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.

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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.

Feel free to agree, disagree, or add you own to my list of best lines. What posts, and what lines, were influential for you? Which ones made you laugh out loud, cry in agony, or want to smack me up side the head? Don’t be shy; my skin is thick. Invite your friends, too. Any number can play.

Philosophy and Conservation Biology: Evolution drives us to breed, drives to procreate, and drives us to accumulate resources. Evolution always pushes us toward the brink, and culture piles on, hurling us into the abyss.

The end of civilization and the extinction of humanity: Cheap oil is fundamental to the 12,000-mile supply chain underlying the “warehouse on wheels” approach to the just-in-time delivery of cheap plastic crap.

Saving the world: a transcript for your review: We’re fish in a river, unaware that there’s an ocean, much less a landbase. If you intend to think your way out of this cultural mess, you’ll think of Nietzsche’s Overman. You’ll think of Orwell’s modest heroes. You’ll think of all the quirky, off-beat, out of touch, counter-culture contrarians you’ve ever met. You’ll think.

Whack! I’m Homo industrialis, after all. I care about me, here, now. Hell with tomorrow, and all the tomorrows to come.

Humanity at a crossroads: We’ve reached a crossroads unlike any other in human history. One path leads to despair for Homo industrialis. The other leads to extinction, for Homo sapiens and the millions of species we are taking with us into the abyss. I’ll take door number one.

Scale: Within the span of a couple generations, we abandoned a durable, finely textured, life-affirming set of living arrangements characterized by self-sufficient family farms intermixed with small towns that provided commerce, services, and culture. Worse yet, we traded that model for a coarse-scaled arrangement wholly dependent on ready access to cheap fossil fuels. Then we ratcheted up the madness to rely on businesses that use, almost exclusively, a warehouse-on-wheels approach to just-in-time delivery of unnecessary devices designed for rapid obsolescence and disposal.

Linking the past with the present: resources, land use, and the collapse of civilizations: We have ripped minerals from the Earth, often bringing down mountains in the process; we have harvested nearly all the old-growth timber on the continent, replacing thousand-year-old trees with neatly ordered plantations of small trees; we have hunted species to the point of extinction; we have driven livestock across every almost acre of the continent, baring hillsides and facilitating massive erosion; we have plowed large landscapes, transforming fertile soil into sterile, lifeless dirt; we have burned ecosystems and, perhaps more importantly, we have extinguished naturally occurring fires; we have paved thousands of acres to facilitate our movement and, in the process, have disrupted the movements of thousands of species; we have spewed pollution and dumped garbage, thereby dirtying our air, fouling our water, and contributing greatly to the warming of the planet. We have, to the maximum possible extent allowed by our intellect and never-ending desire, consumed the planet.

Apocalypse or extinction? Now I mourn because the solution is right in front of us, yet we run from it. We fail to recognize our salvation for what it is, believing it to be dystopia instead of utopia. Are we waiting for the last human on the planet to start the crusade?

Is terminating the industrial economy a moral act? We should be investing in our neighbors, as has always been true. And those neighbors aren’t just humans. They’re animals and plants, soil and water. We need to protect and honor them as we do our own children. We need to harbor them from the ravages of war, and also from an economy built on war. We need to live outside the industrial economy and within the real world of honest work, honest play, simple pleasures, and paying the consequences of our daily actions. We need to abandon a political system that takes without giving, long after it abandoned us. At the most fundamental level, we need to re-structure society so that children understand and value the origins of food, and life.

Surveying the field and charting a course: In short, civilization is only a few days removed from chaos or, if you’re an optimist like me, from anarchy. This has always been the case, for every failed civilization as well as the one left standing. With every passing day, we move further into ecological overshoot and also closer to the end of western civilization and its apex, the industrial economy. For most individual industrial humans, the end will not be welcome. But for the living planet on which we depend, and therefore our very species, the end of industry will bring a welcome relief from decades of oppression. It might even give us back our humanity while granting our species a few more decades of planetary existence.

Economic and ecological consequences of expensive oil: There is a better way. We know what it is. It’s time to give up our childish dreams and act like responsible adults. Is that too much to ask?

The risks of fiddling: Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up their easy lives in the city they’ll bank on the ability of technology to bail us out of our dire economic mess. They fail to recognize that inexpensive oil is the Technomessiah. She died a few years ago, but she’s walking around, zombie-like, to save on funeral expenses. Burying a messiah isn’t cheap, you know.

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I have several public appearances on my schedule for September. Keep track here, and let me know if you’ll be in the neighborhood so we can meet.

