, as you are part of western civilization, you will be
> willing to terminate yourself first; as a good example to the rest of us? I
> can assure you that the moment I hear of your demise I will take a razor to
> my own wrists.

If you’ll read my blog (guymcpherson.com), you’ll note that I will gladly give me life to terminate western civilization. You’ll also note I’ve largely abandoned western civilization.

Won’t you join me?

Comments are always welcome at my blog.

All the best,
Guy

_______________________

> Geez, it must suck to be you! Were you abused as a child?

Actually, it’s great to be me. I live in the real world, adjacent to a huge wilderness area where I have built an off-grid property to thrive when the industrial era ends. You can read about the arrangements here: guymcpherson.com. Even better, I had loving parents and relatives, none of whom abused me as a child (or an adult).

And you? What’s your story? Or, are you merely a nameless troll?

_______________________

> Sir,
> I’m not a professor of anything or any kind. I was at one time interested in
> the global warming issue and to be honest I couldn’t get enough of it. I
> read any article or blog I could get my hands or monitor screen on. During
> all of my research I started noticing things that didn’t add up, and by that
> I mean went against the basic science I learned when I was a whelp in high
> school. The more I dug in the more skeptical I became. Seeing AlGore the
> inconvenient movie didn’t help at all, I had to wave the bu@#&*it flag way
> too many times sitting through that. I am firmly in the skeptic’s ranks now
> and my opinion of the organized science community trying to foist this
> ridiculous warming hypothesis on the unclean ignorant public places science
> right in there with Ed Norton and his shovel. My main thought concerning the
> rebadged “climate Change” is why in the hell did ya’ll base your apocalyptic
> vision on runaway global heating, something that in the entire 4 billion
> year history of this planet has NEVER happened, instead of the
> scientifically known proven and I’d imagine even more devastating ice age
> which has happened many times in the planets past. Almost like a cycle the
> ice ages come and go it seems, but never once runaway global warming…

Thanks for your comment, sir. It’s the most civil one I’ve received today.

I’ve conducted research on global change for more than a decade. For a while, I tried to change minds. I’m done with that, and have focused for the last five years on economic collapse. And I’m nearly done with that, simply because I’m tired of the hate mail. If people want to ignore ongoing impacts of burning fossil fuels, fine. I gave plenty of warning.

All the best,
Guy

_______________________

> Sir, You may wish to live a life of seclusion living on eco-produced food
> from your own garden but unfortunately this does not fit in with the rest of
> humanity.
> We have yet to attain peak oil, according to the oil experts. Oil is getting
> more difficult to remove from the crust but there seems to be plenty there.
> It id technically possible to manufacture oil from bio-digesters using
> modified bacteria. There is a plant in your country which is at the moment
> doing such a thing.
> Climate change has existed for 4.6Ba and will continue and there is no data
> that shows changes are any swifter than have existed in the past. Indeed the
> Medieval Warm Period warmed faster than the early 20th century and became
> warmer. No tipping point was reached then nor in the past. Why will any
> slight warming in future produce such a thing?
> This planet has some 8 Bn people who will be fed and provided energy to
> develop, despite thinking like yours, by 21 century technical advances using
> whatever energy source is necessary including fossil fuels.
> I notice that you still have an email address so complete seclusion is out
> then.

Dear Name:

Thanks for your thoughtful comment. We disagree about several items, as you know, so I will elaborate here.

Data clearly demonstrate we passed the world oil peak in May 2005. Even the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense agree. At current demand, we have a 30-year supply, but we will never use the deep, expensive oil with low EROI. All so-called substitutes have similarly low EROI.

You would be wise to investigate the MWP more closely. It is constantly trotted out as an exercise in denial, but the facts suggest otherwise. I have been a global-change scientist for more than a decade, and I have seen no compelling evidence to suggest the scientific consensus is threatened.

Finally, I have no intention of escaping humanity. Rather, I am embracing humanity — mine and my neighbors’ — as I explain here: http://guymcpherson.com/2009/05/humanity-at-a-crossroads/

Please drop by my blog and leave comments. We have quite a vigorous discussion there, and I welcome learning more about your views.

Best regards,
Guy

_______________________

> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation
>
> Religious rants are fun…

I agree, they are

I’m a rationalist and anti-theist, though

_______________________

> I don’t know what you are smoking, but could you get me
> some of it.
> The sky ain’t falling and using Chicken Little for political
> purposes is obscene.
> I saw no heavy emphasis on population reduction, truly
> our #1 problem in good Earth stewardship.
> I may not slit my wrists, but eating my gun sounds pretty
> good.

