Posted on 07/07/2008 7:33:27 PM PDT by B-Chan
Every time I saw a car towing a motorboat this holiday weekend, I wondered what was going through the head of the towee. Did they have a sense that darkness was falling on their careers in motor sports? Did they have an inkling that an oil-and-gas crisis is upon us and just not give a shit? Or were they just going through the motions, following some implacable rote programming induced by, say, forty-odd years of TV addiction and a diet based on corn-syrup byproducts?
The holiday to me was a creepy hiatus from an ever more desperate reality overtaking the nation like a miasma. Meanwhile, the mainstream media's ongoing narrative has gotten stuck in the moronic groove of "drill drill drill." The belief of people like Larry Kudlow of CNBC and uber-mega-idiot John Stossel of ABC-News is that we could go back to $1.50 gasoline if only congress would open the offshore exploration areas and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This view is just plain erroneous. Nothing we get out of these regions will come close to offsetting the ongoing depletion of worldwide oil resources, or even arresting our own losses.
Larry King had a particularly dreary debate Sunday night between Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and a grab bag of "drill drill drill" advocates. Kennedy took the position that the US could achieve a sort of energy independence by massive deployments of wind and solar equipment. It's an understandable wish, I suppose, but not something I view as consistent with reality. The unfortunate part of the Larry King presentation is that it gives the public an idea that these two fantasies are the only possible responses to our predicament. No one is interested in changing our current behavior.
In the background of these energy conundrums is the sickening spectacle of the nation's fatal insolvency, which remains partially disguised by the machinations of the Federal Reserve, using the various new loan "windows" to maintain the illusion that the major banks have not swindled themselves out of existence -- and in doing so, caused at least $3 trillion (so far) in capital to vanish in a black hole. This three-card-monte game has gone on for a whole year now, and the consequences are hitting home. No more money can be lent into existence now.
One consequence is that other nations sitting on our exported dollars (from our massive trade deficit) have apparently decided to spend off those dollars rather than wait for the fullblown financial collapse of the nation issuing them. My guess is that they are spending those dollars on oil, the primary resource of industrial economies, and that they are prepared to outbid other contestants (including the USA) no matter what -- because they know the dollar is losing value, and that those losses are apt to accelerate over time, and what else would they spend them on? I suspect this is behind the rising price of oil more than anything else -- certainly more than the phantom "speculators" the right wing is yelling about -- and that behind the spending off of those exported dollars are the geological facts of oil being a finite resource inequitably distributed around the world.
But to get back to my prior point, things are hitting home anyway, and with force. The US economy is crumbling because the way we conduct the activities of daily life is insane relative to our circumstances. We've spent sixty years ramping up a suburban living arrangement that has suddenly entered a state of failure, and all its accessories and furnishings are failing in concert. The far-flung McHouse tracts are becoming both useless and worthless in the face of gasoline prices that will never be cheap again. The strip malls and office "parks" are following the residential real estate off a cliff. The retail tenants of all those places are hemorrhaging customers who have maxed out every last credit card. The lack of business is now leading to substantial layoffs. The airline industry is dying and will probably cease to exist in its familiar form in 24 months. The trucking industry is dying, threatening the entire just-in-time distribution system of things that even people with little money to spend still need, like food.
These conditions will now get a lot worse, no matter whether the banks continue to conceal their problems. All of it leads to an inflection point that coincides with the November election. By then, I expect that quite a few banks will be toast, job layoffs will rise spectacularly, foreclosures and bankruptcies will be raging across the land, and homeowners north of the magnolia belt will be shattered by the cost of staying warm this winter.
All this hardship and woe will be blamed on the Republican party. It may actually kill off the party. Political parties do go out-of-business in American history, and this one deserves to die -- with its aggressive no-nothingism, its avaricious, punitive religious extremism (the religious part often being fake), its stunning inattention to financial malfeasance in areas under its direct supervision, and its gross incompetent mismanagement of the nation's strategic interests.
That said, I will feel a little sorry for Mr. Obama if he gets to the White House. He'll have to find a gentle way to tell the truth to the people who elected him, people who will be suffering mightily, and who will be very sore about their losses. He'll have to tell them that the previous "release" of the American Dream software is obsolete, and the new version will require a whole lot more of them in the way of earnest effort, delayed gratification, and revised expectations.
There's a whole lot we can do to greet the new circumstances awaiting us, but the one thing we can't afford to do is put all our efforts into keeping the current system running as is. Reality simply won't permit it. We would squander our dwindling remaining resources trying to keep it all going. The next president is going to have to lead us through the awful process of cutting our losses. So far, the debate has been about how to avoid that.
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Not a good practice to end a sentence with a preposition.
Just sayin' ...
Not to worry - - nobody around here who is familiar with your posting history would presume that you agree with a simple pantload like Kunstler.