And this essay isn’t about bitterness, anyway. It’s about the decisions we make in light of an ambiguous future. One of the costs of making moral choices is breaking the strong emotional ties to a prior life. My own future, if I have one, is necessarily rooted in the past. So I’ll start there, recognizing the inherent self-absorption of my approach. Which is nothing new for my regular readers.

For the better part of a decade, I was the model professor, if only from the standpoint of university administrators. I taught more courses than I was asked, completed more published research than nearly all my peers, and had an active record of service to various mainstream professional entities.

Then, realizing I had an obligation to the citizens paying me, I woke up and starting doing work of some import. As with most of the students in my classrooms, the citizens didn’t appreciate me, at least not upon initial inspection. Learning is difficult, especially when unlearning is required along the way.

I maintained abundant activity of high quality in the three expected arenas of instruction, scholarship, and service, and I added one more delicacy to my overflowing plate: social criticism. I began to write for the general public, most frequently in the form of guest commentaries in various newspapers. My first opinion piece was an accident: When the university president refused to answer the letters I sent directly to him, I sent one of the letters to the local morning daily paper, thinking they might pursue it as a news story. They published it as a guest commentary. That very day, the president of the university responded to my earlier letters. And not kindly, either.

I was hooked. For the next decade, my opinion pieces focused on various aspects of faith-based junk science, including creationism, illiteracy, denial of global climate change, and denial of limits to growth. Since most of my colleagues were (and are) swimming in the main stream, my approach allowed me to simultaneously offended my colleagues as well as the public. In addition to writing for the taxpayers, I extended my service commitment to facilities of incarceration at the request of a new and soon-to-be dear friend.

In response to my newly discovered commitment to relevancy, and although I’d been the lowest-paid faculty member at my rank in the entire college for a decade, the administration soon ramped up the pressure. It wasn’t long before I was viewed as a pariah on campus, and the dean of my college went so far as to libel me. Soon enough, I was banned from teaching in my home department and my scholarship and service were routinely denigrated.

But my students were learning to think, an aspiration reputedly revered but actually despised at all the large, research-oriented institutions with which I am familiar. Real education makes people dangerous. They might go so far as to question the obedience-at-home, oppression-abroad mentality requisite to propping up an empire. My Socratic approach was successful according to the only metric that mattered to me: real learning. The kind that sticks in your craw after you’ve fed at the trough of knowledge. The kind that gives a person the ability, courage, confidence, and desire to question the answers. The kind that changes lives, one life at a time.

Imagine the bittersweet nature of my departure. Recognizing the costs of imperialism, no longer could I tolerate living at the apex of empire, a large city. Recognizing the moral imperative of living outside the main stream, I left the easy, civilized life for a turn at self-reliance in a small community. Recognizing I was doing good work, and doing it well, was insufficient grounds to keep doing it.

I’m not sure I’d do it again, considering the contrary choice of my best friend. I certainly understand why, given a choice, many people would rather die than live outside the industrial economy. I understand, too, why most people who spend time at the mud hut depart with a renewed commitment to civilized living. After all, culture has convinced most people they have a personal investment in maintaining the industrial economy, rather than bringing it down. And it’s clear to most of my visitors that this new life of mine is tough on the mind and even tougher on the body.

Judging from the overwhelmingly negative response to my departure from the hallowed halls, I chose the perfect age to change life pursuits. All people older than my 49 years (now 50, if you’re keeping score) claim they don’t have the energy, at their advanced age, to do what I’ve done. All people younger that I claim they don’t have the money to do what I’ve done (as if they could not join others, as I have done, by necessity and choice).

Although apparently I made the right choice at the right time, getting out of the industrial economy shortly before it reaches its overdue terminus — and there is no unburning this bridge, even if I wanted to — I have lost a majority of influence I might have had (as well as a majority of the ego-stoking limelight). Suddenly those three letters behind my name have lost their power. Because I am no longer active in the academy, I am not asked to deliver seminars at other institutions. I no longer teach classes through the honors college, which was willing to put up with my wacky ideas after my home department wasn’t. I’ve moved too far away to serve populations in facilities of incarceration. And, from a strictly personal perspective, I miss the inmates and honors students with whom I was fortunate to work. I think about them and their wisdom every single day as I move endless tons of dirt, plant trees in the orchard, and make innumerable other preparations for thriving in the post-carbon era.

At the most specific level, few people face the choice I had. The proverbial brass ring of academia — the tenured faculty position — is a rare find. Once ensconced in the easy life of the ivory tower, particularly at the level of full professor — or any other position for that matter, inside or outside academia — few people would consider the implications of their lives for other humans and the entire living planet. At a more general level, I am hard-pressed to come up with any other person who would leave a high-pay, low-work job for any reason, much less morality. It occurs to me that forfeiting the easy life of tenured professor for the challenge of living outside the mainstream is the wackiest idea I’ve had yet.

