The only thing falling apart here is the alternative right. Yet again I'll take on the thankless task of correcting the stupidity and hatred that's become a feature of the 'far right.'
"America was a Garden of Eden with nothing but flowers, trees and vegetation. We bit into the forbidden fruit of oil over a century ago. It has been a deal with the Devil. Oil brought immense wealth, rapid industrialization, 2.7 million miles of paved roads, and enormous power to America. But, now the SUV is running on empty. In the not too distant future the downside of the deal with the Devil will reveal itself. America was the land of the free and home of the brave. Now it is the land of the Range Rover and home of the BMW. In a few years it could be the land of the forlorn and home of the broken down."
Apparently dramatically improving our lives by taking an unused, useless mineral out of the ground and turning it into the greatest nation on Earth full of brilliant beautiful white children was a 'deal with the devil.' Progress is evil. Civilization is evil. Technology is evil. We're evil for making use of any of it. Yay white nationalism, what a rallying cry to get behind. As usual, 'in a few years' our entire country is going to break down. He'll still be saying that a few years from now. Then he'll still be saying that a few years from then. It will always be 'in a few years.' The doom and gloom chorus only knows one note.
This time the way we're all going to die is the mythical 'peak oil' crisis. Oil production hasn't actually peaked yet, but it will, 'in a few years.' At which time apparently the world will end. Apparently there are no viable alternatives to oil. The synthetic gasoline Germans made from coal during World War II is a delusion. It never happened. Such solutions are impossible. We'll all just have to die instead.
"Americans could not survive for a week without oil. Commerce in the U.S. depends upon long haul truckers. Food is transported thousands of miles to grocery stores. The cheap Wal-Mart crap is transported thousands of miles across the seas from China."
It's inconceivable that we could switch to alternative fuels when we start to notice our oil supplies are running low. Nope, apparently we'll be caught suddenly by surprise, our entire economy built around oil, which will all of a sudden disappear overnight. This is a 3 year old's view of the universe. Note the smarmy attack on Wal-Mart. Apparently buying cheap clothes, food, and school supplies is beneath the 'far right.' Everything needs to come from some brand store at three times the price so they can show off their pedigree. Poor people don't have the right to comfortable lives or commercial goods. They should just do without I guess, since they can't possibly afford what they 'should' buy according to Mr. Elite.
"American people are sleepwalking into a future of hardship and turbulence. The Long Emergency will change everything. Globalism will wither. Life will become profoundly and intensely local. The consumer economy will be a strange memory. Suburbia – considered a birthright and a reality by millions of Americans – will become untenable. We will struggle to feed ourselves. We may exhaust and bankrupt ourselves in the effort to prop up the unsustainable. And finally, the United States may not hold together as a nation. We are entering an uncharted territory of history."
No, the American people are letting the free market decide when oil alternatives like electric cars, biofuels, syngas, and the like should replace oil by waiting for the price curves to cross. This is eminently sensible, as there's no point in not using cheap oil while we have it. We aren't sleep walking. We're responding to supply and demand, availability. The fact remains that oil is still cheap and plentiful. When oil supposedly runs out, people's behavior will change and our consumer goods will adjust accordingly. The same thing that happened with whale oil before it.
The cost of shipping is lower than these people can possibly imagine. Moving products across an entire ocean is cheaper than moving it a few miles inland. I'm not sure what the exact mileage is, but basically California and China are more 'local' than California and Nevada. Supposing oil really did become too expensive, ships could just run on nuclear power like our navy does, problem solved. Water brings nations together, it doesn't divide them. This has been true since the days of the Roman Empire. Again, only 3 year olds see a deep blue sea, say "scary water will drown me," and assume globalism will magically wither just because the price of oil goes up. The constant predictions of starvation have been going on since the 1970's and they've been false every time. For one thing, we could all use a good diet. If Americans ate half as much they'd be twice as healthy. So there's a quick fix to our coming food shortages. I'm sure he also knows that we could eat less meat and more crops that are lower down on the food chain and thus more energy efficient. We could also start farming on top of city rooftops and other locations, once the price of food became worth the heavy manual labor or high-tech hydroponics. Wherever there is water, sunlight, and soil there is food. All of these materials are abundant. The only reason we don't make more food is because we waste half of the food we make already and eat too much of the rest, so there's no point making more.
"The age of fossil fuels is about to end. There is no replacement for them at hand. These facts are poorly understood by the global population preoccupied with the thrum of daily life, but tragically, too, by the educated classes in the United States, who continue to be by far the greatest squanderers of fossil fuels."
About to end? In a few years maybe? But this is ridiculous. Our regular surveys of fossil fuels indicate we still have 50 to 100 years in reserves readily available. No doubt we'll discover more as time goes by. This is hardly an incipient crisis 'about' to crash down on anyone. By the day it arrives, we'll have switched to alternative, sustainable energy anyway. What does he mean by 'no replacement at hand'? We have nuclear power, which has been a viable replacement since the freaking 1950's. We have wind power, which is already price competitive with coal. We have solar power, which is coming on strong. We have all sorts of more remote ideas that could be used in a pinch. No replacement?
