As American Empire is completing its fall, the American government might find itself at war with its own people. As long as we have American Idol and high fructose corn syrup, I doubt the people are willing to rebel. But if they are, perhaps this time the people will win.
We cannot use politics as usual to deal with energy decline. Ditto for runaway greenhouse. In other words, there is no viable political solution to deal with either issue.
As usual, I have good news if you don’t like the direction the government and culture have taken: the problem’s going to take care of itself. When the empire completes its fall, when the federal government loses the ability to control everything from foreign wars to domestic sex acts, when the dollar’s even further in the toilet and the transportation networks are completely impotent, when the cheerleader-in-chief of American Empire can no longer destroy the lands and waters and the organisms on which we all depend, that’s when we can bury the neoconservative agenda.
Sometimes my attempts to stir the pot are not successful. And sometimes they result in shaking instead of stirring.
“Without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline is 9.1 per cent.” Energy experts generally agree that a 2 per cent annual decline in extraction of crude oil translate to reasonably painful adaptation and the cessation of economic growth, a five per cent declines spell very painful adjustments and an economic depression of unprecedented magnitude, and a ten per cent decline means societal breakdown at a monumental scale.