Clearing the final shelf of books, I turned to the last pages of my most comprehensive piece of social criticism, Letters to a Young Academic. The words seem a fitting finale to the chapter I’ve closed:

I launch this paper boat with a final bit of advice about the life of the mind: Never take it for granted, for it could be snatched away tomorrow. The life of an academician is challenging, to be sure. It demands stamina of the mind and occasionally of the body. It requires personal sacrifice for the common good, a profession on full public display, and a predisposition to swim upstream against a strong cultural current. It is not for the faint of heart or the feeble of mind.

But the rewards are supreme. You are allowed to live a life of leisure, in the historical sense: You choose the work you do. Through the lives of your students, you experience life and death and the wonderful emotional roller coaster of youth. As such, you can choose to remain forever young, if only vicariously. You have opportunities to serve as a mentor. And, if you are worthy and fortunate, somebody might endow you with that noblest of distinctions by calling you “teacher.”

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This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin
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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. In the future, I’ll try to limit myself to only a couple posts each day instead of the dozen or so I’ve been cranking out. If you’d like to follow along and comment, click here.

Immorality aside, there is a risk. The risk comes in two flavors. One flavor is the opportunity cost of abandoning the empire too soon. The other flavor is the bitterness that comes when you realize you waited too long to abandon the empire, and you are suffering and then dying as a result. And surrounded by a bunch of ugly boxes we call suburbia, no less.

If you abandon the empire too early — before the lights go out, before the shelves are bare in the grocery stores, before the water stops coming out the municipal taps — you’ll forgo some of those imperial fruits. On the other hand, you’ll be ahead of the curve with respect to self reliance, you might ingratiate yourself into your community, and you’ll learn how to live on little. We’re all headed that way, with the ongoing economic collapse likely to be reach your house within two years and perhaps much earlier.

The second risk is the larger one, and also the more tempting one. It is based on your proclivity for dining on the fruits of empire a bit too long. I hate to get biblical, considering my beliefs, but if you hang on to the easy life in the city too long, the wages of sin is (sic) death. To take a more secular approach drawn from popular culture, try this line from No Country for Old Men: “This country’s hard on people, you can’t stop what’s coming, it ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity.”

So far, this country’s been very easy on people (especially Caucasians), one of the consequences of ready access to inexpensive oil. But that’s changing, and it’s about to change much faster. You can either get in front of the changes or you can let them roll over you. Think steamroller, and you’re a duck in a leg-hold trap.

photo courtesy of iStockphoto.com

Would you trade your human community for an online community? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up their 16 daily hours on Facebook they’ll gladly sacrifice human interaction for the joy of electrons. They will be hammering away at the keyboard long after their “friends” stop answering, long after the batteries run dry in the laptop, long after the grid has failed. Waiting, waiting, waiting until there’s nothing left to wait for.

Would you trade virtual reality for reality? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up their television shows they’ll willingly sacrifice human interaction for the feel-good dumbassery of television characters. They will be wondering what happened to their “friends” on television long after the television blinks out for the final time. Then they’ll wait for a studly hero to save them. He’ll be otherwise occupied.

Would you give up living because you fear the future? Some people with whom I speak are so unwilling to give up the notion of marauding hordes they’ll turn away from personal preparations for a decent future because they fear their preparations will be insufficient. Such a decision thus becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: The collective unwillingness to prepare . We make our own futures, albeit constrained by reality. But some people with whom I speak are unwilling to make changes in light of a changing world, thereby ensuring change will happen to them instead of with them.

Would you trade your life for health medical care? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up their employment “benefits” they will work until the industrial age ends. And then work a while longer, hoping insurance will cover their trip to the clinic for a flu shop. All the clinics will be closed.

Would you trade your life for a night on the town? For me, it would have to me a helluva night. Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up eclectic and inexpensive (sic) restaurants and nightclubs they’ll keep their date with Destiny’s Child, thus sealing their own destiny.

Would you trade your life for a few bucks? How about for a lot of bucks? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up their puts and contracts in the markets — after all, there’s serious bling to be made off their expansive knowledge of peak oil and the financial markets — they will be trying to make money off their next trade long after the lights go out, thus precluding electronic trading in the belly of Wall Street’s beast.

Would you trade your life for the industrial economy? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up inexpensive (sic) groceries they are waiting until the industrial economy finishes its collapse. Then they’ll move. Or, more likely, they won’t.

Would you risk your life on the Technomessiah? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up their easy lives in the city they’ll bank on the ability of technology to bail us out of our dire economic mess. They fail to recognize that inexpensive oil is the Technomessiah. She died a few years ago, but she’s walking around, zombie-like, to save on funeral expenses. Burying a messiah isn’t cheap, you know.