"Our entire civilization will collapse in a week without oil. Try to imagine life if the 159,000 gas stations in the country ran dry. We are running on fumes and refuse to acknowledge that fact. We sooth our psyche with delusions of green energy (solar, wind, ethanol); drill, drill, drill mantras; abiotic oil theories; and vast quantities of shale gas."
But of course, this assumes we will run out of gas all of a sudden. Rather than slowly over decades of time, with plenty of time to change our economy to a non-oil standard. It's absurd to equate the two situations. There is nothing oil can do that other materials can't. Even plastic can be made without oil. We only use oil because it's so useful, not because we need it. Slightly more expensive alternatives are ready and waiting in the wings. But apparently all of these alternatives are just delusions. The 20% of energy provided by Wind Power in Denmark is just a delusion. France's nuclear power driven economy is a delusion. The natural gas in Pennsylvania is a delusion. They apparently don't really exist. He has secret knowledge, unbeknownst to us little people, that all of these claims are just government conspiracies pretending there are alternatives to oil when there really aren't any. We're so privileged to have access to his special knowledge.
"How will Americans survive without the 7,500 Pizza Huts, 5,000 Dairy Queens, and 8,000 7-11s that dot our highways? The average Joe is so busy tweeting, texting, and face-booking on their iPads, Blackberries, and laptops, watching Dancing With the Stars on their 52 inch HDTV bought on credit, or cruising superhighways in their leased Hummers to one of the 1,100 malls or 46,000 shopping centers, that they haven’t paid much attention as peak oil crept up on them."
His dripping hatred for ordinary Americans really comes through on this one. It isn't that he's worried about the effects of peak oil, he's gloating about peak oil, he's exulting in peak oil. Like Tim Wise celebrating the beautiful music of old white people's heart beats stopping, the far right has gone full circle and wants to genocide America too, rather than prevent genocide, which was its original purpose for being. What is wrong with pizza, ice cream, slurpees, telecommunications, computers, and TV's? What's wrong with enjoying life? What's wrong with enjoying the conveniences of modernity? What's wrong about staying in touch with your friends and family? What's wrong with an entertaining evening after a hard day's work? Apparently everything. Apparently we should instead be panicking about oil prices all day every day. Because there's so much ordinary Americans can do to solve it, after all. If we would just turn off our TV's and stop texting each other, I'm sure we could all go out and dig a new oil well in our backyards tomorrow. Or maybe invent a new, more efficient solar cell -- though he seems to rule out all possible progress as a 'delusion.' So really I don't know what he wants us to do other than die. We can't watch TV, we can't come up with a replacement to oil even if we do stop watching TV, and we can't feed ourselves once oil runs out. Is there anything left but to die in his world?
"The sprawling suburbia that now houses the American population will become not viable when oil prices rise above $200 per barrel. Out-of-town shopping and entertainment malls will be deserted."
I'm going to laugh when oil hits $200 a barrel and nothing happens. The forces keeping the suburbs away from the inner city have to do with race, not economics. He's apparently blind to this all-important fact that America would rather die than desegregate.
"The United States is already tottering, as the oligarchy of the Wall Street banking syndicate, global mega-corporations and corrupt political hacks in Washington DC have pillaged the wealth of the country and left a middle class gasping for air."
When I look out the window I don't see America 'tottering.' I see a thriving economy, a wonderful midterm election result, a great fall football season, a new WoW expansion, a solid Wheel of Time book, in short:
It's all a matter of perspective, now isn't it? If you hate everyone and everything, I suppose America could be 'tottering,' 'corrupt,' and 'gasping for air.' But any objective portrayal of America would point out that we're still the richest country on Earth, that our corruption indice is one of the lowest on Earth, and that we just had a peaceful transition of power from one party to another without a hitch, the best possible symptom of a stable society. What exactly does he want? A personal rainbow that floats over his head at all times to reassure him that there is light and color in this washed-out dreary world?
"We are entering an era of strife, war, chaos and destruction."
Oh spare me. The world has never been so peaceful. This is just by the numbers. Fewer people are dying by violent conflict per capita than all of human history. This is such bullshit. This is such mendacious lying shit. We don't get credit for anything we're doing right and we get blamed for stuff that isn't even wrong, like eating pizza. We are given the most unbelievable prophecies and then told they are inevitable and there's nothing we can do to stop them anymore, which makes you wonder why he even bothered to write about it.
"Mr. Kunstler believes that the U.S. will be forced to downscale, localize and adapt to a new reality. I wholly support his attempt to warn the American people and would urge those who chose to think that preparing for a more agrarian lifestyle that will be forced upon us by circumstances is essential. No technological miracle will save us from our fate. Decades of inaction will have a price. I truly hope that his optimism that hardship will renew the American spirit will reveal itself:"
Ah, so HERE'S the solution to the coming war, chaos, and destruction. We should all go back to farming, like the Medeival Era. I suppose we'll have to do it all by hand since there's no replacement for oil. But that's okay, because bending over to hoe weeds for a living is a chance at spiritual renewal. Art and culture can't do it, but backbreaking, mindless labor always brings us closer to God.
Honestly, I prefer Tim Wise's future.
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