Desperation

April 24, 2006
       America commuted back into the unknown country of $3-plus gasoline and $75-plus oil (per barrel) last week, and President Bush revisted the Tomorrowland of hydrogen cars in the absence of any reality-based response to the global energy crunch that will change all the terms of America's "non-negotiable way of life."

     Actually, we are negotiating, or bargaining, as Elizabeth Kubler-Ross once put it in describing the sequence of emotional reactions of humans facing certain death:

denial > bargaining > depression > acceptance

     Events seem to have dragged us kicking and screaming beyond the sheer denial stage, since this is now the second time in six months that oil and gasoline prices have ratcheted wildly up. Something is happening, Mr. Jones, and now we want to talk our way out of it.

     The main thread in this bargaining stage is the desperate wish to keep our motoring fiesta going by other means than oil. This fantasy exerts its power across the whole political spectrum, and evinces a fascinating poverty of imagination in the public and its leaders in every field: politics, business, science and the media. The right wing still pretends we can still drill our way out of this, if only the nature freaks would allow them to. The "green" folks thinks that we can devote crops to the production of gasoline substitutes, even though a scarcity of fossil fuel-based fertilizers will sharply cut crop yields for human food. Nobody, it seems, can imagine an American life not centered on cars.

     This is perhaps understandable when you consider the monumental previous investment in the infrastructures and equipment for motoring, which includes the nation's car-dependent suburban housing stock -- which in turn represents the average adult's main repository of personal wealth. If motoring becomes unaffordable, then what will be the value of my house twenty-eight miles upwind of Dallas (Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, et cetera)? The anxiety is understandable.

     But the problem is not going away. It's not five or ten years down the road -- it's here, now. We're in the zone. We're entering a world of hurt. The pain will ebb and flow, as the pain of a fatal illness ebbs and flows over the days. The price of oil and gasoline will ratchet up and down, but along a discernable upward trendline.

     Can we bust out of this narrow tunnel of fantasy? Can we imagine living differently? Can we turn more fruitful imaginings into action before the American scene becomes a much more disorderly place? It would be nice to see President Bush really lead by taking a well-publicized ride on the Washington Metro, or dropping in to visit an organic farm, or signing a bill to increase incentives for small-scale hydro-electricity, or turning loose some federal prosectors on WalMart's human resources department. It would be nice to see the Democrats put aside their preoccupations with gender confusion and racial grievance and start campaigning to restore the US railroad system. It would help to see the science and technology sector return from outer space. Corporate America and its leaders are probably hopeless, but so is the current scale and scope of their operations, and circumstances will decide what they get to do. The mainstream media, representing the nation's collective consciousness, remains in a coma. This morning's electronic edition of The New York Times displays not one home page headline about oil or gasoline prices, despite the trauma of the week just passed.

Comments

[Peter]

Hey folks, if the horror hasn't quite yet sunk in, watch this 5 minute video called Yu Koyo Peya http://www.karavans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=8 It has what you could call a happy ending, but the lead up in the description of PO collapse is quite disturbing.

DO NOT WATCH BEFORE BEDTIME!

[Xtraspatial]

RE: Anger stage:

In his excellent book, "Shoveling Fuel for a Runaway Train," ecological economist Brian Czech predicts that anger, disdain, and contempt will be directed at the "liquidating class" (the top 1% in terms of income) by the "steady-staters" (the bottom half in terms of income). His socio-anthropological extension of Darwinian evolution suggest that the females sympathetic to the steady-state, sustainable "cause" will choose to mate and have offspring not with those who are adept at buying things that aren't necessary for sustainable live, using up scare resources, combusting millenia of banked solar energy, and tossing threir offal into the garbage can the rest of us call Mother Earth, but rather choosing to reproduce with those who see the Earth as a closed system that can support no longer neo-classical economic growth.

I continue to be amazed that the generation that has the most at stake (in terms of years that they will likely live in a post-carbon world) is the least represented at conferences, community meetings, discussions, and gatherings relevant to issues of sustainability and Peak Oil. At a recent forum about "Thriving in times of Peak Oil" at SUNY-Albany, a group of two dozen was represented by no more than 5 or 6 college-aged attendees. Perhaps we need to inject a little of our own guilt into today's youth lest they grow up to share our collective denial and anger, and instead have them move quickly to acceptance of the "great challenge" embedded in redesigning their world in a new physical, cultural, and spiritual context.

