If Ben Bernanke and the fools at the Fed actually thought the industrial economy was recovering, they’d jack up interest rates. When the prime rate is up around 5%, you’ll know the industrial economy is back on track. Alternatively, you can monitor the extinction rate of non-human species.
The Keynesian approach favored by the Obummer administration is working about as well as pissing in an inferno. Those 640,329 new jobs created by the stimulus package came at a cost of $323,739.83 per job. We’ll never pay that tab, of course, because most of us aren’t working any more. Hell, half the kids in the country are on food stamps. Furthermore, the latest insult is a drop in the bucket compared to the 2009 deficit, which exceeds $450,000 per U.S. citizen.
We’ve long used our homes as ATMs, but those days are behind us. Housing prices are expected to continue their decline, dropping a staggering 90%. Suddenly that $6,900 house in Detroit isn’t looking so sweet, or so unusual. And commercial real estate is on the leading edge of a huge crash, as you’ve known for a while if you’ve been reading this blog. Or, for that matter, any other source of economic news beyond the mainstream media.
The housing mess isn’t the only offal stinking up the industrial economy, either. The markets look like the big bubble you blew with an entire pack of Hubba Bubba. And here’s a surprise: The recent rise in GDP is a mirage, just like Dow 10,000. As if the stock markets have any relation to reality, now or at any point in the past.
And just when you thought things couldn’t get any more entertaining, the feds would like to make the big bank bailouts a permanent scar on your grandchild’s checkbook. There’s nothing new about this turn of events: It’s a classic example of socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor (record-setting bonuses at the end of 2009 will add to the ever-growing list of examples). And if you think Obama is your friend, and will assuage your wounds, you’re still drinking the “progressive” Kool-Aid of wishful thinking and ignoring his drive for unlimited power, here and abroad. When questioned, he undoubtedly will perform the infamous act of amnesia we’ve come to expect from our “leaders” in Washington. Alas, Edward Abbey was correct: “Government should be weak, amateurish and ridiculous. At present, it fulfills only a third of the role.” At this juncture, the U.S. cannot even maintain hegemony in Afghanistan because the Taliban will not agree to a backroom power-sharing deal.
The current administration is hardly the first to lie, cheat, and steal from the citizens they claim to serve. Over time, the extent of the immorality has become unbearable. Consider this minor, personal example: I asked for a testimonial regarding my skill as a public speaker from a dear friend and former graduate student who currently works the National Parks Service (which is part of the executive branch, for those of you who missed school that day). After speaking with her supervisor in Washington, she declined. I’m reminded of a line from E.M. Forster: “If I were forced to choose between my country and my friend, I hope I would be brave enough to choose my friend.” Here’s another relevant line from Edward Abbey: “I would never betray a friend to serve a cause. Never reject a friend to help an institution. Great nations may fall in ruin before I would sell a friend to save them.” Sadly, damned few among us are as principled as Forster and Abbey.
The “solutions” to our energy predicament are clogging the airwaves. As if algae will save our dreams of happy motoring. As if building nuclear power plants will provide free electricity. As if algae, plutonium, and uranium come problem-free. As if Transition Towns will allow an orderly, peaceful transition to a trouble-free future. As if maintaining industrial culture in smaller form will magically stop destroying the living planet.
Industrial civilization is hardly the first civilization to outstrip resources critical to human life, thereby committing cultural suicide. But it’s the first to make a serious run at murdering the entire living planet, and American Empire is coming to a close far sooner than most people thought possible. Soon, the lights go out, which brings down every aspect of western civilization.
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This post is permalinked at Counter Currents.

My generation, which demographers say was born between 1946 and 1962, came together during Woodstock and the Summer of Love. We demanded environmental protection after we saw the Cuyahoga River catch fire and we demanded an end to the Vietnam War after tens of thousands of teenagers died in defense of capitalism. For us, environmental protection and peace were the same battle, and we won those battles, albeit temporarily. We started realizing our dream of living close to each other, and close to the land that sustains us all.
