I performed a little rudimentary math last week. A little because even a little pushes my limit for math, these days. And rudimentary for the same reason. The outcome was staggering: We’re using oil at the rate of 5,500 cubic feet per second (cfs).
I haven’t watched television for years. My brain’s in bad enough shape without the brain-cell-destroying intoxicants of alcohol or delta waves, so I’ve foregone both for quite a while. Long enough, in fact, that I’m starting to feel as if I’m obsessing about them, so I suppose I should get back on the wagon to see what I’ve been missing.
It doesn’t pay to be a prophet, at least not in one’s own time. I’ve been ridiculed, disparaged, and generally mocked in public, and the email in-box is filled with hateful missives. I’m not complaining, mind you: Every social critic knows how little regard society has for criticism. I don’t much care for it myself, when it’s pointed my way.
I’ve given several talks during the last couple weeks. And I’m spending way too much time preparing for, and then arguing with, the provost. My primary points during each of these exchanges, from the Department of Defense workshop to the discussion in juvey hall, have focused on peak oil and runaway greenhouse. It never ceases to amaze me how deep is the denial of increasingly obvious facts. The audience doesn’t seem to matter much: We all worship the same gawd, after all. Her name is Oil.
We’ve passed the world oil-supply peak and we’re staring down the barrel of a crisis to which leadership is conspicuously absent. If you think the government — or anybody else for that matter — will bail your sinking rowboat when oil is priced at $400/barrel and annual inflation is running at 1,000 percent, you failed to notice how long it took FEMA to get water to the Superdome in the wake of Katrina. That was a temporary inconvenience, and the feds had plenty of resources, including carbon-based ones.
As I prepare for my post-carbon future, I’ve been thinking about the benefits of empire. My entire life — all 47 years, so far — has been marked by economic growth and rapidly increasing national prosperity. My folks were the first in their families to attend college, and I spent my childhood in a small, redneck town filled with hard-working manual laborers — it was a logging town, complete with a lumber mill and filled with white, lower middle class folks. The only real dangers were barroom fights and bad driving. I was too young to drink in public, and very lucky to avoid dying in a car crash.