Thanks for your message, and for taking the time to send it. I agree that the sky is not falling. Indeed, the end of western civilization is very good news for those of us who care about non-industrial cultures, non-human species, and the continued persistence of humans on Earth. I suspect there are about a dozen of us. You’re not one. Many of the 186 essays at guymcpherson.com, the original source of the essay you read, refer to overpopulation. Check ‘em out. Leave comments, please. And make it a great day. –Guy

_______________________

> Dr. McPherson,
>
> You started out your piece mentioning a fossil fuel addiction. I alway know
> when I see that that there will be a call to implement policies that will
> result in misery and death on a grand scale. You ought to be ashamed of
> yourself! I am ashamed of you as an American and as someone who once
> respected American academics. First we are not “addicted” to fossil fuels at
> all. That is a ridiculous anti-intellectual cheap appeal to an emotional and
> illogical response. Fossil fuels are the foundation of modern economic and
> indeed survival activity. Without replacing these very abundant fossil fuels
> with inexpensive alternatives before curbing their use, the result will be
> genocide and misery on an immense scale, and you know it.
>
> You make a claim that we are facing global warming. That is hogwash and most
> people now know that fact. It has been conclusively demonstrated that
> climate is primarily heliocentric and that we are indeed beginning a new ice
> age or at least a mini-ice age following a brief and somewhat subdued period
> of mild warming (which was very mild in comparison to the Holocene Maximum
> and even the medieval warm period) that was completely natural and cyclical,
> and indeed heliocentric in origin. Furthermore, the global warming movement
> has been exposed for the huckster’s scam that it is. Because of the lack of
> a real foundation for your claims (as well as a lack of a real conscience
> and descent character), the global warming advocates have resorted to fraud
> and criminal activity on a grand scale. This has included the fraudulent use
> of the names of non-scientists’, non-climate scientists’ names, and
> dissenting scientists names on lists that are claimed to be lists of
> supporters of the global warming claim. It has included unethical gagging of
> all dissenting voices. It has included too many forms of fraud and coercion
> for me to briefly mention.
>
> In addition to making outdated and discredited claims about global warming
> you make reference, as if it is a proven fact, and it isn’t, to peak oil.
> Peak oil is a scam! In fact, in the years since the claims that the sky is
> falling regarding the peak oil scenario, huge oil fields and reserves have
> been found off of the coast of Brazil, in Canada, Montana, and other
> locations as well as discoveries that the oil reserves in Iraq and other
> current oil fields are twice as big as previously believed. The United
> States has immense coal reserves in addition to other immense fossil fuel
> reserves. Tragically and outrageously, however, the repressive and
> nihilistic “greens” (they are really more akin to “reds”) environmentalist
> militant murderous thugs have prevented the use of most of our immense
> domestic fossil fuel sources. Soviet and later Russian engineers have made a
> very convincing case that oil is constantly renewed through abiotic
> processes, as I am sure that you are aware.
>
> You should really just admit that you have no case but that you hate other
> humans and wish to destroy them and follow in the footsteps of Hitler and
> Stalin who are apparently your role models. At any rate, your nihilistic
> and genocidal plans are coming to an end and the people are becoming aware
> of what you and your ilk really are!
>
> Sincerely,

Dear Name:

Thanks for your message, and for taking the time to pass it along. Unfortunately, I suspect I am correct about global climate change and peak oil. I have studied these issues for the last decade. Abundant evidence, in the form of models and data, support both concepts.

If you’d like to read more, please peruse the 186 essays at guymcpherson.com. While you’re there, please post comments so we can discuss your ideas in a common forum. I like to have all ideas discussed in a public forum, so we can evaluate them rationally.

Make it a great day, and thanks in advance for commenting on my blog.

Best regards,
Guy

_______________________

> Dear Professor Emeritus:
>
> You have convinced me, as well as a great many others, about the current
> dire status of Western Civilization. Your great mind is needed at this
> time. Like Einstein, you will have an everlasting imprint on mankind for
> your contributions.
>
> As the average man feels hopeless in being disarmed with an ineffective
> intellect compared to your own, we all ask what we’d do without your
> assessment of Western Civilization’s current status?
>
> Best regards,

Thanks for your high praise, Cheryl. Nobody appreciates tongue in cheek assessment as I do.

Unlike Einstein, however, the end of western civilization ensures my voice will be scattered by the winds of time. So, there really is nothing to be done. We’ve fucked the planet, and now it’s our turn to bend over. As my blog is titled, Nature Bats Last.

Best regards,
Guy

_______________________

> Mr. McPherson, You would benefit by getting out more or
> maybe getting some kind of professional help. As you should
> know, the earth has been cooling since 2000. Recent events
> have shown that the high global temps reported by NOAA are
> incorrect because of satellite problems. Sorry to disappoint you
> but the sky is not falling, the seas are not rising abnormally, the ice
> isn’t melting at the poles, the polar bears are fine. I hope you can get
> some help. There are a lot of great doctors.
>
> Yours truly

Name — Thanks for your kind concern. As a global-change scientist, I DO know Earth has been warming, despite the babble you’ve been led to believe. We have experienced the warmest decade in history within the last 10 years. The facts are clear. You might want to check them. Best regards, and make it a great day. –Guy

I’ve written all this before, but I have not recently provided a concise summary. This essay provides a brief overview of the dire nature of our predicaments with respect to fossil fuels. The primary consequences of our fossil-fuel addiction stem from two primary phenomena: peak oil and global climate change. The former spells the end of western civilization, which might come in time to prevent the extinction of our species at the hand of the latter.

Global climate change threatens our species with extinction by mid-century is we do not terminate the industrial economy soon. Increasingly dire forecasts from extremely conservative sources keep stacking up. Governments refuse to act because they know growth of the industrial economy depends (almost solely) on consumption of fossil fuels. Global climate change and energy decline are similar in this respect: neither is characterized by a politically viable solution.