We lost our way during the late 1970s when the last decent president in this country called conservation, “the moral equivalent of war.” But Jimmy Carter also laid claim to oil in the Middle East, claiming it belonged to the U.S. We wanted to agree with him about both issues, as if they are not mutually exclusive. But, even more than we wanted environmental protection and peace, we wanted economic growth. So we threw away our dream, abandoned our principles, and snatched the brass ring. We threw Carter out of office after he asked us to slow down to 55 mph and put on our sweaters during the winter. We let a mediocre Hollywood actor convince us that it was, in his words, “morning in America.” Like anybody who was paying attention during the gloomy days of the 1980s, I thought it was time for “mourning in America,” and throughout the world.
The rest, as they say, is history. My generation consumed planetary resources faster than any generation in the history of this planet. Instead of living in close-knit neighborhoods, we ramped up the suburban nightmare initiated immediately after World War II. Instead of living close to the land that sustains us, we trashed the world in a half-hearted quest for the short-term happiness that comes from accumulating material possessions, and then we traveled the world in a misguided spiritual quest, our lame attempt to “find ourselves.”
But all that consuming and traveling and trashing the planet is about to come to a rather abrupt stop because we’ve reached the point of “peak everything.”
The extraction of finite materials tends to follow a bell-shaped curved, as M. King Hubbert described in 1956. The top of the curve is called “Hubbert’s Peak,” or “Peak Resource.” Beyond the top of the curve, the human population continues to grow, thereby increasing demand, but the supply of the material declines. In this century, we have passed or will pass the peak of everything required to maintain civilization. For example, we passed the world oil peak in 2005. Peak silver is behind us, as is peak gold, peak copper, and peak uranium. Peak natural gas and peak coal lie on the horizon in full view.
If you haven’t reached your 75th birthday, all you’ve ever known is economic growth. But that’s rapidly changing. Passing the world oil peak led to oil priced at $147.27/bbl in July 2008, an event that nearly terminated western civilization. That event also brought Keynesian economics back from the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan used the Keynesian strategy — and abundant, inexpensive oil — to kick-start economic growth. This time’s different, of course: There’s no more cheap oil, and the Keynesian approach is a tiny band-aid on a spurting wound.
The financially wealthy burglar class runs the U.S. economy now, and they don’t give a damn about your dreams. They’re profiting, and profiteering, as the ship of industry goes the way of the Titanic. And, demonstrating as much optimism as the architects of the plagued ship, they’re calling this Greatest Depression “just a downturn.”
For those of you who have never known anything except next year’s I-pod, and have enjoyed the omnicidal industrial culture kick-started by Reagan’s “morning in America,” I have bad news for you: The ongoing collapse of the world’s industrial economy will be complete within a few years. Soon enough, American Idol on the television, high-fructose corn syrup at the grocery store, and water coming out the taps will be distant memories.
On the other hand, for those of us who actually care about non-human species and non-industrial cultures, I have good news: The ongoing collapse of the world’s industrial economy will be complete within a few years. Soon enough, American Idol on television, high-fructose corn syrup at the grocery store, and water coming out the taps will be distant memories. We will stop driving populations to extirpation and species to extinction. We will stop polluting the waters that slake our thirst. We will stop destroying the landbase that feeds us, clothes us, and shelters us. Many industrial humans will die, but the survivors will once again be living the baby boomers’ dream, close to their neighbors and close to the land that sustains them.
It appears the good times won’t last long. Not only did the boomers destroy the living planet for other cultures and species, but we turned the dynamite on ourselves. Soon enough, the jig is up for Homo sapiens.
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This post is permalinked at Counter Currents and The SIXTIES.

