The Crash: Its Cause and Promise |
by Jan Lundberg | |
06 April 2009 | |
From the perspective of a critic of car culture, the Depression -- and the petrocollapse that primarily caused it -- is insufficient as yet. Just look at the huge U.S.-made motor vehicles terrorizing the roads with a single occupant to this day. But, keeping our cool, let us examine trends and how to influence them.
Someone else besides Culture Change has seen the financial meltdown and the Depression as resulting from the record high oil prices that led up to $147 per barrel last July. The Wall Street Journal last week confirmed our view. Its analysis is based only on what happens to housing prices and commutes when gasoline prices stay high. We need not limit our analysis to gasoline or housing. Petroleum products all rose and gouged the economy hard. Direct and hidden subsidies were costing oil users much more than the nominal record prices. And today's prices are likely double or more than the posted prices. "This is what petrocollapse looks like." Prices had been swinging higher for a few years, enough to sap the economy of its accustomed cheap energy. It was after two months of financial collapse in late 2008 that I first began saying and publishing, "This is what petrocollapse looks like." However, with collapsed oil and gasoline prices, people could now forget some immediate stress: they now cared about money issues in general, rather that what has underpinned wealth all along: limited resources.
Yet, the oil-price/Depression connection has been missed by almost everyone, who thought that the mortgage bubble had caused a recession. But what enabled all that sprawling home and commercial building? Answer: cheap (subsidized) energy. What was the infrastructure involved? Answer: petroleum, through and through, that we also depend on perilously to feed ourselves. As peaking oil extraction is marked by an inexorable supply-decrease afterward, the end of economic growth is automatic. And industrial society is not set up for a steady-state economy that works with the ecosystem sustainably. This picture gets worse, a view I base on my previous career as an oil-industry analyst (I was called The Oracle by Chevron's Vice Chairman before I quit industry in 1987): - There's no substitute, on the whole, for petroleum and its ability to comprise so many "essential" products.Because of the potential for the worst outcomes from lack of preparing for petrocollapse now underway, the need for transitioning to a car-free society is urgent. And for the sake of the climate, the driver of the big bad American vehicle needs to be curbed. The car bubble may have burst, but there's no proactive policy or movement to follow through with intelligent planning. Another reason to not only end car culture but to pull the plug on the global-warming economy is that there's a better way of living than competing for dispiriting jobs. Most jobs exist to enrich the greedy few who are blinded by their own propaganda regarding civilization and science. (For positive survival-options, take a tour of CultureChange.org and other websites such as The Farm's Ecovillage Training Center's.) "Did the Oil Price Boom of 2008 Cause Crisis?"In commenting on the Wall Street Journal story, journalist Paul Nellen wrote, "It was quite clear from the very beginning that the oil price shock in 2008 and the financial collapse last year have been strongly connected. No one talks about it because this finding could cause major anxieties and even political unrest for the dark future to come." He credits the earliest prediction of today's crash and debt crisis to 2005 by Colin Campbell, the geologist who founded the Association for the Study of Peak Oil and Gas. Unfortunately, Campbell has been characterizing peak oil as "the beginning of the second half of the age of oil." I disagree, as we come from opposite ends of the oil industry. He was disappointed at Culture Change's 2002 project Committee Against Oil Exploration, as he still thought like an oil man. But in 2005 he published my essay "End-Time for the USA upon Oil Collapse - A scenario for a sustainable future." What can be good about the crash? People are getting closer together, doing more gardening, spending more time with one another due to less work, and -- crucially -- the environment gets a break. For example, the usual timber saies in the Pacific Northwest are not getting many bids, due to the construction downturn. Downsides include revenue loss for new schools. But why should there be new schools? We are going to have to limit population size and abandon endless growth. We can thus save the remnant of ancient forest essential to everyone's survival and continued evolution. Collapse is not a comfortable feeling. In Pittsburgh on April 4th an emergency call to police left three officers dead: After an argument between a son and mother over a dog's urinating in the house, the mother threatened to kick out the son. To back this up, she had the cops come and invited them in. Her son blew them away, and she stated he had been stockpiling guns and ammunition "because he believed that as a result of economic collapse, the police were no longer able to protect society." Michael Moore's movie Bowling for Columbine showed how gun happy so many U.S. citizens are. For their survival though dwindling resources and ecosystem crash as well, a community convergence would make more sense than individual arms maximization. And the lethal weapons known as cars need to be minimized now, for so many reasons. One more reason: don't let the pollution-industry corporados laugh all the way to their banks! * * * * *
"End-Time for the USA upon Oil Collapse - A scenario for a sustainable future" Culture Change Letter #100, by Jan Lundberg:
Did the Oil Price Boom of 2008 Cause Crisis?", Wall Street Journal: The Farm's Ecovillage Training Center: thefarm.org This report is Culture Change Letter #247
This article is published under Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. See the Fair Use Notice for more information.
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