There simply is no comprehensive substitute for crude oil. It is the overwhelming fuel of choice for transportation, and there is no way out of the crude trap at this late juncture in the industrial era. We passed the world oil peak in 2005, which led to near-collapse of the world’s industrial economy several times between September 2008 and May 2010. And we’re certainly not out of the economic woods yet.

Crude oil is the master material on which all other depend. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot produce uranium (which peaked in 1980), coal (which peaks within a decade or so), solar panels, wind turbines, wave power, ethanol, biodiesel, or hydroelectric power. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot maintain the electric grid. Without abundant supplies of inexpensive crude oil, we cannot maintain the industrial economy for an extended period of time. Simply put, abundance supplies of inexpensive crude oil is fundamental to growth of the industrial economy and therefore to western civilization. Civilizations grow or die. Western civilization is done growing.

Not only is there no comprehensive substitute for crude oil, but partial substitutes simply do not scale. Solar panels on every roof? It’s too late for that. Electric cars in every garage? Its too late for that. We simply do not have the cheap energy requisite to propping up an empire in precipitous decline. Energy efficiency and conservation will not save us, either, as demonstrated by the updated version of Jevons’ paradox, the Khazzoom-Brookes postulate.

Unchecked, western civilization drives us to one of two outcomes, and perhaps both: (1) Destruction of the living planet on which we depend for our survival, and/or (2) Runaway greenhouse and therefore the near-term extinction of our species. Why would we want to sustain such a system? It is immoral and omnicidal. The industrial economy enslaves us, drives us insane, and kills us in myriad ways. We need a living planet. Everything else is less important than the living planet on which we depend for our very lives. We act as if non-industrial cultures do not matter. We act as if non-human species do not matter. But they do matter, on many levels, including the level of human survival on Earth. And, of course, there’s the matter of ecological overshoot, which is where we’re spending all our time since at least 1980. Every day in overshoot brings us 205,000 people to deal with later. In this case, “deal with” means murder.

Shall we reduce Earth to a lifeless pile of rubble within a generation? Or shall we heat the planet beyond human habitability within two generations? Or shall we keep procreating as if there are no consequences for an already crowded planet? Pick your poison, but recognize it’s poison. We’re dead either way.

Don’t slit those wrists just yet. This essay bears good news.

Western civilization has been in decline at least since 1979, when world per-capita oil supply peaked coincident with the Carter Doctrine regarding oil in the Middle East. In my mind, and perhaps only there, these two events marked the apex of American Empire, which began about the time Thomas Jefferson — arguably the most enlightened of the Founding Fathers — said, with respect to native Americans: “In war, they will kill some of us; we shall destroy all of them.” It wasn’t long after 1979 that the U.S. manufacturing base was shipped overseas and we began serious engagement with Wall Street-based casino culture as the basis for our industrial economy. By most economic measure, we’ve experienced a lost decade, so it’s too late for a fast crash of the industrial economy. We’re in the midst of the same slow train wreck we’ve been experiencing for more than a decade, but the train is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Meanwhile, all we want to discuss, at every level in this country, is the quality of service in the dining car.

When the price of crude oil exhibits a price spike, an economic recession soon follows. Every recession since 1972 has been preceded by a spike in the price of oil, and direr spikes translate to deeper recessions. Economic dominoes began to fall at a rapid and accelerating rate when the price of crude spiked to $147.27/bbl in July 2008. They haven’t stopped falling, notwithstanding economic cheerleaders from government and corporations (as if the two are different at this point in American fascism). The reliance of our economy on derivatives trading cannot last much longer, considering the value of the derivatives — like the U.S. debt — greatly exceeds the value of all the currency in the world combined with all the gold mined in the history of the world.

Although it’s all coming down, as it has been for quite a while, it’s relatively clear imperial decline is accelerating. We’re obviously headed for full-scale collapse of the industrial economy, as indicated by these 40 statistics. Even Fortune and CNN agree economic collapse will be complete soon, though they don’t express any understanding of how we arrived at this point or the hopelessness of extracting ourselves from the morass.

We know what economic collapse looks like, because we’re in the midst of it. What does completion of the collapse look? I strongly suspect the economic endgame is capitulation of the stock markets. Shortly after we hit Dow 4,000, within a few days or maybe a couple weeks, the industrial economy seizes up as the lubricant is overcome with sand in the crankcase. Why would anybody work when the company for which they work is, literally, worthless? Even if they show up for a few days to punch the time-clock, the bank will not issue a check, and the banks won’t be open to cash it. It won’t be long before publicly traded utility companies don’t have enough employees to keep the lights on. It won’t be long before gas (nee service) stations shutter the doors. It won’t be long before the grocery stores are empty. It won’t be long before the water stops flowing through the municipal taps.

There are those who question my credibility, particularly when I make predictions. We’re in the midst of a war to save our humanity and the living planet, and some readers are worried about my credibility, as determined by the power of the main stream. My responses are two-fold: (1) I’m hardly sticking my neck out, unlike when I made my “new Dark Age” prediction in 2007 (at which point the price of oil had yet to exceed $80/bbl, the industrial economy appeared headed for perennial nirvana, and everybody who read or heard me thought I was insane); of the fifty or so energy-literate scholars I read, about half indicate the new Dark Age starts within a year, and a large majority of the other half give us less than two years; (2) Get over it. This war has two sides, finally. This revolution needs to be powerful and fun, and we cannot afford to lose. We cannot even afford to worry about seeking credibility from those who would have us are having us murder every remaining aspect of the living planet on which we depend for our survival.