(1) At most, I made a minor difference for a few students during a two-decade career. I could keep doing that but, in the near future, that approach would kill me because it requires living in a major metropolitan area. I’m not willing to die for that particular cause. (The problem with being a martyr is that you have to die for the cause.) (2) Have you failed to notice the economic world around us? We passed TEOTWAWKI when the suburban housing market collapsed. So we socialized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Then we socialized the financial system and the automobile industry. Call is socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, to quote Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich in One with Ninevah. I’d guess we have six months to three years before there is no more fuel at the filling station, food at the grocery store, or water coming out the taps.
More often, the conversation goes something like the following. It typically includes a middle-aged, middle-class American (MAMCA) visiting with me, although my role often is subsumed by a student responding to his or her parents as they play the former role.
MAMCA: Nice place you have here. Thanks for the tour. Do you really think the economy could collapse?
Me: Of course. In fact, the collapse — which, by the way, I prefer to call a Renaissance — is fully under way. The U.S. industrial economy nearly came grinding to a halt five times (that I know about) during the last year. According to Dmitry Orlov, author of Reinventing Collapse, we’re in the second of five stages of collapse (we passed financial collapse, we’re in the midst of commercial collapse, and political, social, cultural collapse lie ahead — unlike Orlov, I’d say social and cultural collapse have already happened in many locations, and we’re poised on the brink of political collapse).
MAMCA: Well of course the Soviet Union collapsed. Everybody saw that coming. There is no way to sustain socialism, after all But I don’t see any way this country could suffer a collapse. How could that happen?
Me: First off, it’s already happening, one household at a time. It could visit your household any number of ways. We passed the world oil peak several years ago, and demand seriously outstripped supply last summer, when the price of crude oil topped $147/barrel. That led to the failure of the suburban housing market, the failure of several banks, and socialization of banks and General Motors. Unemployment is skyrocketing and the nation’s “safety nets” are full of holes. Could you get caught in the unemployment wave? Probably not. Could you find yourself under water on your mortgage? Probably not. But many people, many households, have already collapsed under the weight of those two problems. Can you afford gasoline at $5 per gallon? Sure. But a lot of companies, large and small, cannot afford expensive fuel for a sustained period of time. When those businesses go under, they take real people down with them. At some point, all the banks collapse because the banking system only works when the industrial economy is growing. And the economy simply cannot grow when oil is too expensive because expensive oil eats up GDP and causes hyperinflation. The typical approach with individuals, groups, or economies is the same: they grow or die.
MAMCA: Okay, but how do we get from expensive oil to economic collapse? How do we get to no water coming out the taps? I just don’t see how that can happen. For starters, we’ll develop alternative energy sources when needed.
Me: First off, bear in mind that an annual decline rate of only one-half of one percent led to $147 oil. The International Energy Agency, a group that previously never admitted oil would peak, projected a decline rate of nine percent from this year forward. They’ve been wrong so far — data indicate an annual decline rate of only three percent so far, and demand destruction in the form of the ongoing recession is staying ahead of the three-percent decline rate. But if the recession shows signs of recovering, the price of oil will rise again. Oil priced at $150 per barrel consumes one-quarter of the world’s GDP, leaving little slack in the system. Second, there are no “renewable energies” that scale to a few million people, much less a few billion. All energy sources are derivatives of oil, not alternatives: It takes a lot of oil to make a solar panel, or a wind turbine. And try putting those in your car or truck. The bumper stickers are right, after all: “Without trucks, America stops,” at least with respect to economic growth.
All that aside, would you continue to go to your job if you weren’t getting paid, or if the paycheck kept bouncing? How about if money wasn’t work a thing?
MAMCA: I suppose not, at least not indefinitely.
Me: Would you continue to work if your employer has no financial value? That is, if the company is worth nothing on the stock exchange?
MAMCA: Of course not. That would mean they couldn’t pay anybody. But I don’t see how that leads to no fuel, no food, and no water out the taps.