Would you risk your life on the government? Any government? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up a high standard of living at low (sic) cost they’ll count on the ability of the government to keep the current game going toys and jobs coming, courtesy of American Empire and its militaristic reach.

image courtesy of fas.org

Would you trade your sense of humanity — your ability to become a human animal in the real world — for meaningless chit-chat at the water cooler? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up interpersonal interactions in the workplace they’ll gladly forgo the wonder of the human experience in a human community. They willingly, gladly, purposely hang onto a murderous way of living in exchange for the good life.

Would you risk the lives of your progeny, and all future humans, for the comfort of inexpensive (sic) fossil fuels? Some people with whom I speak are so reluctant to give up happy motoring and central air conditioning they’ll gladly ignore the cultures and species we destroy on our imperial path. By their actions, if not by their words, they demand a personal IV of cheap oil, just as this country mainlines crude.

What will it take before you notice the warning shots? If you think the empire cannot fall within a couple years, you’re reading a different set of tea leaves than the dozens of petroleum geologists, social critics, thought leaders, writers, historians, and economists to whom I’ve been paying attention.

What will it take before you notice the moral imperative? I’m not thinking about the morality of attending church services or donating to the community food bank; rather, I’m thinking about the real costs of everyday choices based on cheap living within the mainstream culture of the industrial economy.

What will it take before you begin preparations for a world of your own making? The real world awaits, beyond the edge of empire. And if you don’t think the United States represents an empire, then I don’t think you understand the meaning of the word.

Rome is burning. Why are you fiddling?

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This essay is dedicated to the many people who will die in ignorance, apathy, or continued pursuit of the American nightmare. It is permalinked at Counter Currents, Island Breath, CFB483, and Insurance Today.

Don’t you know, yeah, yeah

The hour is late as the game enters the top of the ninth inning. The home team has held the Industrialists scoreless, and leads by a single run. If the Industrialists score, the home team will bring out the bats.

Don’t you know that you are a shooting star

The lead-off batter for the Industrialists reaches base on a bunt down the third-base line. A sacrifice fly to deep right follows a sacrifice bunt, advancing the runner to third with two outs.

And all the world will love you just as long
As long as you are

Nature’s pitcher checks the runner at third before smoking a fastball low and away. The Industrialist’s best hitter swings and misses.

“Strike one,” cries the umpire behind home plate. “You’re out.”

Johnny’s life passed him by like a warm summer day

Incredulous, the batter turns and stares at the umpire. The Industrialist’s manager storms from the dugout to argue the call. But it’s game over for the Industrialists. Nature wins again. All the appeals will be for naught.

If you listen to the wind, you can still hear him play

Stunned by the outcome, the few fans of the visiting Industrialists file out the exits as the fans of Nature collectively exhale a sigh of relief. A few angry Industrialists lash out, injuring Nature’s players for a final time. But everybody knows it’s over. Nature didn’t even need to use its last turn at bat to win this one.

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Perhaps Osama bin Laden was correct when he said, twelve years ago, oil should be priced at $144 per barrel. Perhaps this price will suffice to bring down the empire. Perhaps the first post-peak spike in the price of oil will yet do the trick.

President Obama and his lead lackey Ben Bernanke have managed to paper over the gaping holes in the industrial economy for 18 months, largely because the clueless fans of empire have been watching reality television instead of paying attention to reality. As managers of the industrial age, Obama and crew have effectively argued against economic collapse. Among the many costs to industrial humans, which admittedly pale relative to the costs to non-industrial humans and non-human species: criminal banks and ongoing erosion of the freedoms we once took for granted.

All that arguing could have been spent preparing an unprepared citizenry instead of creating a diversion from the central issue of our time. But that’s water under the proverbial bridge. Instead of a recovery, we’re witnessing an economic death spiral. Although it seemed absurdly unlikely as little as a few months ago, it is becoming evident that the economic impacts of passing the world oil peak are still running full-out. We might not need a second spike to bring the shooting star of industry down to Earth.

Johnny died one night, died in his bed
Bottle of whiskey, sleepin’ tablets by his head

Woah …
Don’t you know that you are a shooting star

It wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. The industrialized world was supposed to have time to prepare alternatives to oil. Or so goes the mainstream story.

The ongoing story runs contrary to conventional wisdom. This version of the traditional narrative includes a twist, completely unexpected by most readers (and especially by economists). Just when it appears Nature is down for the count, even as Nature is gasping for life through the many assaults of industry, even as the living planet is turning belly-up and taking our species with her, a light flickers.

