On Monday, June 7, 2004, at 01:42 AM, michaelP wrote:
It's already been happening. Very good this enormously belated recognition
of the ludicrous stronghold the desire to go anywhere anytime anyhow (cheap
available oil) in those selfish old-fashioned disgusting machines (cars) has
on us 'civilised' humans.
More than just the price of petrol at your local bowser, cheap oil means cheap road/rail haulage and international shipping as well as air travel, it means cheap food produced by mechanised industrial agriculture and nitrogen based fertilizers, more than underwriting the value of the US dollar and economy it upholds the world stock markets and banking system. Cheap oil has paid for our modern lifestyles since WW2. The end of cheap oil will mean a lot more than just buying a hybrid fuel cell car or car pooling to avoid the petrol queues.
At worst it could mean a complete global economic collapse sometime after 2010, middle class poverty and the breakdown of law and order, massive starvation in the third world and the unrestrained outbreak of global warfare with the risk of numerous 'limited' nuclear conflagrations. I hope your superannuation funds are secure, maybe you should convert your stocks to gold and start hoarding canned food and bottled water for your cellar bunker. And remember, in the event of a nuclear detonation just 'duck and cover'.
So be it (as Nietzsche once said much better), if
humanity perishes... All this hysteria over being able to go for a cheap
ride-thrill everyday in order to maintain some obscene notion of freedom or
to maintain wage-slavery in the same name of freedom, no matter what's been
obvious for decades if not generations.
Fuck!
Agreed, although the problems of power were evident to Roman critics a couple of millennia ago, and their Greek counterparts before that. Some things never change, but the scale certainly has, it's planetary now and our technological overreach is becoming absolute.
ps: sorry Malcom if I've not caught the entire drift of your piece but
infuriated over this. As if that (the oil prob) were the actual real
problem!
What can you mean by "progress"?
Did I mention "progress"? And what do you think is the 'actual real problem' apart from peak oil? I'm not sure I catch your drift here Michael.
Cheers,
Malcolm
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