Me: All fuel suppliers in this country are private. We have not nationalized our petroleum companies (yet). So if those companies have no value, do you suppose the drivers are going to keep delivering the fuel to the filling station? Ditto for Safeway.
MAMCA: Okay, I’ll reluctantly agree that we could, eventually, have no fuel and no food. But no water out the taps?
Me: Who supplies your water?
MAMCA: I don’t know.
Me: It’s either a private company or, more likely, a municipality. The employees at the municipalities have to cash their checks, too. To do so, a bank has to issue the check and a bank has to cash it. Perhaps the more important question is, “Where does your water come from?”
MAMCA: The tap, of course.
Me: And if you believe water originates at the tap, you’ll defend to the death the system that allows water to come out the tap. But of course water doesn’t originate with the tap, it originates in the watershed. When people realize where the water actually comes from, perhaps they will defend to the death the system that supplies the water, meaning an ecosystem. But I doubt it.
MAMCA: What you’re suggesting is that protecting the environment is more important than maintaining economic growth. But don’t we need economic growth to have the money to protect the environment?
Me: I don’t think we’ve ever made a serious attempt to protect the environment in this country. We occasionally take small steps to conserve specific areas after we ensure economic growth. But economic growth is the underlying root of environmental destruction. When we demand economic growth first, we postpone environmental protection until later. And it’s getting very, very late.
MAMCA: What do you mean by that?
Me: According to recent projections from large climate-forecasting groups, we’re very close to a tipping point, if we haven’t passed one already. Global climate change is accelerating as a result of economic growth. If we don’t halt or reverse global climate change, we’re doomed to extinction at our own hand.
MAMCA: But we can’t simply give up economic growth to save the planet, can we?
Me: No, apparently we’re unwilling to take that step, sane as it seems. We’d rather reduce the planet to a lifeless pile of rubble than slow economic growth.
MAMCA: Surely we can have both economic growth and protection of the environment.
Me: I’ve never been shown how that’s possible. Economic growth destroys habitats and species. Ultimately, it will destroy habitat for our own species, perhaps in as little as a single generation. We should welcome the ongoing Renaissance.
MAMCA: But no economic growth? You’re committing my children to a future of poverty.
Me: No, you already did that. In fact, our entire generation of Boomers did that when we abandoned the goal of living close to the land and close to our neighbors for the sake of economic growth. When we were offered a choice between the good life and “daylight in America,” we chose Ronald Reagan and the notion that greed is good. As a result, we burned through the planetary endowment of fossil fuels at a record-setting clip, hence polluting our waters and skies while ensuring your children are addicted to fossil fuels, economic growth, and technology. But if they’re like most 20-year-olds, they have no relationship with the living planet beyond the Discover channel and their Facebook friends.
MAMCA: An economic collapse sounds horrifying. People will die. Many of those people had nothing to do with this mess.
Me: As has always been the case.
MAMCA: What do you mean?
Me: The industrial economy is basis of American Empire. Imperialism kills people every day, and most of them had nothing to do with this mess.
MAMCA: I was talking about Americans.
Me: So was I.
MAMCA: But many Americans will be caught up in the collapse. Most people in this country do not know how to live if there’s no water coming out the taps.
Me: No, of course not. We’ve overshot our resources, and a population crash is quite likely.
MAMCA: When faced with hard times, I’m certain Americans will change their behavior. The economy has always recovered before.
Me: On the back of cheap energy. But those days are behind us. We face an event unprecedented in the history of the planet. We can enjoy an economic collapse and the associated Renaissance or we can suffer ecological collapse. The Renaissance will cause population reduction, but not nearly to the extent of the latter. Some leadership on this issue would be nice, although it’s clearly too late to save western civilization. Had we started on this project thirty years ago, we might be able to save some elements of civilization and avoid a large-scale die-off of civilized humans. But at this point, four years post-peak, I don’t see how we can mitigate collapse at the scale of a few million people, much less thirty million Americans or nearly seven billion planetary citizens. The famous Hirsch report concluded we’d have to start twenty years before peak to have a chance at saving civilization. And, even at that, we’d have to work at it. The federal government and the media haven’t even acknowledged the issue yet.