Credibility? Respectability? It’s time to stop playing by the rules of the destroyers. We need witnesses and warriors, and we need them now. It’s time to terminate western civilization before it terminates us.

Lesson over. The exam comes within a couple years. And pop quizzes come up every day in this unfair system.

______________

This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents, Revelations, Islam Times, New Age Op-Ed, Island Breath, creative informationalist, Before It’s News, Mammon or Messiah research, Hot Kashmir, remedios’s posterous, and Running ‘Cause I Can’t Fly.

Update: So far, the comments at Counter Currents are absurd to the point of being humorous. But they cannot compare to the ludicrous nonsense landing in my hate-filled email in-box. Fear of the future must be driving this insanity. Similar stupidity fills the right-wing blogosphere. Google “Guy R. McPherson” for a taste.

Update 2: This essay is mentioned in the Melbourne, Australia Herald Sun, which adds one of my interviews from 2008. As usual, the comments are particularly insightful with respect to denial of both sides of the fossil-fuel coin.

It is easy for me to write about philosophy, conservation biology, education, global climate change, ecological collapse, economic collapse, and how to deal with all of them on a personal basis. These phenomena are pieces of ongoing reality. Facing up to them is difficult at times (as demonstrated clearly by my angst here) but, as Thomas Hardy pointed out, “If way to the better there be, it exacts a full look at the worst.” Indeed, better days lie ahead when we stop destroying every aspect of the living planet and start living as if we are a part of nature (cf. apart from nature).

Unlike the ease of my usual essays, this essay has been quite challenging to write. It responds to my email in-box, and the half-measures people can take to mitigate their misery during the completion of the ongoing economic collapse (while ignoring the moral imperative of living close to our neighbors and close to the land that supports us). I don’t believe in half-measures. Yet, as I visited San Diego and Tucson and their wide array of cultural exhibits and restaurants — where a large amount of amazingly good food can be had in exchange for the equivalent of an hour or two at minimum wage — I was forced to face my greatest fear about the future: the industrial era will persist long enough to allow industrial humans to destroy the very elements of the living planet that allow our continued existence as a species. According to this view, fossil fuels will become less and less available, but the reduction will be so gradual we will barely notice our increasing poverty (cf. this essay).

So, for the good people of Tucson, and for Angela-from-my-inbox and others like her in San Diego, I ask you to join me as I stare into the abyss. I’ll tackle the issues we face in my usual order: water, food, body temperature, and community.

Water is fundamental to human survival, so the greatest challenge we face is retaining potable water supplies. In the absence of municipal water coming through the taps, you will need to find another source of water and you will need to make it potable. Harvesting rainwater is barrels is easy enough, but you’ll have to reduce your consumption considerably (of water and nearly everything else). Fortunately, the issue of potability is resolved with relative ease. Water can be pasteurized with the power of the sun and, with a little more energy, can be boiled. Search the web using the phrase “pasteurize water” for a few quick tricks. You’ll want to invest in simple, inexpensive infrastructure while you still can.

For those of us who eat, food is another important consideration. Even if you believe we’re headed for third-world status, instead of the inability to buy food with fiat currency at the grocery store, you have to recognize what this means: limited selection and massive shortages. You’ll want to stock up on essentials while food is still inexpensive. And I strongly suggest figuring out how to grow, trap, shoot, prepare, and preserve a significant portion of your own food. You’ll want a rifle, and perhaps some traps, and the ability to use them. If all else fails, perhaps you can start making human jerky.

WordPress really needs a sarcasm tag.

Maintaining body temperature will be far more challenging in Fairbanks than Belize, which is why I recommend the latter as a place to live. But if you’re profoundly committed to your current residence, please invest in various elements of durability while they’re financially inexpensive: a metal roof and abundant insulation will go a long way toward keeping the rain at bay and also keeping your body at 98.6 F. Buy some blankets for you and the unprepared people with whom you’ll be bartering. Ditto for large garbage bags, which passably serve as raingear. The opportunities in this category are essentially limitless, and I’ve described a few of them here. Feel free to add your own in the comments section below.

A decent human community is probably less important in a world characterized by “muddling through” than in the future I foresee. After all, cheap fossil fuels have allowed us to develop comprehensive online communities instead of real ones. Still, I value communities for reason beyond survival, as I try to make clear here: “At some point, we simply lost track of the importance of communities, human and otherwise. Along the way to becoming a nation of multitasking, Twittering, Facebook ‘friends’ we abandoned the ability to connect meaningfully, viscerally, individually. If we are to thrive during the post-carbon era, we’ll need to create groups of straight-talking, look-’em-in-the-eye, mean-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean, self-reliant, individuals who are not afraid to ask for help from the neighbors and who, when asked, readily offer assistance.”

If you’re committed to your human community, you’ll want to stock up on items certain to be less commonly available in the near future than today. In addition to water (and the ability to purify it), food (and the seeds to grow more), and the previously mentioned blankets, medicine comes to mind. Two recent essays focus on simple antibiotics, which likely will not seem so simple in the coming years: they are linked here and here.