At first distant and dim, the light grows until it obscures the darkness of industry. Plants grow through the asphalt and then cloak the highways and bridges. Cities give way to small towns. Machines give way to nature’s bounty. The global horde of humankind gives way to a compassionate host of humanity.

This version of the story includes a Hollywood ending and a feel-good, bumper-sticker mantra: Nature Bats Last.

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This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin and Island B.reath

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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.

Of course, had stock traders known the dire nature of AIG, for an easy example, the economy would have completed its ongoing collapse long ago. Fortunately, Americans prefer presidents and presidential candidates who lie about the likes of AIG (and, as nearly as I can distinguish, everything else).

But back to the smoke-and-mirrors recovery. It’s fizzling out and there is worse to come. The Wall Street Journal predicts collapse will come in 2011. Over on CNBC, the recommendation is to buy barbed wire as the endpoint of devaluation appears. Others prefer a different phrase: the next step down, also known as a dead end. If you’re a part of Saudi Arabia’s royal family — welcome to the blog, by the way, and feel free to post a comment — it’s time to get out before the apocalypse comes to the kingdom.

For the imperialist-in-charge, what to do, what to do? Now that the Keynesian approach has about run its course, Obama is set to re-open offshore drilling program in a feeble attempt to keep the current game going. And there’s undoubtedly more stimulus headed our way, even though we already passed the point of debt saturation: each new dollar of federal debt now subtracts 45 cents from GDP.

If you’re having a tough time swallowing the notion that the economy can go from apparent recovery to the toilet in a few years, remember what most people believed in 1930: they thought the bad economic news was behind them, too. It’s looking a lot like 1930.

Even usually clueless Americans are getting nervous about the economy — apparently they’re no longer watching television. But even the ever-soothing voices on the tube are pointing out that the gusher in the Gulf is getting worse by the day, with economic implications bound to bury the coast for decades. The BP spill is probably gushing on the order of 100,000 barrels per day, not the 70,000 bpd reported by BP, a number that keeps going up as they keep repairing the problem. The spill certainly exceeds estimates by ultraconservative marine scientists.

But even the latter scientists agree about the existence of the undersea plume (or cloud). I am definitely not applying the “scientist” label to anybody working for the Obama administration: those former scientists gave up their integrity card when they started lying in the name of political fortune. Their new jobs are to hide the facts, not reveal them.

Despite the ongoing game of obfuscation, striking similarities have emerged between the financial collapse of 2008-2009 and the Gulf disaster. Among other characteristics, BP is paralleling the actions of the big banks, aided by the Obama administration, in covering up the truth. It comes as no surprise that BP CEO Tony Hayward has racked up a “greatest hits” list of quotes only a politician’s mother could love.

Energy analyst Matt Simmons predicts BP will declare bankruptcy within a month. That would be one way to escape paying for damages. The more likely approach, in my opinion, is a full-scale bailout by you and me. That route is already wending its way through Congress, although GOP House leader John Boehner is shying away from the idea he proposed earlier.

In a stunning bit of good news — in the category of throwing us a bone — BP finally released the list of toxins in the dispersants. Now that I’ve seen the list, though, I’m not particularly happy about it.

Finally, a single article from the mainstream points out that maybe we should re-think our oil-drenched lifestyles. Oil drilling threatens our future, as even the BBC has determined. Will that be enough to get us off the devil’s excrement? Certainly not if Barack Obama or the politicians in Louisiana have their way.

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This essay is permalinked at Energy Bulletin and Island Breath.

2. It’ll take a lot of rats to clothe plus-size models in the latest fashion accessory.

3. Encouraging us to keep the weight on, the American Heart Association endorses Nintendo’s Wii. Please put aside your shovel and turn on the TV.

4. Japan’s Prime Minister has put an ex-swimsuit model in charge of solving the problem of declining birthrate in that country. Ratcheting up planetary ecological overshoot is an idea whose time has come.

5. Also on the topic of objectifying women in the name of sex, Charlie Sheen has ensured one of the world’s stupidest television shows will remain on the air by settling for $2 million per 22-minute episode to play a misogynist adolescent. The new season will have to wait until he pays his dues for beating his wife and threatening to kill her. For his indiscretion, he’ll serve 30 days in jail (or, more likely, barely supervised community service).

6. Apparently trying his own hand at situational comedy, BP CEO Tony Hayward says BP is capturing a majority of the oil from the spill, as well as claiming the gusher is spilling only 10 million barrels of oil each day. The media play along, naturally.

7. It’s no wonder ethical investors include BP in their portfolios.

8. By now, we’re probably all aware who’s to blame for the ongoing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. It’s those pesky environmentalists, of course. Sarah Palin says so.

