Via a link at Wolcott's blog, comes this article from James Howard Kunstler at Rolling Stone: The Long Emergency.
In this rather long, but exceeding important article, Kunstler posits that we're all whistling past the graveyard with the current runup in gas prices. World peak oil production is here - or has already passed. We didn't plan, prepare, and no one told us about it. And now we're on the verge of being royally screwed; lifestyle changes that none of us comfy Westerners could have ever imagined ten or twenty years ago are upon us.
I'm going to tackle this entire topic in a great deal of depth (in fact, the topic is quickly becoming an obsession for me), but for the moment here's a couple of pointers to two other resources that back up Kunstler:
Peak Oil - a website for energy industry insiders that covers the broad topic of energy production and consumption.
Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management - the Department of Energy Study which is the basis for Kunstler's article (.pdf file)
And, yesterday, Alan Greenspan stuck his nose into the current energy crisis - "let the markets be", is Greenspan's mantra. Anymore, when I see Greenspan's face on the tube, I know I'm about to take a big personal hosing. It's becoming more and more apparent that freemarketer Greenspan is bound and determined to be a prime driving force behind the establishment of a serf class.
It's starting to look like the revolution is coming sooner than even I might have thought. People like Greenspan have to be concerned. One of these days soon, someone with excellent market credibility is actually going to speak up, and there's going to be a major panic in all markets, commodity and financial.
Shoot, it's staring me in the face every time I drive by my local gas station.
Anyway, go read The Long Emergency, then we'll talk. And if you haven't yet signed the Consumer Renewable Energy Tax Credits petition, please, please do so right now.
