Hello from yet another voice from the wilderness. The issues in this diary have all been raised and examined here at length by other diarists. Nobody, to my knowledge, has yet connected the dots to reveal the full terrifying picture.
Not to be alarmist -- for the record, notions of apocalypse or armageddon in any religious sense are ludicrous to me -- but we have passed the point of no return. Geopolitically, things are now FUBAR, and the situation cannot be undone. Call me a Chicken Little. Believe me, I wish I were wrong.
First, let's delineate the major factors that play into what's coming:
- At root, it hinges on limited access to oil. Not only is production unsustainable, but recent political events surrounding the Middle East will strain supplies SEVERELY in the not-too-distant future. When Iran and Saudi Arabia square off through their Iraqi proxies, say goodnight to cheap and easy oil. Other variables play in, but the fuse fast burning toward the powder-keg in the Middle East is the biggie.
- The utter inability of the American government to deal effectively with crisis is glaringly obvious after Katrina. The Bush administration has exacerbated it, but this problem extends well beyond Heckuva Job Brownie; it is structural. The bureaucracy is so overwhelmingly large, corrupt, and inefficient that the right hand really doesn't know what the left is doing. Furthermore, resources are strained thanks to the war. Does your state's National Guard have the personnel and materiel to carry out effective relief operations? Mine doesn't. Not anymore.
- American people are not prepared. This is actually an understatement. Babes in the woods, we depend entirely on an economic infrastructure that is crumbling beneath our feet. Ask yourself the questions, "Could I feed myself if my money lost its value or if the supermarket shelves were bare? Could I protect myself if marauding bands of desperate people came after what I have?" For me personally, the answer is no on both counts. Not that I advocate building a shelter in Montana and stocking it with guns and canned goods; the simple fact is that the easy life has made us weak.
- The dynamics of desperation will play out on a global scale. All nations do what they must to protect themselves.
If you have read this far, the ramifications of the above factors should be obvious, but let's delineate in brutal detail the likely outcomes.
Let's take a peek at what life will be like:
Forget about driving everywhere. You won't be able to get gas at any price. Your way of life will be drastically altered because limited oil supplies will need to be used wisely, i.e., to produce food and to fuel the armored vehicles and helicopters that will be needed to maintain order in our streets.
Your food was coaxed out of the ground through the magic of petrochemistry. Most farm land in this nation is now essentially sterile. Only the massive application of petrochemicals makes the breadbasket full. If you do not believe this, examine a fallow corn field -- any fallow corn field. What you will see is something like a parking lot populated by the mummified (not rotting because the soil is dead) stumps of corn stalks. Any pasture around it will be full of weeds, but not the corn field. It's deader than a doornail by design: Corn and only corn should grow in the industrial corn field. The same is largely true with other crops, but corn is the Big Momma of them all so it makes the best example.
Farmers are already unable to farm. We erudite city slickers here on DKos probably aren't aware of that, by and large.
So what happens when oil becomes not only expensive but scarce? What happens when tankers not making their way out of the Persian Gulf with any regularity? Answer: hunger. Here. In America. Get used to the idea. Sure, sure, we still produce a lot of oil domestically, and agriculture will probably take priority in a time of emergency.
In such an emergency, farmers will farm at the barrel of a gun. Pretty much, farming as a free enterprise will be a goner once oil supplies tighten. The emergency management apparatus will demand it, doling out fertilizers and pesticides to farmers in exchange for their crops. The only seeds that will sprout vigorously in this scenario will be those of discontent.
What does this mean for you, Citizen? How does the prospect of walking a few miles to get rations handed out by people with guns strike you? Of course, the army and police will get first crack at food, but if you're lucky, there might be some left for you.
What the hell does any of this have to do with event horizons? The event horizon is the point of no return; once light passes it, it cannot escape the black hole. We could have probably avoided the now-inevitable mess that is to come had we made wiser decisions as a society. We could conceivably have altered our way of life, developed an energy-efficient economy, pursued an international climate of cooperation, developed alternative energy sources -- these actions might well have kept us from getting sucked in to the black hole we're now entering. Oh well, shoulda, coulda, woulda...
When did it become inevitable? Maybe those of us who survive can debate that in 20-30 years. In my opinion, the "election" of Bush in 2000 does not constitute the moment of no return, though it certainly speeded things up.
Since it would have taken a long time to make the changes described above, in my estimation, the event horizon was crossed around 1980, when the Reaganistas decided that a military buildup and profligate drilling would be the best way out of the energy crisis. If the Clinton administration had not essentially continued these policies -- lowering CAFE standards and birthing the SUV explosion, among other things -- it might have made a difference, but probably not. We hit the fork in the road back when we had to choose between Jimmy Carter and his sweater and Ronnie Raygun and his morning in America.
Pretty soon we're going to be mourning America. Life will be very, very different by 2008. Sad to say it, but short of miraculous revolutions in food production and propulsion technology, there is no way out at this point.