9. Last week’s article in the New York Times is yet another fine piece of journalism, considering the source. If the article had been written by a semi-literate 12-year-old, it might have warranted a passing grade in an American elementary school. The paternalistic piece of ass-wipe disguised as journalism quotes a single “prepper” and a single authority. The latter, Daniel Yergin, is the renowned energy optimist who believes crude oil emanates from a limitless, juicy nougat in the center of the planet. Even the title points the wrong direction: For the dozen or so of us who care about the living planet, we’re preparing for the best of times, not the worst.

Also last week, in a rare moment of introspection the Times asks whether we shouldn’t self-induce genocide. As if we’re not.

10. And, on the topic of genocide, self-proclaimed uber-environmentalist Bill McKibben is begging Barack Obama to resurrect our energy policy so we can keep propping up the omnicidal machine of civilization. McKibben is becoming increasingly desperate to finish the job of destroying the living planet on which we depend. With examples such as these, Sarah Palin seems right on the mark.

The financial sector has been largely nationalized, with the U.S. taxpayer on the hook for trillions of dollars of bad loans made by big banks. Back in February 2009 our national debt was a mere $10.5 trillion, but it already exceeded the value of all the currency in the world and all the gold ever mined. Those were the good old days. Now our national debt exceeds $13 trillion (with more than $8 trillion still hidden from view), and the empire will go down like a tub full of gold bricks if we stop fanning the flames by slowing the printing press.

By running the printing presses at full speed, we are inflating the most massive bubble yet. We’ve seen how those bubbles pan out for the industrial economy. If we build them, the pin-pricks will come. Can we create another financial crisis? Of course. After all, a smoke-and-mirrors economic recovery is no protection against a crash in the equities markets. The peak in industrial economic growth is already here, with about ten thousand swords out there vying for attention to burst the bubbles of Treasuries, the U.S. big banks, China’s economic growth, the re-inflated housing market, and a renewed credit crisis. Oh, and of course the interaction between these myriad factors. In summary, the countdown is well under way for completion of the ongoing U.S. economic collapse, and there’s simply no way to soften the blow when we plunge to the bottom of the economic heap. The U.S. has the world’s biggest industrial economy, and the bigger they are, … well, you know.

The one-size-fits-all solution of printing money is leading inevitably to hyperinflation, even as the U.S. money supply dwindles. Think Zimbabwe, but with U.S. dollars. And the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency. All signs still point to a major crash in stock markets (see here and here, too, among a kajillion other sites). At this point in the post-peak oil era, it’s clear to anybody paying the slightest attention we’re headed for full spectrum collapse.

How will it end, and when? It seems completion of the U.S. economic collapse will follow on the heels of Europe, which is cheering for its own demise even as all the PIIGS drown in a sea of debt. This is supremely good news, of course, for the dozen or so people who care about non-industrial cultures and the living planet: Our little reign of terror is just about over. We’re an empty garbage can, playing power games enabled by the hologram-like appearance of power.

I’ve no doubt the empire will fail to go silently into the night. Instead, we’ll take out individuals and countries with every lethal weapon in our power, including weapons most of us don’t even know about and people we don’t care about. Iran apocalypse? Could be — talk about mutually assured destruction — and soon. How soon?

Your guess is as good as mine. But is it as good as the 25 leading trends forecasters, who agree that 2010 could be the year? Hedge funder Hugh Hendry provides a concise summary: “I would recommend you panic.”

As much as I appreciation the concision of Hendry’s recommendation, I would recommend you prepare and celebrate. I’ve been recommending the former for several years, while pointing out the good news associated with economic collapse. I have more company now than I’ve had for a while: Economic collapse has gone mainstream, and the occasional worthwhile ecologist is joining Daniel Quinn and Derrick Jensen in recognizing and spreading the good news.

Even as the gusher in the Gulf gets much worse by the day (thus diverting our attention from BP’s other large spill), even as Barack Obama tries to use the disaster to push his ill-founded political agenda, even as the cozy relationship between BP and the Obama administration becomes clear, so too do U.S. political policies keep steering straight at the iceberg of economic and environmental collapse. As the industrial economy stumbles along, the world’s biological diversity continues to suffer even as we peer into the abyss of extinction for many of the world’s species (including, ultimately, our own).

Where should you be when economic collapse comes to your house? Michael Ruppert and his protégé Rice Farmer suggest staying where you’re most comfortable. Much as I appreciate their efforts to inform and engage economic collapse, this advice seems immoral and short-sighted to me. First, it’s the comfort of city living that got us into this civilized mess to begin with, and it’s exactly this comfort that requires obedience at home and oppression abroad. Second, today’s comfortable urban existence might not be so damned comfortable when the lights go out and the water stops coming out the taps. Rice Farmer points out that people in rural areas will “have to cope with hordes of desperate, starving city people who try to steal our food. Unless you are in a really remote location, expect hungry visitors.”