MAMCA: Okay, so when does collapse hit?
Me: As I already indicated, it’s already hit many people and many households. When does it hit you? That depends how wealthy you are. More importantly, it depends how willing you are to live in the world. I spent my life in the so-called ivory tower of academia. As you’ve seen, I’ve developed new skills to mitigate for a totally new set of circumstances in the years ahead. If I can do this, I’m pretty sure most people can, too.
MAMCA: I don’t have enough money to do this on my own.
Me: Neither did I. My wife and I were fortunate to have like-minded friends who generously offered their property as a starting point. We still are fortunate. Very fortunate, as it turns out. But we can all do something to prepare, especially us middle-aged, middle-class baby boomers.

Small banks failing like dominoes on a cattle car? Okay. GDP growth dead, except for federal spending? Hello, stimulus. Unemployment out of control and getting worse? Outstanding. Things falling apart in the industrial economy? Sign me up. Americans working harder for less pay? Well, of course. Pay raises going down with the imperial ship? Duh. Foreclosures about to get really serious? No surprise there. Home values and income being destroyed on Main Street even as the financial companies rake in exorbitant profits and hand out phenomenal bonuses? You betcha. Consumer credit drying up like a jellyfish in the desert? Why not? Stock market bubble, created by the Fed, about to pop? Yes, please. The bubble in higher education about to pop, too? Hurry, hurry. And the mother of all bubbles, the bailout bubble, about to implode? Hallelujah. Oh, and Chris Martenson reveals who bought last week’s Treasurys: the Fed (secretly, of course). More printing money, behind closed doors. Whoo hoo. Dmitry Orlov interviewed on the radio? It’s about time. Hyperinflation on the way, as Fed faces its Zimbabwe moment? It can’t come soon enough for me. I could go on (and on). But you get the idea.
How about you? Are you a doomer? If so, what kind?
As I’ve written and said countless times, completion of the ongoing collapse offers the only legitimate opportunity for non-human species and non-industrial cultures to survive the onslaught of industrialization. The oppression at the hand of corporatism continues unabated, and has extended to all arenas of the human experience, including land-grabs by industrial powers at the expense the poor. If you’re anthropocentric, it’s worse than that. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the industrial economy poses a threat not merely to national security, but also to the persistence of our species on the planet.
Which makes me wonder: When will even a small percentage of industrial humans join the doomer movement? Will the day come only after our species is reduced to a couple small groups of hungry individuals in polar regions, struggling to survive? Will we ever recognize the perils of human population growth? Or will give up the planet as easily as we traded our republic for fascism, without so much as a muffled protest?
More importantly, is that what we want? Is hell on Earth our goal for our hapless descendants?
The twin sides of our fossil-fuel addiction — energy decline and global climate change — are the most important topics we can address as a species. The national conversation ignores or marginalizes these critical topics. On the rare occasion they inadvertently come up, we act like a roomful of eight-year-olds with plates full of peas and mashed potatoes, pushing the main course around without actually ingesting it, wishing for the distraction of dessert.
“I know the real reason Paula Abdul is leaving American Idol.”
Problem solved.

Thus begins John Zerzan’s 2008 manifesto, Twilight of the Machines. Those words are, interestingly, placed above the title on the book’s cover, which has the author’s head-shot photograph taken in a cave. Before turning the first page, the reader knows where this book is headed.
Zerzan is an anarchist, as indicated by the titles of two of his previous books: Against Civilization and Running on Emptiness. Feral House published both previous books, as well as Twilight of the Machines.
Following a two-page Preface, Twilight of the Machines is divided into two sections: “Origins of the Crisis” and “The Crisis of Civilization.” Part I describes how we got into this series of predicaments, dating to the division of labor in the Neolithic, and Part II takes a more contemporary approach.
