Tainted Saints

“Imagine the scene, perhaps two decades from now. After years of gradually lengthening brownouts and blackouts, your town’s power has been down for days, and no one knows if or when it can be restored. No one is even sure if the blackout is statewide or nation-wide, because radio broadcasts have become more sporadic. The able members of your community band together to solve the mounting practical problems threatening your collective existence. You hold a meeting.

Someone brings up the problems of water delivery and wastewater treatment: the municipal facilities require power to supply these essential services. A woman in the back of the room speaks: “I once read about how you can purify water with a ceramic pot, some sand, and charcoal. It’s on a website….” Her voice trails off. There are no more websites.

The conversation turns to food. Now that the supermarkets are closed (no functioning lights or cash registers) and emptied by looters, it’s obviously a good idea to encourage backyard and community gardening. But where should townspeople get their seeds? A middle-aged gentleman pipes up: “There’s this great mail-order seed company—just go online….” He suddenly looks confused and sits down. “Online” is a world that no longer exists…”

Full article…

In the spring of 2005, Rolling Stone published a piece called ‘The Long Emergency’, which was about the potential ramifications of Peak Oil. Although I had three books at the time in my Amazon.com Wishlist about Peak Oil, I didn’t really grasp the gravity of the issue, and never actually read any of the books. I also tended not to read the essays in Rolling Stone because they always had so many words, but something about Kunstler’s piece made me begin reading, and then I couldn’t put it down. When I was finished, my heart was racing, and I felt sick to my stomach. And my priorities would never be the same…

It turns out that Kunstler is a racist, sexist bastard who is given to generating as much sensationalism and hysteria about Peak Oil as he can muster. Which doesn’t mean there aren’t some hard truths to be found in what he says, or that we shouldn’t treat this issue with deadly seriousness, but you have to weed through the copious amounts of garbage in his books and podcasts to get to it. Nonetheless, I recommend reading this article because I think we all need to be shaken to the core about what our future could look like – not 100 years from now, but just around the corner…

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency

Rapid economic and population growth are increasing demand for energy in Saudi Arabia, which could ultimately impact the amount of oil exported from the country if new reserves aren’t discovered soon.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6eb3bd10-aeea-11de-96d7-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Where they already have a network of high-speed trains, and clotheslines are the norm. Maybe they’ll still let us visit sometimes (at least until the jet fuel runs out…)

http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE5942I920091005

Have you noticed that the price of gasoline has been increasing in recent months, slowly but steadily? Have you wondered why that is, given that the “fundamentals of the economy” seem to be getting weaker by the day, and demand is about as low as it can be, with growth at a virtual standstill? Michael T. Klare, author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet, has something to tell you….

http://tomdispatch.com/post/175117/michael_klare_energy_xtremism