Good point. But why do you think those “hordes of desperate, starving city people” are bound to be desperate and starving? Why do you think they’ll be leaving the cities in hordes? I’d guess it’ll be because they’ll become suddenly and profoundly uncomfortable when the grocery stores run out of food and the water stops coming out the taps. If you think you’ll be comfortable surrounded by a few thousand desperate, starving city people when TSHTF in your backyard, by all means stay in your comfort zone. On the other hand, if you don’t think that’s going to work out well for you, I’d recommend skedaddling out of the city before the real rush gets under way. When will that be?

In this case, “better late than never” is the wrong answer. The time to dig a well is not when you’re thirsty. The time to plant a garden is not when you’re hungry. The time for securing your water and food is now, before the industrial economy burns itself out. You and I didn’t start the fire of empire. But we’re about to see it extinguished.

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This essay is permalinked at Island Breath.

As should be clear by now, we cannot grow the industrial economy while reducing use of energy. As a result, we cannot grow the economy while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Thus, we’re stuck in a politically untenable situation: To save the living planet, including habitat for our own species, we need to shrink the industrial economy. But the industrial economy requires growth. Recent research indicates we need to shrink the industrial economy to oblivion to save our species. In other words, what we really need is to kill the industrial economy before it kills us. And by us, I mean all of us: the entire collection of wise apes. As a society, clearly we have made our choice. But as an individual, you can choose to the contrary, with benefits for your psyche and quite possibly your survival.

Crude oil is the master material, the energy source that provides access to all others. Economic growth requires ever-increasing supplies of crude oil. As availability of oil declines the price goes up (with considerable variability, as we have observed during five years since we passed the world oil peak) and the industrial economy starts to sputter. When the price gets high enough, long enough, the economy simply, finally, expires. The world has been on an undulating plateau of oil availability for several years, but that plateau leads to a cliff. According to the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. military’s Joint Forces Command, the cliff comes in 18 months.

I know no energy-literate person who thinks we’ll be able to avoid the post-industrial Stone Age by 2025. Assuming a conservative 4% annual decline rate of crude oil between now and then indicates we will have access to the same amount of oil in 2025 as we did in 1970, when the planet held half as many people as it now does and the world was considerably less industrialized than it now is. And that’s merely the gross rate of decline, whereas the net rate of decline will be much more rapid because it takes so much energy to extract and deliver energy. Oil priced a $147.27 per barrel nearly brought down the industrial economy five times I know about, and we’re hardly out of the woods yet. There is little hope for the industrial era to persist more than a few years, and the next spike in the price of oil could very well be the trigger that brings the industrial era to a sudden close in an unprepared nation.

I suspect we’ll pass through a new Dark Age en route to the post-industrial Stone Age. Indeed, many countries in the world are already there because they lack the world’s reserve currency and the world’s largest military. Bully for us: We have both, thus ensuring a steady supply of fossil-fuel-driven energy into every city and town in the United States. Well, so far.

As an aside, how long do you think we can maintain a military and a functioning industrial economy if we keep spending 58% of our budget on the former? We could stop our involvement in wars, but that would be quite un-American, wouldn’t it?

The costs of maintaining the non-negotiable American way of life are huge, even beyond simple economics. The American suburbs are the antithesis of durable living, as they require us to live far from work, far from play, and far from the places we shop for disposable items in our throw-away culture. They require obedience at home and oppression abroad. American Empire is city living (i.e., civilized), writ large.

The relatively few people paying attention to the undercurrents of the industrial economy know the ship is taking on water faster than the governments can run the printing presses. As the industrial economy continues to lurch and stumble, the vaunted American consumer loses the ability to consume (in part because inflation is rampant on items that actually matter, notably including food). Because ours is a consumer culture, with personal consumption accounting for 70% of the industrial economy, the ship is listing. The next financial crisis is already unfolding — notwithstanding absurd reports from politicians, media, and the irrational exuberance, again, in the stock markets — and governments have nearly exhausted their supply of tools to deal with economic issues. We hit the iceberg of peak oil and, as government administrators busily rearrange the deck chairs, it’s time to launch the lifeboats, even if you believe consumption is a good thing. Personally, I think it’s not, in part based on the definition:

Consume:

1. To do away with completely; destroy

2a. To spend wastefully; squander
2b. Use up

3. To waste or burn away; perish

Consuming gives most people a temporary emotional “high.” We’re addicted to shopping. But I trust it’s clear why rational people want no part of the consumer economy. If we cannot terminate the industrial economy, and soon, we’ll exhaust all habitat for humans on Earth by the end of this century (and, if the models are to be believed, much sooner). Along the way, if we have our way, we’ll destroy every non-industrial culture and every non-human species.