But first, from the Preface: “Specialization, domestication, civilization, mass society, modernity, technoculture … behold Progress, its fruition presented more and more unmistakably. The imperative of control unfolds starkly, pushing us to ask questions equal to the mounting threat around us and within us. These dire times may yet reveal invigorating new vistas of thought and action. When everything is at stake, all must be confronted and superseded. At this moment, there is the distinct possibility of doing just that. … Clinging to politics is one way to avoid the confrontation with the devouring logic of civilization, holding instead with the accepted assumptions and definitions.”
Amen, brother. Seems the more dire our situation becomes — that is, the more we pillage the planet and our fellow human beings — the more we turn to politics for answers. But, as I’ve been intimating for years, there are no political solutions to the crises we face. If there is a politically viable solution to solving global climate change, energy decline, or the complete absence of community in America, please fill me in.
And yet, the cries continue for the Teflon president 2.0, the second coming of Ronald Reagan, to save us from ourselves. Get over it, people. We need to push the politicians and the politics out of the way. We need to abandon the system, albeit long after it has abandoned us.
But, back to Zerzan. With plenty of supporting citations, he traces the division of labor to the end of the Paleolithic (i.e., beginning of the Neolithic), coincident with the rise of agriculture and also the rise of organized violence against other humans. Agriculture plants the seeds of war because war is required, for the first time in human history, by agriculture. Once agriculture arrives, bringing with it substantial differences in quality of life for the two sexes, “another dichotomy appears, the distinction between work and non-work, which for so many, many generations did not exist.” Echoing his many predecessors, most notably Daniel Quinn, Zerzan interprets the Fall from Eden as a demise of hunter-gatherer life, with its subsequent expulsion into agriculture and hard labor. The victim bears the blame, a common historical pattern.
Shortly after Cain murdered Abel and then founded the first city, more cities began to dot the Mesopotamian landscape. The rewards of civilization allowed relatively few people to feed the majority, with the biggest rewards going to a select, powerful minority. From those days forward, cities have allowed, in Stanley Diamond’s words, “conquest abroad and repression at home.”
Once the Fall was complete, the battle lines were drawn. Feelings of gratitude toward a freely giving nature were replaced by the ethos of domestication. It’s humans against nature, as well as humans against other humans. The resultant top-down, power-based culture gradually led to development of the ultimate top-down, power-based culture. Monotheism conquered the West some two-and-a-half millennia ago.
I think most literate people know the causes and consequences of our dilemmas. There is nothing new in the first half of Twilight of the Machines. But Zerzan does a nice job articulating the disaster, yet again. And he does so with relatively few words and also with sufficient evidentiary support to satisfy most skeptics. Similarly, Zerzan offers a way forward in relatively few words: “Primitivists draw strength from their understanding that no matter how bereft our lives have become in the last ten thousand years, for most of our nearly two million years on the planet, human life appears to have been healthy and authentic. … It’s an all or nothing struggle. Anarchy is just a name for those who embrace its promise of redemption and wholeness, and try to face up to how far we’ll need to travel to get there. We humans once had it right, if the anthropologists are to be believed. Now we’ll find out if we can get it right again. Quite possibly our last opportunity as a species.”
I couldn’t agree more. It is an all or nothing struggle. Continuing along the current path risks our living planet and our species, thus representing simultaneous ecocide and extinction of our own species. (There is no word in the English language for the latter phenomenon, I suppose because suigenocide sounds a bit too German.)
After briefly explaining the messes, and their likely causes, Zerzan calls for a voluntary return to primitivism. I’ve finally found somebody more optimistic than me. Whereas I think we’ll be riding the Stone-Age train quite soon, Zerzan thinks Homo industrialus will be fighting, er, bartering, for tickets aboard the train.
Perhaps we’ll power down with the tranquility of Buddhist monks. But my bet lies elsewhere.