Oil

there is something going on with the energy delivery systems in the world these days. from rolling blackouts in california, to the blackout in new york, and now an even bigger blackout in italy. what gives? there are still some questions regarding how 'real' the california energy crisis was. we probably won't know the extent to which that was caused by price gouging until those energy commission papers are pried from vp dick's cold dead fingers.

this guy thinks the end of the oil era is coming soon. it's hard to disbelieve him when all these blackouts keep cropping up. the thing that's scary about them is that they are preview of what will happen if periodic loss of power became a regular occurrence. kunstler thinks that a lot of people in our car-obsessed nation will react like 'vengeful crybabies' at the loss of their comfortable standard of living.

when you hear about people getting violent and looting once the lights go out for a few hours, it gets downright chilling to imagine what they'd do if the lights went out several times a month for days at a time. or if they just went out permanently. civilization is a thin veneer allowed only by the abundance of food, shelter, and other necessary resources. once people begin to view one another as competition for these things, life gets ugly.

are we up to the challenge as a nation to deal with the end of cheap energy? will we riot, smash windows, and crack heads out of an immature need to blame someone for a situation we're all responsible for creating -- a situation we collectively refused to deal with when we had ample time to develop technologies that could have replaced our petroleum global economy?

jimmy carter, i'm sorry your fabulous plan for addressing this problem over twenty years ago didn't work out. i'm sure a lot of other people will feel the same way within ten or fifteen years, if we even have that long.