[A-List] Bad Times Coming

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

by Charley Reese

King Features Syndicate (March 03 2004)

One of the things the Bush administration is ignoring is the coming
catastrophe that is likely to impoverish the world and plunge it into
global warfare.

It will be the end of civilization as we know it, and it will occur in
this decade or the next. Not since the fall of the Roman Empire will
human progress so forcefully and quickly reverse itself. I'm talking
about the end of the oil age.

Several experts now agree that world oil production will peak soon and
begin an unalterable decline. The price of oil will skyrocket, and as
the supply dwindles, some of the nations that can't afford it will try
to take it. Nation-states will be like starving hounds fighting over a
few scraps.

Things we take for granted, like electricity, the family car and air
transportation, will become unaffordable for the great mass of people.
Petroleum permeates our economy, not only in the form of gasoline,
diesel fuel and heating oil, but also in the myriad of petrochemicals
that are made from it. Many of these are essential to large-scale
agricultural production.

The impact of the loss of oil would be better understood if someone had
not mislabeled the Industrial Revolution. It was instead a fossil-fuel
revolution. Prior to that, in the course of human history, poverty had
been the norm. The only sources of energy were human and animal muscle,
wind and water. Oil and coal existed, of course, but no one knew how to
convert them into energy that could do work. That's why for most of
human history, slavery was universal.

Whatever work was to be done - agricultural or construction - had to be
done by human muscle, assisted, if they were available, by animals.
Water could be used to grind grain, and wind was the principle source of
propulsion on the seas. Since the human population was small, slaves
were considered simply as the spoils of war, a valuable commodity.

The invention of the steam engine, followed by the internal combustion
engine, the diesel engine and the electric motor, allowed mankind to use
fossil-fuel energy to do the work of civilization. At first the main
fossil fuel was coal, until cheaper oil put it into a secondary position.
Now our civilization is dependent on oil, and so is development. The big
net importers of oil today are the United States, China and Japan. As
other countries try to develop, they will need cheap oil, and so even as
supply peaks and then dwindles, demand is constantly increasing. That
spells skyrocketing prices, conflict and poverty.

For a more academic discussion, you might read the new book "Out of Gas:
The End of the Age of Oil" by California physicist David Goodstein.
Others in the petroleum industry are also forecasting the same thing.

President Bush, instead of trying to increase the profits of his
corporate oil buddies by opening up new areas for exploitation (which
won't amount to a drop in the bucket), should be mobilizing the nation
to face the coming crisis. Uninformed talk about hydrogen won't do it.
Goodstein points out that it takes the energy of seven gallons of
gasoline to produce enough hydrogen to do the work of one gallon of
gasoline.

What is needed is the equivalent of a new Manhattan Project, the
extraordinary government effort to develop the atomic bomb. The best
brains in America need to be mobilized to prepare the country for that
soon-to-come day when the world demand for oil exceeds the world supply.
Unless we can find alternatives - cheap, mass-produced alternatives -
Americans face a catastrophic decline in their standard of living, not
to mention a dangerous world in chaos and conflict.

If you think I paint too grim a picture, imagine what your household
budget will be like when the price of oil has climbed to a $100 a barrel.
It is an unfortunate truth of history that nations sometimes face
extraordinary challenges just when their political leaders are poorly
equipped by nature and nurture to deal with them.

http://reese.king-online.com/Reese_20040303/index.php

Please also see:

"The Coming Implosion of the American Empire" by Gary North,
lewrockwell.com (February 23 2004)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north249.html

"The Coming Financial Train Wreck (A Tale of Peters and Pauls)"
by Steven Yates, lewrockwell.com (March 06 2004)
http://www.lewrockwell.com/yates/yates91.html

"The Trade Tightrope" by Paul Krugman, New York Times (February 27 2004)
http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/022804E.shtml

"The social costs of globalisation" by Joseph Stiglitz, Financial Times
(London, February 25 2004)
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/CGI/wa.exe?A2=ind0403&L=vicug-l&F=&S=&P=52

"The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation" by Vandana Shiva,
ZNet Commentary (February 19 2004)
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2004-02/19shiva.cfm