It’s not just antibiotics, of course. The possibilities are endless. If you wear glasses, buy several pair. To prevent your prescription from changing, invest in gas-permeable (i.e., “hard”) contact lenses and adapt to wearing them. Visit the dentist and get your teeth fixed. Store toothpaste and floss. Take a relevant class or two. And so on, ad nauseum, until you feel comfortable entering a world in which availability of goods and services is limited. And, if that’s too challenging, get rid of your taboos about marriage and hook up with a medical doctor, a dentist, and a pharmacist. While you’re at it, you might want to add a marksman, a permaculturist, and a really good shaman.

Above all, you’ll need the comfort of knowing politicians are acting in the best interests of the people they represent. You’ll need to convince yourself that the ongoing attempts by Obama and Bernanke (and Bush and Greenspan before them) are working. You’ll need to convince yourself that plugging every leak in the dam actually takes pressure off the dam, that the dam will not break because of temporary patches. Ultimately, you’ll have to convince yourself that American empire will last forever, and is not an empire.

Good luck with that.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.
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As I move toward conventional essays in this space and away from link-filled commentary, I have been posting many links about global climate change, energy decline, and economic collapse on Facebook, and I often accompany these links with pithy commentary. If you’d like to follow along and comment, click here.

But this brief post is not about my conference presentation. It’s about my visit to Chicago.

As long as I’m flying in and out of Chicago, I would like to interact with one or more audiences beyond the conference. I will extend my trip by a day to interact with your group if you’ll pay for my lodging on the night of Tuesday, 28 September and also buy me supper that night. It doesn’t matter how large the group or how nice the digs.

I’ll sleep in your guest bedroom and dine at your table if you’ll find people interested in my message. If you’re interested, please post a comment below or send me an email message at grm@ag.arizona.edu. If more than one person responds — which seems unlikely — we’ll work out something.

I am flexible about the details. If you prefer a seminar presentation, find me a room and an audience. If you prefer an informal meal with a dozen of your friends, make the reservation. If you prefer to discuss the details about a durable set of living arrangements on your property, set aside time to talk and provide transportation to the site.

This is a limited-time offer, not available in any store. I will make airline reservations for this trip within the next two weeks. If you’re interested in hosting me in or near the windy city, please respond promptly.

I’d like to visit with you on your property, to discuss your ability to thrive in light of the ongoing collapses in the industrial economy and the environment. I will focus on a durable set of living arrangements. Fees vary, depending primarily on three factors:

1. Location. No offense to my Phoenician readers, but I’ve been to Phoenix, and I’m not excited about the prospect of returning, at least for no pay. I’ve not been to Ecuador so I’ll visit there if you’ll simply pay my expenses.

2. Civility. After a career in academia, I’ve spent far too much time working with jerks. I prefer people who appreciate what I have to offer, and who are kind. Here’s a model, but you need not be a saint to qualify. And you might need to put up with me not being a saint.

3. Seriousness. During the last year, about a hundred people have visited the mud hut to see what we’ve done as they prepare to develop a durable set of living arrangements. Considerably more people have sent email messages seeking advice. I have responded to each visitor and to each message with free, detailed advice because these people clearly are serious. On the other hand, I have little tolerance for people who are in denial about the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy or ongoing global climate change. If you’re serious about changing your life, I’m serious about helping you.

In any case, I’ll charge considerably less than Matt Savinar, Chris Martenson, Matt Simmons, or the handful of other people offering consulting services. Far be it for me to disparage these energy-literate folks, and perhaps you get what you pay for. Maybe my commitment to a life of service will provide little service to you. But unlike most of the consultants I know and know about, along with my partners at the property I’ve actually developed a durable set of living arrangements, paying particular attention to water, food, body temperature, and community. I know what it takes — down to the details — as well as how to prioritize and avoid costly mistakes.

The notion of economic collapse has gone mainstream. Renowned trends forecaster Gerald Celente claims this is “much bigger” than economic collapse as he predicts“food riots, tax protests, farmer rebellions, student revolts, squatter dig-ins, homeless uprisings, tent cities, ghost malls, general strikes, bossnappings, kidnappings, industrial saboteurs, gang warfare, mob rule, terror” in 2012. In light of the accelerating decline in American Empire as well as the world’s industrial economy, please let me know if you’d like practical advice as you navigate the stormy seas ahead.

Feel free to spread the word, and contact me if you’re interested. You can reach me via email at grm@ag.arizona.edu, leave me a message at 520.621.5389 (for the short time I still have an office on campus), and Skype me at guy_mcpherson (though the connection is cumbersome). Alternatively, additional contact information for me is displayed here. I’m always willing to talk on the telephone if you’ll pay for the call, but we’ll have to arrange a date and time to talk because I’m rarely in the vicinity of the telephone at the mud hut.

If you’ve visited the mud hut or communicated with me via other means, feel free to leave a testimonial in the form of a comment. Not that I’m fishing for compliments, you understand. That would be unseemly.

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This post, and the underlying idea, were inspired by my friend Cindy Winkelman, an idea-generating phenomenon.

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Next-day update: Please have patience as I deal with an overflowing email in-box. I’m headed out of town for a couple days, but I will respond to each message within a week. Thanks.