References:
http://www.ucpress.edu/books/sale/pages/9057.html
http://www.steadystate.org/

[Peter]

"I've known lung cancer patients to smoke out of their tracheostomy while undergoing chemo and radiation attempts to save their lives."

Steve, I have a close friend who was a fisherman up until 40 in Alaska. After that died, he became an RV salesman in Pheonix. He's one of the best in the country at selling those huge monsters that go for $200K to $400K apiece. I keep waiting for him to tell me that sales are down due to gas prices, but it hasn't happened so far. Everyday more of those things are sold.

Funnily enough, last week he told me that he never looks at gas prices. When his BMW needs fuel, he pulls into a station and fills it up, all the while studiously avoiding looking at the prices.

[grok]

A Tykhyy sez
grok, different people can be at different stages simultaneously, one in denial another in anger yet another already bargaining...

I am refering to the "body" of the american politic, the masses...they are at the gates of denial still. They have little insight into the magnitude or the difficulty we collectively face.

Look for instance how long it took most amerikans to be "educated" on the costs and difficulties of the current Iraq war. Still a third of the populace thinks the Iraq war was a good thing after lies and deception, torture prisons, disappearances, propanganda exposed(tillman story), unbelieveable amount of money spent, oil production in Iraq FALLING, etc.

When 66 per cent of the populace realizes that the "american dream" has evaporated then we will be at another collective stage: ANGER.

Watch out...there will be hell to pay.

grok out.

[Patrick]

Great post JHK. A couple thoughts.

The more I follow the news on this issue and several others the more I see a convergence of several enormous problems--all of which have been successively put off by generations of citizens, policymakers, and governments.

1. The ongoing energy crisis. Everyone agrees it will happen, really more an arguement over how bad it will be and when.
2. The possible effects of global warming. Again, consensus about GW--only arguments are when, who/what caused it, and how bad.
3. US Federal debt and budget deficits. This one is easy-Americans caused it, but the world will suffer. When the US can't pull any more credit for itself out of thin air (unless the US forgives its own foreign debt-haha) this will negatively effect anyone and anything who uses/owns dollars.

These three problems have several things in common; they have massive scale, they're well-known, they're poorly understood, and everyone has used procrastination as the preferred modus operandi.

So, the real problem is not just a world-wide energy crisis--it's the convergence of three global problems in the areas of energy, climate, and finance. One of these problems by itself is a handful, but three is simply unworkable.

That's why I'm worried.

[Peter]

Speaking of denial, today Kenny Boy takes the stand in order to tell judge and jury that he had nothing to do with what was going on at Enron all those years he was in charge. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/24/business/24cnd-lay.html?hp&ex=1145937600&en=e6dcc3285c5a3d0b&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Last week, it was Skilling's turn to weep over how he had been duped by thieving underlings.

Denial: it's not just a river in Baghdad anymore.

[peak-a-boo]

grok, in some sense, 65% of the population "knows" about all the stuff on your list. But when the anger manifests as action, PNAC won't be on the receiving end. Probably not the rich, either, as they'll probably manage to wall themselves off.

No, Rush Limbaugh will sic the fools on other targets.

[Weaseldog]

Acceptance is seeing a situation for what it is, and living within it's constraints.

I grew up as a techno-optimist. I was a rabid sci-fi reader since the fourth grade. I read Heinlen, Niven, Sturgeon, Silverburg, Bradbury, etc... Most with a positive outlook on life. Most with happy feel good endings. Or so I thought.

Robert Silverburg introduced me to the dark side of Sci-Fi. IT was tough as a kid to get through his works. It was heavy into social stuff. But there was enough Sci-Fi in it to keep me reading. Then I read Starship Troopers and began to see there was another side to Sci-Fi (nothing like the movie). After that I discovered Richard Brunner and the world began to make more sense to me.