In the face of a contracting industrial economy and the knowledge we’re headed for a situation with extremely limited access to fossil fuels, a quote from Peter Drucker comes to mind: “You can either take action, or you can hang back and hope for a miracle. Miracles are great, but they are so unpredictable.”

What’s an individual to do, in light of the imminent collapse of western civilization? In addition to hastening the collapse, some tools for which I’ve listed before, I describe four points along a continuum for your own, individual, post-carbon future: (1) transition towns, (2) agricultural anarchy, (3) hunting and gathering, and (4) traveling. I will describe each approach, briefly, as a means of generating thought, action, and perhaps even discussion.

Transition towns allow us the fantasy of keeping the current omnicidal culture going, albeit in slightly different form. This model assumes a long descent that allows time for cities to develop alternative energy sources. Think solar on every rooftop, for starters, and gardens in every suburban lot. For this approach to work, though, the food shed must be sufficiently nearby and sufficiently productive to support all the people in the transition town. This seems hugely problematic in sprawling western cities, especially those with more than a few thousand people. And for areas with limited supplies of water, or water that is several hundred feet below the surface of the ground, it’s difficult to imagine a scenario that doesn’t include massive suffering along the way to a huge die-off. The inability to store energy in the absence of fossil fuels beyond a few years in expensive, transient, and toxic batteries is a microscopic problem relative to the absence of ready access to water and food. And there’s an additional problem with the transition-town notion: I seriously doubt we have access to the fossil fuels needed to create the needed infrastructure for the 250 million city-living Americans, much less the 3.5 billion people who occupy the world’s cities. Solar panels and batteries simply won’t make the grade — there’s not enough oil left to pull this one off.

When the lights go out in the city, chaos often erupts. Is your city different? If so, will that difference persist when the lights don’t come back on, ever? I’ve often said and written that I would give my life to terminate the industrial economy, if only to alleviate the burden of oppression on the living world. I’ve no doubt, in fact, that I will make this sacrifice. And that’s okay: My insignificant life pales in contrast to the living planet and the persistence of our species. On the other hand, although I loved city life, my city was not worth dying for. So I left to prepare, recognizing that fortune favors the prepared. In contrast, Michael Ruppert moved to his home city of Los Angeles with full knowledge L.A. would be among the first cities to go up in flames. Ruppert is willing to die for the privilege of comforting the afflicted there.

Agricultural anarchy was offered as a model by Thomas Jefferson, and Monticello was the prime example before it became a museum. Contemporary examples are found in nearly every “third-world” country. A large proportion of the towns and cities in Central America and South America never have had ready access to abundant fossil fuels. As a result, communities have communal water sources and people dig shallow wells and harvest rain from rooftops. On a daily basis, local markets are filled with fresh food brought from nearby gardens and farms. The power goes out frequently, and nobody seems to mind because the towns and cities are actually located in livable areas in the absence of fossil fuels to heat or cool every building (cf. Tucson, Arizona). In short, agriculture has always been, and still is, at the center of everyday life.

Hunting and gathering will doubtless make a comeback for a very few hardy, quick-witted folks. This model resembles the prior Stone Age, and clearly is the most durable approach. It worked for the first 2 million years of the human experience, and we fled from it as recently as a few thousand years ago. But if you can’t find a tribe to go along, you’ll be as lonely as a Saguaro cactus on an ice floe.

Finally, individuals can largely avoid the ravages of collapse by traveling from spot to spot. History has been kind to travelers because people rooted in a particular place hunger for knowledge. If you’re to pursue this route, you’ll need to be quick-witted, good-humored, and willing to lend a hand when needed. Also, you’ll need to recognize and avoid danger. Traveling will be terrifying, but no worse than staying in one location. And you’ll get to see the world and live an adventure-filled life, just as promised by U.S. military recruiters.

None of these options offer a life similar to the one you’ve known. But a different life doesn’t mean a worse life, especially if you give a rat’s backside about anybody besides yourself. There will be plenty of opportunities to serve your community, as there has always been, in the months and years ahead. We’ll be living closer to our neighbors and closer to the living planet that sustains us all. For those courageous, compassionate, and creative souls willing to live in the world rather than in a cubicle, life’s about to get even more interesting. For the vast majority of industrial Americans, though, life is about to become miserable and surprisingly short.

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This essay was inspired by a comment from Danielle Charbonneau. It is permalinked at Counter Currents, Island Breath, and A Climate for Change.