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Based on recent comments in this space, and also in my email in-box, I am compelled to provide an updated overview of my proposed agenda in light of the ongoing collapse of the world’s industrial economy. There’s nothing new here, but plenty of people don’t have the time to read what I’ve written in the past so, in spasms of foolish ignorance, they keep asking me to stop driving my car (trust me, I’d love to … and I go for weeks at a time without doing so) or cease speaking and writing about economic collapse because it is not happening (and, in a related issue, there’s an invisible man in the sky who loves us and wants us to be happy).

The other primary topic of conversation, real and virtual, begins with “Okay, but what can I do?” As if I’ve ignored that particular question. “No, but I mean me. Here in Phoenix. With no money and no spare time.”

Sigh. If you’re unwilling to change, you’ll simply have to let change happen to you. And Bill Clinton was correct about this issue: People like change in general, but not in particular. Nobody who is unwilling to change is liable to appreciate the change headed their way.

If you’re willing to change, perhaps you’ll seek ideas and inspiration from sources other than me. Perhaps you’ll test your courage, creativity, and compassion. You’re going to need those attributes soon enough anyway, so you might as well drag them out now.

I think the ongoing economic collapse is driven by declining energy supply at the world level: We passed the world peak of conventional crude oil in 2005. Considering the primacy of oil to the industrial economy and therefore to our way of living, it’s no surprise the industrial economy is unraveling. Fortunately, it’s taking disaster capitalism with it, albeit far too slowly to suit me.

My hope, of course, is completion of the economic collapse in time to save the remaining fragments of the world’s biological diversity and perhaps even habitat for our own species. Call me a dreamer. Recognizing that it’s generally a waste of time to try to convince people we’re headed for economic disaster and therefore environmental nirvana, that, regardless, is my mission.

I have no interest in trying to save civilization, which is irredeemable and omnicidal. But I am interested in extending the lives of the relatively few people in the industrialized world willing to make substantive changes in their lives. Sadly, that leaves out nearly everybody with whom I converse or correspond.

Conservation is irrelevant at this point and, with respect to materials that are too cheap to meter, conservation probably has always been irrelevant. That’s the crux of Jevons’ paradox. Although Jevons’ paradox assumes free markets, and all markets are manipulated, it is not at all clear to me that relaxing the free-market assumption would have a significant influence on the global outcome of energy markets. Furthermore, if you’re really a believer in free markets and lack of governmental interference in those markets, then oil is the premier example of a global free market.

Many people are concerned we’ll respond to Jevons’ paradox with hedonism. As if we’re not already there.

If you think individual conservation efforts scale up to society, consider an incomplete but still stunning overview of the statistics on energy use. For example, the energy in a million barrels of crude oil — the amount gushing in the Gulf of Mexico every ten days or so — will supply your house with power for the next 81,000 years or so but will keep cars on U.S. highways for about four hours. So, at some level we’re all BP (those of you cheering for the industrial economy have company from J.P. Morgan Chase on the BP issue — the spill and cleanup apparently will enhance GDP, at least in the short run). More pragmatically, though, we each bear about as much responsibility for BP’s incompetence and recklessness as we bear for causing planetary ice to melt, the financial success of Wal-Mart, and the microfauna in belly of the nearest polar bear. As much as the media and politicians would like you to feel responsible and guilty, you should feel neither.

I regularly promote the idea of hastening economic collapse. If you’re not on board with that idea, but you still see the huge neon signs pointing us in that direction, perhaps you can be convinced to pursue a modicum of self reliance.

Photo credit: Getty images

The notion of self reliance, long discarded in a nation where we enslave others to do our drudgery, is about to make a profound comeback. When the new Dark Age gets under way, people who are willing to do useful things with their hands and minds will be welcome additions in any community. The contemporary idea of American-style independence is, in Orwellian fashion, the exact opposite of independence. To secure our food, water, and body temperature, we have become wholly dependent on a large-scale system (the industrial economy). This is the diametric opposite of self reliance, and it’s long past time to focus on self reliance within the context of the interdependence of people in communities. We need each other, but we do not need the industrial economy.

How do you provide service to your community? What preparations should you make to thrive during the post-carbon era, and to help your community thrive, too?

I have written at length about the preparations I’ve made, with a focus on water, food, body temperature, human community, and living a life of service (in this case, four out of five gets you the equivalent of a cake with no flour). Securing these elements has been done by humans for about two million years in the absence of the industrial economy. Only recently have we become dependent on a system that is making us crazy and killing us. I suggest we get out of this system. If that cannot be done in your specific location — and I’m thinking about places such as Tucson, Arizona, Las Vegas, Nevada, and Los Angeles, California — I strongly suggest changing locations. The other obvious alternative is to re-arrange the deck chairs as the cruise ship of empire takes on even more water. There are many approaches to be pursued on this front, including recycling, joining a CSA, riding the bus, and volunteering in the local literacy movement. These are noble causes, but they won’t save you or your community. And if you don’t save yourself, you won’t be able to help anybody else.