My journey from denial to acceptance has been long an painful. A bit like my journey to understanding that Santa Claus doesn't exist. It came in stages. I was first told that Rudolph didn't exist, then the reindeer weren't real, there was no sleigh, no elves, no Mrs Claus, no workshop. I think my dad was trying to spare me in working up to the big guy, but I grieved for each of these first.

And peak oil has been like that experience. It's been a constant realization that each aspect of our society, our comforts, are predicated on oil and gas. And virtually nothing that I know, nothing that I've been taught is my birth right, is real. None of it will come to pass. I'm also 43 and I know I will have no retirement. If there are golden years for me, it will because I will carve them out of a world that is reverting back to it's natural state.

Even the rich are not immune. Once the market collapsed, they became more shrill, angrier and put more pressure on the system to produce profit.

As Groucho Marx says it, "Politics is the Art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, misdiagnosing the problem, and applying the wrong solution".

And that will define the slide.

When the natural gas crisis fired a salvo accross our bow in 2000. Our politicians reacted by by subsidizing the energy industry to drill faster and build more gas powered electrical plants. Our chemical industry reacted by leaving the country and moving to Asia. Our speculators reacted by price gouging.

With the bird flu coming, the gov says it will cull backyard flocks to protect the factory operations. In effect, fighting a minimal threat by destroying genetic diversity in the domestic bird population. To save indoor mono-culture flocks, they are going to destroy the diverse genetic heritage of the tougher birds living outdoors. the very birds more likely to overcome and evolve past this disease.

Rather than invest in an infrastructure to reduce energy consumption domestically, we're investing war to suppress oil sales by competing muslim concerns, to jack prices for our rich masters and their allies.

And the people who are hurt first by these actions are the poor and those most in debt, living from paycheck to paycheck. So we have hispanics seeing much of their paychecks going to buy gas and the middleclass going to the pawn shops on Saturdays to buy gas, because their ARMS are jacked and they have no disposable income.

When the poor and middle class can't work anymore, they won't make it to the offices everyday. They'll be so depressed and angry that they won't do a good job at work.

This will lead to suffering by the higher income folks who will find it increasingly difficult to find good help that will work cheap. Folks won't be able to buy the crap they are selling and unless the Gov bails them out, they'll start losing second homes.

The wealth of this nation, rests upon the well being of all the classes. the better the lives of those at the bottom, the better the lives of those at the top.

We're living the parable of the house built upon a rock and a house built upon sand, as taught by Jesus.

In the US we've rebuilt this nation's foundation upon debt, upon the shifting sands of finance.

We've given up everything for borrowed money.

The lessons of our ancestors have fallen on deaf ears.

Those of us who wish to get through this, will have to live with acceptance, and learn to find paths in the world that is, not the world as we wish it to be.

One day at a time.

[Peter]

Weaseldog, you mentioned bird flu. Here's a quote from Ran Prieur:

April 20. Bad news (thanks Patricia): The purpose of the bird flu scare is to exterminate autonomously-raised flocks and force us to depend for survival on big agribusiness. This is exactly the same as "terminator" seeds or the massacre of the plains buffalo: Top-down systems are so inefficient and unpleasant that they can only survive by violently destroying all alternatives. And even then they can only survive for a little while. Luckily we're omnivores -- we can just eat stuff other than poultry and eggs until the bird flu and the Empire blow over and the backyard flocks return. http://ranprieur.com/

[grok]

grok sez nice post weaseldog.

I too grew up as a techno-optimist and read science fiction. As the 911 attacks were ocurring I flashed back to a sci-fi novel Stand on Zanzibar, guerillas would use technological innovations against itself...I thought to myself,"Now I am living in the future."

Flying cars, missions to mars, star trek require complex extensive societies to organize and fund them. They demand huge inputs of energy that will be MIA in the future.

Peak civilization has bloomed, but there is a slight wilting of the edge of the pedals.

grok out

[Weaseldog]

Thanks for the link Peter.

The Dallas Morning News had an article a week ago, buried in the back pages, that said that if backyard flocks had a bird that looked sick, they would cull the whole flock without testing. Just in case. Then went on to say that people should keep their birds indoors like the factory farms do.

This ignores the fact that close contact with sick birds is what is causing the bird to human transmission.

