Once upon a time, after the ice receded, human settlements spread across a small island. As a result, wars ensued and the natural world was torn asunder. But the relatively small size of the human population, coupled with limited technology, allowed many species to thrive.
Last week’s contentious Viewpoints piece in the Arizona Republic stirred some long-overdue interest in peak oil. On the first of six pages of online comments is this one: “We’ll check back with ya in 10 years Guy. You might have some ‘splanin’ to do.”
I suspect there will be no need for explanation in a decade, by which time we’ll be well on our way to the post-industrial Stone Age. So I’ll provide the explanation now, before the power goes out and the Empire collapses under the weight of its own hubris. Actually, I gave a partial explanation in a follow-up piece in the Republic, but more details follow .
Our first move in 18 years is complete. We’ve moved into a shabby rental house in a great neighborhood a couple blocks from campus. We’re moved in, but not settled in — that’ll take a while longer.
The U.S. economy is moving in ever-tighter, ever-accelerating spirals. This, mind you, despite ongoing attempts to prop up the economy in the name of staving off a recession by Ben Bernanke and the ghouls at the Fed, Hank Paulson and his gangsters at Treasury Department, and Dubya and his cabal of criminals.
Seems my entry from last week was premature. Specifically, I wrote: “The federal government’s complete unwillingness to deal with the tsunami of economic news, from home foreclosures to runaway inflation and supply disruptions in gasoline, is truly pathetic.” The federal government and its primary media outlet suddenly leaped into action.
The hallucinatory economy of the United States, based on the “service” industry and consumption of salad shooters, is starting to drag. Seems the absence of cheap oil, along with the closely related inability to use our homes as automatic teller machines, removes the grease from the skids. The associated friction has the Dow doing its best impression of a man falling down the stairs, lurching and spinning and almost recovering before he falls headlong into the abyss of the black widow-infested cellar he couldn’t even imagine except for the old stories about the previous Great Depression.