People often ask me how they can make the kinds of changes I’ve made, without actually making those changes themselves. That is, how can they turn their lives upside-down without actually changing a thing? They blame lack of finances (which, as I’ve pointed out with my own example, can be overcome by joining others in a community-based effort). They blame an unwillingness to leave the apex of empire, the large city they occupy (i.e., they do not agree with my view that industrial economy is inherently immoral). They blame the marauding hordes certain to find them if they get out of the city (i.e., they use any and every excuse to avoid taking action). Comfortable with the immorality of their lives, unwilling to forgo empire in exchange for the difficulty of self reliance, brainwashed by culture to keep pursuing this particular version of culture, they are hopelessly trapped in a hapless situation. Although I recognize the power of culture and the lack of free will for human animals, I’m beginning to lose sympathy.

Empires don’t break up, they break down. And American Empire is obviously breaking down, with abundant evidence to be found in the striking absence of any appeal to the common good from governments at any level. There has been no semblance of morality emanating from the fascists running the corporations, and therefore the country, since at least 1980. I don’t expect a vast outpouring of empathy and compassion any time soon. Faux compassion, of course. But the real deal? I hardly think so.

Digital art courtesy of Hock on the Behance Network

Although some insist a slow descent is likely, I have yet to understand how that can possibly work. Feel free to fill me in. Do we dim the lights one percent annually so that, in one hundred years, the electricity goes out without our noticing? Do we reduce our extraction of finite materials a few percent each year, even as the human population grows by more than 200,000 people daily, until we simply, peacefully, stop using everything needed to maintain the industrial economy? Do we slowly, painlessly, with no suffering at all, reduce the human population to a viable number? What is that number? A billion? Fewer?

All these outcomes seem quite unlikely to me. I think we’re so committed to unlimited, exponential growth on a finite planet that we’ll do whatever it takes to delude ourselves into believing that impossibility. If that means we have to destroy everybody and everything so we can have ice cream and cookies every night, that’s exactly what we’ll do. We’re an industrialized world of overfed clowns and we think others are laughing with us instead of at us. In short, I need somebody to show me another way. I’m eager to learn how we can prevent unimaginable suffering and catastrophic die-off on a finite planet. Sans miracles, of course.

Looking back, and relying on a plethora of economic metrics, it’s evident we’ve experienced a lost decade. So we can trace the economic decay to 2000 or so. It’s easy enough to can go back further, tracing the imperial decline to 1979 with the Carter doctrine. Or 1956 with the Interstate Highway System. Or the late 1940s with the federal government’s promotion of suburbia. Or 1789 with the unrelenting thirst for empire at all costs exhibited by the founding fathers. With respect to any of these temporal benchmarks, the decay clearly has accelerated in recent years and months.

From the day I predicted the new Dark Age would begin by the end of 2012, the criticism has been continuous. Most critics, citing no evidence and no understanding of peak oil and its economic consequences, claim we’ll surely adjust and adapt and generally demonstrate our big-brained brilliance with a long descent into peace, prosperity, and infinite good times. Adding balance in a mainstream media kind of way, the occasional critic optimistically — without recognizing the optimism — claims the Dark Age will begin well before 2012. We should be so lucky.

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This essay is permalinked at The Gable Grey, Counter Currents, Rebel News, and Island Breath, and it gets a shout out at Unconventional Ideas and it is discussed at the LATOC Forum.

Mission accomplished. I’m there, as we all are. As we always have been, during two million years of the human experience.

May you attract the attention of the government.

I’m there, as I have been for years. To remove all doubt, about five years ago I placed a call to then-Governor Napolitano’s lead advisers on two topics, Energy and Agriculture & Natural Resources. I begged and pleaded with them, but they kept coming back with their singular response: “There is nothing we can do about global peak oil.”

It took a couple years for me to figure out what they meant because, of course, there are many things the government can and should do to mitigate for declining energy supplies. Government officials could start by letting citizens in on the truth about energy.

So, what did members of the governor’s staff really mean? There are no politically viable solutions. In this case, telling the truth is political suicide. The impending death of millions of people — and perhaps billions — pales in comparison to political careerism.

May you find what you’re looking for.

I’m talking to a naturalist I barely know. His one-year-old son is resting on his shoulders and treating a cattail as his personal magic wand. The seeds of the cattail are falling into the hair and beard of the 40-year-old naturalist as the boy succumbs to his own personal energy crisis and, fighting all the way down, succumbs to slumber.

I’m writing a book about the dire nature of our predicaments and I mention the high likelihood of a global economic collapse within a decade or so. The naturalist doesn’t bat an eye before responding: “I hope I’m around to see it. I don’t want my son to have all the fun.”

Fast forward six years, and I’m sharing a property with the naturalist and his young son. Collapse of the industrial economy is well underway, and has entered the acceleration phase of its death spiral. Obviously, we will live to see the final stages of the ongoing collapse of the industrial economy. As a result, we might see the living planet take the first tentative steps to a comeback.

Or perhaps not. Maybe in the coming few years we will die, collateral damage of the demise of the industrial economy. Just like entire ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico and the millions of species organisms within them, consumed by the fire as Rome goes up in flames.

Maybe lifting the curse of industry will reveal a worse fate, at least at the level of individuals. But it’s difficult to imagine a situation in which termination of the industrial age will not improve the lots of every non-industrial culture and every non-human species on this planet.

May we find what we’re looking for, regardless of the personal cost.

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This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin, Counter Currents, and remedios’s posterous.