Someone sent me a series of links a while back, detailing the problems the factory farms are having with the bird flu in other countries. Some factory farms have lost all of their birds to the flu. Yet backyard flocks might lose a couple of birds and then they all recover.

The difference as you know is from genetic monoculture. The factory farm birds are so inbred that they are all susceptible to the same diseases. They are fed a constant diet of anti-biotics and this acts to suppress their immune systems.

Backyard flocks, even with heritage breeds of birds, have more genetic diversity and stronger immune systems.

And you're right, we can eat other things. Industrial food concerns could probably get licensed to start adding more insect products to foods to supplement the proteins. The public wouldn't even have to be informed if the labelling rugs are set up right.

[Tim Wolfe]

I shudder to contemplate what happens when we reach Kubler-Ross' third stage: depression. That's the point, I worry, when the social contract may not mean what it has for so long.

[Weaseldog]

Labelling regs...

[lco28]

You get a splinter in your foot and it hurts like hell pulling it out. But you're always better off after the pain subsides. Same will happen here-- just hope the pain in this case isn't fatal. I think the world JHK envisions after all the turmoil will be a vast improvement over the current edition.

[We Don't Need Them]

It amazes me how everyone here just takes it as a given that the rich will continue to lord it over the rest of us post-collapse.

"But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no reason to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves, like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose, they could blow the party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely, sooner or later, it must occur to them to do it? And yet....

— George Orwell, 1984

They steal our money, sacrifice our children in their wars, send the poorest and most victimized among us off to jail for petty mistakes, and crush those of us who might present a real threat to the arrangement. They know we don’t like it. They don’t care. They don’t need to care. They also control most of our avenues of dissent. It’s a very simple, very elegant design."

This is a must read: http://www.altpr.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=520&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0/

[EastCoastShock]

Well it can only be fair to say that certain people are at certain stages in the cycle. For example, the vast majority of the public are in denial. They think that they are entitled to a lifetime of cheap oil and gas. Hence, as an earlier poster noted, you have Charles Schumer investigating price fixing and other scary cartel-related stuff. Some now are moving towards anger, blaming the Republicans for the predicament.

"Enlightened" left-leaning folks, such as those at the Daily Kos, seem to think that if we just ran everything on ethanol, we'd be fine. No discussion as to the negative repercussions of devoting so much farmland to powering cars or whether such a project would even be feasible. "Brazil did it," they state confidently. It seems they are in bargaining mode.

Most of us here are either in depression or acceptance. I think it's possible to have both at the same time.

[peak-a-boo]

The rich won't dominate because they deserve to.

But they -- at least those who own something other than paper -- have the resources to buy some security in the short run. Longer term, I think class consciousness (in America) has been clouded with so many obfuscations that Cletus six-pack has no idea which side he is or should be on.

Slap a ribbon on your Camaro, cheer the Iraq war, call for an attack on Iran, and snicker when any suggests a draft becomes inevitable at some point.

Kunstler definitely has a point when he talks about our national religion of "something for nothing." Rush Limbaugh makes how much per year? And Cheney? Yet Cletus thinks these guys are on his side.

[Weaseldog]

We Don't Need Them, I think the ultra wealthy, are just selling off our nation for profit, until it's time to leave.

They don't live here now and don't need to live here in the future.

Folks like bush and cheney and others are rich enough to live anywhere also.

I believe it's a mistake to believe that these people love America more than money. America is a vision they sell to us on television. Go outside and look at America. It's all around you. Ask yourself, if I had a choice of where to live or die, beofre I came here, would this be the place? Would this be the best that you'd hope for?

Folks with billions in foriegn currency can live in all sorts of nice place. Buy whole towns and be El Patron. The big guy that decides for everybody. There's always a place for these people to go.

The rest of us are chained to mortgages or live where our ability to pay rent allows.

The ultra rich know freedom. We dream of it. Or tell ourselves that this is what freedom looks like.

And the hypnotic box helps to reinforce that ideal, as more our financial security is vacuumed from our lives.

[grok]

Grok sez
The progression is not what JHK says, it is this:
denial, ANGER, bargaining, depression, acceptance...

JHK please try to be more accurate when you quote other peoples work and draw conclusions...you just confuse people unnecessarily and weaken your arguments.
grok out

[peak-a-boo]

Don't forget: whatever stage of acknowledgement you are at today, the masses are months behind you.