FRegards,
LH
“Did they have an inkling that an oil-and-gas crisis is upon us and just not give a shit?”
Yep, that’s me! I work too damn hard and if I want to blow through $500.00 in gas in an afternoon, that’s my business.
Now buzz off!
Simple. Water skiing is worth $4/gallon and how I spend my money is none of his dammed business.
Sure. High energy prices couldn't possibly be blamed on the party that steadfastly refuses to expand oil exploration and production, build new refineries or construct nuclear power plants...
“simple pantload like Kunstler”
Heh.
bttt
Wow, he feels sorry for Obamaa**hat if he gets to the WH. He should feel sorry for the citizens of this once great country. I would just as soon knock a**hats like this out as to listen to their BS.
Does this guy, Kunstler think that we should all just sit home & not enjoy life while we can? Its not like we can get the gas & store it. Shaking my head again. I don’t like this guy at all. He sounds like a doke.
James Howard Kunstler (born 1948) is an American author, social critic, and blogger who is perhaps best known for his book The Geography of Nowhere, a history of suburbia and urban development in the United States. He is prominently featured in the peak oil documentary, The End of Suburbia, widely circulated on the internet. In his most recent non-fiction book, The Long Emergency (2005), he argues that declining oil production is likely to result in the end of industrialized society and force Americans to live in localized, agrarian communities. He has written a science fiction novel conjecturing such a culture in the future, World Made by Hand in 2008.
I have been on Windermere, in the Lake District of England, where “petrol” has been over $5.00 per gallon for at least a decade. On a sunny summer weekend, you can cross the lake by jumping from one motorboat to the next.
People who love boating are going to find a way, even if it means stringent conservation elsewhere. Same with flying or anything else.
This kind of miserable anti-humanist is nestled comfortably in his hair-shirt and thinks all of the rest of us should join him.
James, how do you feel about nuclear power? Cheap, clean, domestic. (See: France.) I’m ready for an electric Porsche. Not that sitting in the dark eating berries and talking to the thirty other people in the commune doesn’t sound great...
Render Michael Moore here. Render him now. Pay less.
Kennedy said this??? HIS FAMILY IS THE MAIN IMPEDIMENT TO THE WIND FARMS OFF MARTHA'S VINEYARD AND THE OUTER CAPE!!!!
Where we are at..
A well known life long Freeper posts a disclaimer to having any views that support an obvious ultra Leftist view article.
: )
I'm guessing you meant the 'tower'! But grammar aside, hope you're making a living as a pessimist, 'cause you've certainly got a terminal case, that's coming thru loud and clear! (along with the terminal BDS, terminal liberal pap, and terminal capability to politicize the unpoliticizable). You were only saved by your termination of self deprecation! My diagnosis is that you've got a terminal case of watching Network TV! Easily cured by becoming a 'tower' of one of those mean nasty boats! I happen to have one that uses up a couple cups of your precious #2 diesel fuel every weekend! Oh and I also incorporate a 'wind turbine' (sail) into the weekend as well! Yep, it's a great cure for 'Network TV'...and It will definitely cure your other terminal diseases as well. so g'luck widat.
Oh, dear. Another tiresome Kunstler “Repent! Repent!” column. So what’s the water-skier supposed to do, drown himself?
Welcome to the Kunstler/Obomba/Gore/Reid agrarian Utopia. You'll only be allowed one child but it's okay if he has two heads.
Well he’s free to sit in a cave and suck rocks now isn’t he? ; )
Yes he is & no orange creamcicles for him. Lmao & a WEFG!
Crisis? What Crisis? Just because it is expensive don't mean there ain't lots of it.
so now the “little people” aren’t supposed to enjoy water sports either. No driving, no boating, no heat in the winter or AC in the summer. Why don’t the liberals just heard us all into a pen and gas us?
Oil has not peaked.
What has peaked??
The ability, character and ethics of the people in our national government has peaked.
Let me assume the following, just as a thought experiment:
1. This peak oil thing is real.
2. There will be no more major technological breakthroughs, but we will be able to scale up existing technologies.
So does society collapse and we have a massive die-off? Hardly. In the worst case scenario, we already can get diesel fuel from algae at $20 a gallon. Most people would have to drive hybrids and plug-ins to get by, but we know how to make those. We also have coal-to-gas technology and nuclear power.
The result? Suburbia wouldn’t die, but it would change. We’d have a lot more telecommuting and local work centers. People would plant more crops on their property for local markets.
While I think that Mr. Kunstler has some interesting ideas, and while I agree with him on certain topics including architecture and various social issues, I don’t happen to share his gloomy forecast of the future. I have faith that God will preserve Christian civilization, and that most of us will somehow manage to muddle through to a happy senescence.
I still believe in the future. As the father of a little boy, I would be derelict in my duty if I did not.
So very well put.
Clearly, a preposition is something you should never end a sentence with.
For later read and comment.
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