And, because the taxpayers are so easily swindled by TPTB, there is little doubt they will fail to notice or, more likely, will believe the inflation-induced salvation of Greece is a brilliant move by the Economists In Charge. Judging from today’s explosive jump in stock markets, the swindle worked brilliantly. But volatility in the stock markets is back, so today’s huge gain will be wiped out by week’s end, perhaps in a ten-minute spasm subsequently blamed on a computer glitch that cannot be rationally explained. Glitch? If you believe that, then I’ve sell you some ocean-front property in Arizona. Well, it’s not ocean-front property yet. But we’re certainly headed in that direction.

But let’s go back to that coffin. Following the lead of the last remaining hyper-power, Europe is generating a mountain of debt so high it cannot be imagined, and therefore cannot be dealt with.

The black hole of debt has gone global. We’ll never pay off the debt because it cannot be paid off. But the average American believes every word that ends with illion is the same as every other word that ends with illion, so he goes back to the television while sucking down cheap beer and cheese doodles. Failing to recognize the effects of debt for him and his equally ignorant children, he keeps cheering on the military while booing the politicians, gleefully following American Idol while bitching about the quality of the public schools, bemoaning those poor fishermen in the Gulf of Mexico while filling up his SUV with gasoline and blaming Obama for not fixing the deep-sea oil gusher, blaming his elected representatives for high taxes (sic) while demanding eternal solvency of Social Security and Medicare, and calling Barack Obama a socialist even as the president nominates a fascist to the Supreme Court.

Citizens have become consumers. (Ben Franklin: “It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.”) We have abandoned the pursuit of inquiry, thus trading skepticism for suckerism. (One every minute is a massive underestimate from people who cannot distinguish millions from trillions.) We traded in our union cards for the promise of free money without reading the fine print. Having thoroughly fucked the planet and ourselves, we’re all playing extend and pretend, wishing for economic growth for our own generation (while willingly shit-canning future generations, as we’ve always done).

Eyjafjallajökull blowing smoke, ice melting at an accelerating rate from Antarctica, oil covering the Louisiana coast, biodiversity taking the fast track to oblivion at our oil-soaked hand, and on and on until the real news becomes so sickening we readily, eagerly, happily turn to reality TV (sic) or other mind-altering substances to get us through the week. If I weren’t a rationalist, I’d swear the third rock from the sun was trying to even the score with its most clever species.

Fortunately, even Ben Bernanke knows the odds are dimming on an orderly collapse. Don’t look away from the television now, but the post-industrial Stone Age is coming into full view.

Will it arrive in time to save the last remnants of the living planet? Will it arrive in time to save our species? Considering the planet’s atmosphere currently holds 387 ppm carbon dioxide, with 350 ppm the likely upper limit humanity can tolerate for an extended period, I have my doubts. Toss in methane, which is far more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and we’re currently experiencing the equivalent of 460 ppm carbon dioxide.

If that seems problematic to you, perhaps you’re numerate enough to distinguish between millions and trillions. Consider yourself a rare industrial human.

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This essay is permalinked at Counter Currents and Island Breath.

As adults know, hope is for little kids and tooth fairies.

Today’s panic-infused stock-market crash was an ode to days economists thought long gone. But those economists continue to be stunned at every substantive event, as if passing the world oil peak couldn’t be expected to generate any economic consequences.

“High prices will cause the market to generate substitutes,” they cry. I guess we can expect a comprehensive substitute for crude oil to show up any day now. Or perhaps these long-predicted swings in the price of oil will continue to destroy capital and therefore lead to one canceled alt-energy project after another.

I suspect we’re back on the stock-market rollercoaster with a general trend down. Probably way down, by year’s end. But the crash that completes the collapse of American Empire could come any day, and today was a near miss after a six-month series of near misses came to a halt last March. The Dow lost about a thousand ticks today in a 15-minute span before the plunge protection team (PPT) took quick action to save the imperial day.

Oh, wait, there’s no PPT. It wouldn’t be completely legal for the federal government to buy stocks in the beloved free market, would it? And certainly not when the mantra is hope change transparency. I guess those traders just came to their senses and regained confidence in the markets. Lucky thing, too, from the imperial perspective: Another hour without intervention from the PPT and we’d be looking out over the smoldering ashes of the industrial economy this time next week.

If all goes well, the U.S. will be forced into hyperinflation or default even before the next oil-price shock brings down the industrial economy. If we’re really in the midst of the empire’s last dance, soon enough we won’t be forced to choke down lines such as these:

“There’s more war in America’s future — a great deal more, judging by the Obama Administration’s reports, pronouncements and actions in recent months”

“U.S. exempted BP rig from environmental study”

“The world may be on the brink of biological disaster after news that a third of US bee colonies did not survive the winter”

“Scientists and environmentalists from around the world assessed the state of global biodiversity and found that it has been in steady decline”

“An American Chernobyl”

And so it goes, headline after headline, until the process of killing the planet to transfer money from the poor to the rich finally succeeds in killing us, too. Until, if the corporatocracy running the industrial show has its way, the last human on the planet accumulates all the material wealth and celebrates gleefully with his last breath.

This story could end another way, if only we’d let it. If only we’d trade in hope wishful thinking for action, the culture of make believe for the reality of the real world, insanity for reason, the horrors of extirpation and extinction for the living planet, a dead-end road in a hellish future for the heavenly wonders of life itself.