Typical newspapers have numerous stories about oil every day. And ain't many of them with good news.

But how many average people do you think have any clue that these problems aren't temporary?

Perhaps there is a creeping malaise in the society, something playing out beneath explicit consciousness for lots and lots of people. But I don't think articulate awareness of the problem exists in more than 5% of American minds.

What are the thresholds for panic, mass anger, lawlessness, despair, catatonic resignation?

What will happen at 10% awareness, 25%, 50%? How quickly will the clue virus spread?

[grok]

peak-a-boo sez
What will happen at 10% awareness, 25%, 50%? How quickly will the clue virus spread?

Some tipping point will be reached. One can imagine a recession, high energy prices, inflation, and disasterous reversal of fortune in the ME triggering ANGER that will sweep those in power from the game board.

Our previous political and institutional relationships will be ashes in their mouths.
grok out

[We Don't Need Them]

Americans love to mock the French. But take a moment and ask yourself, who really has the guts to stand up for their self interests? The French recently held a two week long nationwide demonstration against the proposed labor law changes which would make it eaisier for companies to fire employees during their two year probationary period.

In the end the masses won, and the government caved in to their pressure.

Meanwhile what do Cletus & Lurlene do whenever they are sodomized by the few? They just take it and then try to numb the pain with TV and lord only knows what booze or controlled substances.

I am flabbergasted by how most Americans just take it year after year. Their rationale is always, "Well the 50 shareholders in the company had every right to move it to China and put 5000 of us out of work. The move was in the shareholders' best interests."

Here's my question: What about your best interests and mine?

Don't we count too?

On the one hand, we have shareholders with diversified portfolios of which but a tiny fraction are invested in a particular company. On the other hand, we have ordinary Americans whose lives are invested in those jobs.

Whose interests are more important?

While I cannot answer that here, I do continue to ask why the average American is so docile and reluctant to speak up on behalf of his own best interests?

By the way, French workers are more productive than American workers despite being much harder to fire. Plus they work fewer hours per week, have more vacation time, and enjoy universal health care.

So who are the real suckers?

[Betamax]

The French are a bunch of cheese-eating surrender monkeys. 'Nuff said.

CNBC just reported that percentage sales of large-engined V8 vehicles are the same as last year, so most are apparently still in denial. Cheers.

[grok]

We don't need them sez
In the end the masses won, and the government caved in to their pressure.

Yup, our glorious classless society has no need for labor unions, worker protections, vacations, health care, child day care, reasonable housing. We live in a glorius utopia ruled by the "invisible hand".

FREE THE MARKETS and a universal good will trickle down to you...unless you don't like being pissed on.

The amerikan middle class is going to have to suffer a painful "edumacation" in realizing there own self-interests.

But this scares the bejesus out of me because of the retarded nature of the amerikan body politic. We may have to suffer tyrants for the "learning" to procede and may fall farthur and faster than imaginable.
grok out

[Peter]

Weaseldog said: "The rest of us are chained to mortgages or live where our ability to pay rent allows.

The ultra rich know freedom. We dream of it. Or tell ourselves that this is what freedom looks like.

And the hypnotic box helps to reinforce that ideal, as more our financial security is vacuumed from our lives."

It's called the Tapeworm Economy. Catherine Austin Fitts coined the term. Back in the early 1980s, while at college, I stumbled across a fringe group of economists who saw the dangers of globalization and stressed the importance of the local economy. Whenever I brought up this viewpoint in class or outside, people looked at me as if I had just wet my pants and begun speaking in tongues.

The data now supports the early suspicions that globalization only benefits a few.
http://karavans.typepad.com/karavans/2006/04/the_tapeworm_ec.html

People need to wake up. To find out how the system works, just follow the money. There's a reason why the rich keep getting richer and the poor poorer under the present system.

I've been self-employed since the mid-1980s. I'm all for true free markets, it's too bad we don't have them anymore. It's all been corrupted. What we have instead is oligopolies, crony capitalism of the mosy blatant variety, and a poisonous trend towards concentration of capital in the hands of fewer and fewer.