We’re living in a time of mass insanity, when people buy a “nice new car” despite knowing about global warming and diminishing oil supplies.  Consuming plastic is insane as well, as we let petrochemicals into our bodies for the sake of convenience.  People have an innate understanding or suspicion that consuming crazy amounts of petroleum -- even just plastic -- is wrong ecologically and morally.  Although they don't see petroleum going up in flames before their own eyes, they are building their own coffins and calling it employment.  People have deadened their spirits and must pretend life is still alright, at least compared to the lot of Iraqis and Afghanis. 

(Fortunately, telling a waiter or shopkeeper that we are allergic to plastic works every time when one is trying to avoid the toxic petroleum.  We are actually all allergic to plastic and other petrochemical toxins, but if you just want your coffee in a non-dioxin or non-styrofoam cup, it’s better to refrain from constantly educating.)

System Collapse x 2: birth of a new age

There has been a lot of overbreeding going on, especially when land has only been getting scarcer.  Although die-off upon petrocollapse is not a pretty vision, there will be plenty of land to go around for the future culture of sustainability.

Fortunately, peak-oil nay-sayers and confusionists are going out of style even more rapidly than the global-warming nay-sayers and confusionists dwindled to a few resolute, fossil-industry paid talking heads.  The pace of change only accelerates.

However, despite progress in our collective understanding and recognizing the need for action, we are at the end of the necessary time period for restructuring the nation’s infrastructure.   

Robert Hirsch, whose study for the U.S. Dept. of Energy was mentioned but unidentified in USA Today’s top story of Oct. 17, 2005 on peak oil, pointed out that waiting for peak to hit and then try to take traditional government/industry action will be not only a failure but will result in severe hardship for the whole petroleum-dependent nation and world.  Hirsch's study is strong on examining petroleum industry trends, and analyzes the effects of car dependence (25% of U.S. oil use in terms of fuels).  But the report does not raise an alarm about food production and distribution.  Welcome to petrocollapse, my friends.

Some in the U.S. government do understand the bigger picture on petroleum and the threats to continuing business as usual.  Congressman Roscoe Bartlett has started to gain valuable adherents in the House of Representatives.  Congressman Bartlett, imagining the world's opinion of the U.S.'s gluttony of petroleum, told me this nation must surely appear to the rest of the world as a big pig that the world would not mind seeing suddenly deflate and fall. 

Much more of these honest, open assessments of peak oil and our common plight need to be made and shared.  Or we can glue our eyes to televised World Series baseball and watch car ads.  We can wish to believe that terrorism happens because our (dwindling) freedom is hated.  Actually, some of us home-grown Americans are getting to hate our "freedom to shop."

The unraveling of Earth’s delicately balanced climate is underway.  Concurrently, the socioeconomic system is under considerable strain on its way to collapse.  In the absence of government planning for a world unable to grow nearly as much food as is required, due to dwindling petroleum and global warming – while population continues to mushroom – we can sit back and wait for double, total collapse.  Or we can hasten change toward a future by getting through collapse sooner, by living as if the post-petroleum future were already here.  Withdrawing our daily support of the growth economy can have serious and beneficial effects.

Where is the outrage, the militant opposition to this deadly system?  In the 1960s sacrifices were made for social change.  Black Power activists not only demonstrated their right to bear arms, but did it to call attention to suffering under racism in hopeless communities.  So, a contemporary activist today could reject poisoning by plastic and fight the encroachment of cars upon the common land.  Even if one was put off by the Black Panthers and their rhetoric and rifles, most of us now can agree that taking some kind of serious, peaceful action for the climate and to deal with petrocollapse is essential.  This is a new crisis across the board, and it’s not about leftism or rightism. 

Effective activism today challenges the culture of greed and waste, no matter who indulges in it.  There are plenty of us trying not to play the game of consumerism and marching meekly off to slaughter (i.e., being trampled in a food riot when the trucks don’t roll in to the supermarkets).  What happened to our animal spirit that ordinarily would resist threats to our freedom and survival?  We also point the way to cooperative solutions rather than competition.  Modern humans need to re-form into tribes or establish a culture with tribal values, and also enforce peace.

We appear to be a tremendously weak generation, but exceptional individuals and groups persist.  However, we are surrounded by idiots who think success means being able to consume a fancy coffee drink in a “nice car,” polluting on their way to the corporate job.  Granted, it’s hard to live apart from the dominant system, but why participate to the hilt?  Turn off the lights and pull the plugs already!

If survival in an anti-nature society is doubtful -- it is increasingly obvious -- doesn't it make sense to move toward a natural way of living and to defend nature?  This must not be ignored by peak oil experts and renewable energy advocates.  One can say that it's difficult or even unrealistic.  But rejecting it means annihilation.  Historically speaking, this is a culture of poison -- of our bodies and nature -- and overpopulation:  This will be more of a legacy than "The Gipper's" Hollywood smile or whether same-sex marriage is ever allowed in the military.

If we keep listening to the narrow-interest "leaders" who represent the short-term profiteers and exploiters, the oppression continues until all is lost. 

The mask of legitimacy and of fairness has been slipping from the Bush regime and the whole government, as continuing greed and “order" become the clear purpose of the dominators and their system.  It is not merely a matter of bad policies, but rather the raison d'etre that we must question regarding the system of economics and government.  The Democrats are just as much a part of the beast as the Republicans, as the "left hand" is encased in a velvet glove of the "good cop."

The police state is bankrupt on many levels and ought to be abandoned before petrocollapse gives the state another purpose for attempted, botched governance -- it is too late for anything constructive by the government except perhaps to allow sustainability measures that are now illegal under zoning laws.

The destruction of good soil and drainage through paving and antiquated industrial agriculture are ridiculous features of the short-term fossil-fueled affair humans are engaged in.  Our abusive relationship with Earth is starting to yield the equivalent of the greatest backlash that any criminal rapist could ever imagine.  Meanwhile, to undo the over-pavement and free the land is illegal, oftentimes even when it is "your" land.

Peak oil and petrocollapse demand reforms verging on fundamental redesign of human habitat.  To understand peak oil, to accept petrocollapse and visualize a post-petroleum sustainable culture, we must appreciate how horribly destructive is the present society.  To understand how unjust and wasteful is the dominant social system is to advocate its soonest replacement by its opposite: a nature-oriented, egalitarian and tribal society organized along local economics.  This vision was clearly offered by various speakers at the Petrocollapse NYC conference Oct. 5th. 

The failure of the dominant system is understandable when people are hopelessly attached to the global economy, willingly or without question, and cannot deal with the reality of petroleum’s failure to endlessly accommodate economic growth.  They have a religious conviction that there will be a technological fix even though the climate collapses.  This notion was dispensed with by the speakers at Petrocollapse NYC.

The inability of the system’s ardent practitioners to change course is shown by their tolerance for killing-machines – cars – to be allowed to run around everywhere.  Such tolerance of nature’s subjugation and risk of fatal crashes and animal slaughter suggests this must be a culture of hate.  At least, a complete lack of taste.  The antecedents of dominator-culture (centered around Mesopotamia) assured that a greedy, materialistic culture would come along to enslave the whole Earth.  Now, to fuel needless driving, the leading force in Western Civilization (the U.S.) is like a serpent biting its tail: Iraq, the origin of the civilization, subject to its deadly invader.