(This is awesome, belongs up top... the Oil civilization is done... time to realize it! - promoted by Diane G)
The Oil Age is over. Running on the fumes of empty. It is a ghost empire. The Age of Ponzi-scheme fractional banking is over. The house of cards has collapsed. The emperor not only has no clothes, but he has no skin, bones or blood. He was always a mirage.
Civilization as we have known it in our lifetimes - the move toward centralization, globalization, authoritarianism - is at an end.
And while there is always a soldier who is killed on the last day of war or the first day of armistice, it does not change the fact the war was over when he died. Same too for some of us, because the end of civilization does not end like war with a stroke of a pen, but can linger for decades. So in the meantime, in the age of fumes, we might die before we see the truth, but the truth is, it's over.
And this is a good thing.
Look at our world today. At the height of human civilization, we are at the depths of humanity. Look at how many people live in abject poverty. How many people do not have access to clean, safe drinking water. How many live in squalor at the mercy of despots, war lords, corporations and indifference.
Look at how many in the greatest country in the history of the world; the richest country; the freest country; the kindest, gentlest country; find themselves against the ropes on the precipice of free-fall. How many jobs, homes, health and self-respect must be lost before we process the truth.
USA Today reports "Record number in government anti-poverty programs."
50 million Americans are on Medicaid, a 17 percent rise since December 2007.
40 million people get food stamps, a 50 percent rise.
10 million receive unemployment insurance, four times the amount that was recorded in 2007.
4.4 million people are on welfare, an 18 percent increase.
Politicians chant the election year mantra, "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" while they suck the teat of corporate largesse to marginalize the worker and maximize profit through outsourcing, downsizing and wage-slavery. They built a consumer society based upon the strength of unions, collective bargaining and the promise of a living wage over a minimum wage; the ability to buy a house on credit and to repay on time; to have money left over for the occasional night on the town, summer vacation and romantic splurge.
Now look where we are: people running scared, living on fumes, in cars or tents and the prospect of a bright future extinguished like human dignity is a by-product of prosperity and not an inalienable right.
Modern civilization was built on the back of Oil. And now that resource is going away and there is no plan to replace it. Alternative fuels? Clean energy? Nothing but empty promises of compromised politicians. Oil discovery peaked in 1964. America's oil producing capability peaked in the 70s. World oil production is peaking right now. Peak Oil is not a myth or theory. The numbers don't lie.
Why are they drilling for oil miles below the ocean's surface? Because the oil under dry land has already been discovered and drilled.
Oil Geologist Colin Campbell explains:
The one word they (oil companies) don't like is depletion. That smells in the investment community, who are always looking for good news and the image, and it's not very easy to explain all these rather complicated things, nor indeed do they have any motive or responsibility to do so. It's not their job to look after the future of the world. Their directors are in the business to make money, for themselves primarily and for their shareholders when they can. So, I think it's certainly true oil companies shy away from the subject, they don't like to talk about it and they are very obtuse about what they do or say about it. They themselves understand the situation as clearly as I do, and their actions speak a lot more than their words. If they had great faith in growing production for years to come why not invest in new refineries? There are few new refineries being built. Why do they merge? They merge because there's not room for them all. It's a contracting business. Why do they shed staff and outsource people? BP aims to have 30% of its staff on contract. This is because it doesn't want long-term obligations to them. The North Sea is rapidly declining. They don't like to say so, but I think only four wildcats were drilled this year (2002). It's over! It's finished! And how can BP and Shell and the great European companies stand up and say, well, sorry, the North Sea is over? It's kind of a shock they don't wish to make. It's not evil or there's no great conspiracy or anything. It's just practical daily management. We live in a world of imagery and public relations and they do it fairly well, I'd say.
From The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, pg. 27
Indeed. Thatcherism (privatization - which we now know is a complete failure) did not revive Britain's flailing economy in the 80s. North Sea oil did. America fended off foreign oil dependency and price fixing during the 80s because of the Great Alaskan oil field and pipeline, now already pumped past peak.
Your future is not in the daily commute to a low paying job miles down the dilapidated highway. It's in your backyard "victory garden" growing tomatoes to trade for some squash from your neighbor.
Don't you think there is a reason for all the talk about re-building infrastructure as part of a jobs-program stimulus package to revive our modern Great Depression era economy - and then not spending a dime on our highway/bridge infrastructure? They know. There is no future in highways and bridges because there is no future in automobiles because there is no future in oil.
We began with two trillion barrels of oil. We have used half that in the first one hundred plus years of the oil age. The world is now using 27 billion barrels of oil a year. According to the best information available, oil will be gone, the Oil Age over in 37 years. And not all the oil will be retrieved because of costs. The easy oil has already been got. Witness, the recent disaster in the Gulf. Do you they think they'd be drilling costly dangerous deep sea wells unless they had to?
The ratio of energy expended in getting oil out of the ground to the energy produced by that oil in the U.S. Oil industry as fallen from 28:1 in 1916 to 2:1 in 2004. This number will continue to decline.
The modern world, the industrial age, the consumer age, the information age is built upon access to cheap oil. The cheapness of oil has come at the cost of Colonialism and Western support of gluttonous dictators on Big Oil's payroll.
More than 60% of the world's remaining oil supply lies under the Middle East. The U.S. has 3% of the world's oil, but uses 25% of the world's daily oil production. Three times the amount of the next biggest oil consuming nation - China. With the rise of industrial China and its ever growing need for oil, mixed with the world's ever decreasing supply, is it any wonder we are at perpetual war half way around the world for all the fake reasons given to us by our politicians who can't give us the one true reason? Oil.
Your future is not driving to the mall to buy cheap goods from China. You'll be growing your own food, sewing your own clothes, purifying your own water, and using herbal remedies to cure what ails you.
The United States of America is the largest debtor nation on earth. The American people are under financial water to the tune of trillions owed to private banking cartels. The ONLY reason we are not yet in third world, banana republic conditions on the ground in America is because the U.S. Dollar is the currency used by most nations who trade in Oil. Petro-dollars. Countries of the world hold U.S. Dollars in reserve to purchase their oil. There is a move now to replace the Petro-dollar with other currencies or basket of currency/commodities because the devaluation of the Dollar over the last ten years has made it a lousy investment and skewed "free trade."
Do the math. Once there is no more oil to trade in dollars and countries begin to dump their dollar reserves the dollar will be completely worthless and a loaf of bread at the supermarket will cost $10,000. Hyper-inflation. Chaos. Collapse. The end of the good old U.S.A.
Like the next terrorist attack, it is not a question of if, but when.
It may sound like Hollywood Dystopia, but it is not. It is as simple as ABC, 1-2-3.
The best thing to do is end your distractions of the bread and circuses of politics, poontang TV and wondering what can be done to fix things.
The fix is in. And you are out.
It is time to organize at the local level. The country is not coming to save you because there is no saving the country. Running on empty can sometimes get you to the next gas station. But if there is no gas, then walking you will be.
Diane Gee's Wild, Wild Left is a Multi-authored collaboration of the Best and the Brightest moving the World to a Sane & Equitable Future for the World!
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