I don’t agree with Kunstler’s total collapse theory. I think prices will rise and people will adjust. Priorities will be set. Alternatives that are too expensive right now, will become affordable.

The big question is what will happen to political stability of those oil producing countries (Mexico, Iran, etc) as their reserves run out and what effect will that have on us?

Dave

Curiously enough, most of the people I knew who were mortgaging themselves to the hilt were doing so because they could no longer make ends meet on jobs that paid less in real terms every year, could no longer afford the cars even on $0 down installment payments, and so believed all the drivel about mortgages being a “safe” means of extracting money, largely because that’s what they were being told by most of the investment world.

Reality – while oil prices have risen in the US in particular due to the decline of the dollar (which tracks the rise of inflation), nominative wages have risen only slightly and real wages have been dropping steadily for the last forty years.

Put another way – the decline not only is not in the future, but its been a hidden reality for several years; it’s just that the disconnect between the fiction being sold to most people (look, the DJIA has just hit another high) and the reality that most people face has grown so great that its no longer possible to paper it over.

Oil is being nationalized globally. Conservatives in particular moan about the mean, crazy socialists like Chavez, but the reality here is that most oil producing governments worldwide understand that the oil companies do not in general have the host country’s best interests at heart. When oil was relatively cheap (and seemingly plentiful) the benefits that the Exxons and BPs brought (the investment in infrastructure, the establishment of trading systems, and so forth) more than outweighed the losses, especially if the bribes were large enough.

When oil becomes a strategic advantage, when a country’s resource assets drop to a certain point, even the most greedy, venally corrupt government official will start getting nervous about the rabble outside the door, and there is evidence from nearly every point on the planet that the tank is now half empty.

Kunstler is perhaps an extremist, but most of the conflicts that are heating up now are ultimately about the control of oil. The relationship between the US and Canada, long one of the most stable, is now becoming increasingly testy because of the thawing polar ice caps and the question of territoriality of polar ice fields.

China’s economy continues to heat, drawing more oil for itself, and as bungled economic and foreign policy is now causing the not so subtle disintegration of the dollar, to the extent that the number of countries that are calling for a redomination of oil prices in Euros has risen dramatically – why buy US dollars to purchase oil when those dollars are inflating at 2-3% per MONTH?

Put this way, even if we do have fifty years of reserves left globally, the reality that the US is now facing is that the cost of that oil is going to become too prohibitive for the economy to function.

If you’re part of the privileged 1%, you will have all of the oil that you need, your kids will be able to go to college, you will have the best health care, you’ll still be able to travel around the globe.

If you’re part of the remaining 99%, your world is already shrinking, your options are diminishing, the jobs available will continue to shrink because there’s no manufacturing base left to build on (and comparatively little demand from the rest of the world), because American products are increasingly seen as being shoddy and dangerous (Mattel toys anyone? Even if the products came from China, it was the Americans who accepted the inferior products because they were cheap to manufacture, and to the rest of the worlds it’s the Americans who are culpable here).

Globally, energy return on investment (EROI) has been dropping dramatically; technology can slow this descent for a little while, but it can’t stop it. Fusion is as far out of reach today as it was in the 1930s; at best, even with the most efficient computers controlling magnetic flux, the most recent fusion reactor (ITER) still required more input power than it produced, and it had a stability on the order of seconds before the containment fluxes destabilized.

Nuclear fission systems may continue to provide power to the grid (I don’t believe the lights will go out any time soon), but even there it will take significant investment in new facilities and it will be insufficient to power the transportation sector. Similar arguments can be made for other technologies; the biggest possible exception of which being coal.

Coal will likely end up becoming a dominant power source in North America within the next half century. However, the EROI on coal liquification is still far below that of even sour crude – this isn’t economics but physics. Similarly the EROI on contemporary biofuels (especially ethanol) is not great, and it has the added drawback of forcing increasing competition for land use with agriculture.

I’m not sure where any of this falls into being a religion, unless its “the religion of science”. The conditions for crises may take a while to occur and happen relatively unnoticed, but when enough stressors reach a critical point, the crisis itself can be rapid and brutal.

When you’re driving a car, the performance of that car changes subtly whether you have a full tank or a nearly empty tank, but its usually not that obvious. However, when there is no longer enough fuel in the tank, then the car isn’t going anywhere, and you are forced from your anticipated routines (driving to work) and are instead reliant upon your own two feet and a gas can.

The questions that Kunstler raises are simple prudence. If a crisis was to knock out your available power for an extended period, could you survive? Do you have back up skills that you can barter for food or goods? Can you produce your own food if you need to? Are you close enough to a municipal center that you can get there under your own power in a reasonable period of time? Do you own a decent bladed weapon (a gun is useful only until the bullets run out, then it’s only a not terribly effective club)?

These may seem like absurd questions (even alarmist!) but they are good thought exercises. I live on a large island (Vancouver Island) and these questions have been asked by emergency planners and city managers all over the island because the possibility does exist that Victoria and the rest of the communities could get cut off from the mainland for any number of reasons from bad storms or earthquakes destroying critical ports to the potential of hostile military action.

The findings from these exercises revealed that Vancouver Island probably could become self-sustaining, but that would only happen after nearly a decade of starvation and political strife – and that in a relatively calm, civilized country like Canada.

If Kunstler is wrong, then heeding his warnings would still insure that in the event of some emergency there were preparations – life insurance – in place to minimize the effects of the disruption. If, as I believe, Kunstler is on track with regard to much of his thesis, then by preparing for that you’ll be much more likely to survive the political unrest that will likely come from a rapid shift downward in local EROI.

Just because there are survivors does not mean these expectations are false. What it does mean is that it remaining a survivor will take either lots more effort/luck.

Currently I’m reading the book “The Great Wave: Price Revolutions and the Rhythm of History” by David Hackett Fischer. In it he details four of these episodes, in which the world did not end, but massive starvation for the poor was unavoidable.

Of course, some of the poor survived, but in some cases it was due to killing/eating their own children/parents, or worse yet, digging them up from their graves. Unfortunately, thanks to embalming, we will lack that opportunity.

Bussard Fusion Reactor
Easy Low Cost No Radiation Fusion

It has been funded:

Bussard Reactor Funded

I have inside info that is very reliable and multiply confirmed that validates the above story. I am not at liberty to say more. Expect a public announcement from the Navy in the coming weeks.

The above reactor can burn Deuterium which is very abundant and produces lots of neutrons or it can burn a mixture of Hydrogen and Boron 11 which does not.

The implication of it is that we will know in 6 to 9 months if the small reactors of that design are feasible.

If they are we could have fusion plants generating electricity in 10 years or less depending on how much we want to spend to compress the time frame. A much better investment that CO2 sequestration.

BTW Bussard is not the only thing going on in IEC. There are a few government programs at Los Alamos National Laboratory, MIT, the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana among others.

That, I think, is the basic theme of a lot of Kunstler’s writing (and also of Agora, Rude Awakening, Whiskey and Gunpowder): writers always waiting for some future pleasure at the correctness of their predictions, while agonizing over the delay in their gratifications.

Kunstler assures us that the sky is falling, the world is coming to an end, our sinful ways are about to be destroyed. On what empirical and logical basis does he assure us that there cannot and will not be a replacement for oil? That we do not now have a replacement does not mean that there cannot or will not be a replacement: discoveries and inventions are made all the time. Just a week or so ago, a cancer researcher accidentally discovered that salt water burns when subjected to low-level radio frequencies. Who knows what next week will bring. And why the wailing over suburbia and cities? Only if we expect things to remain just as they are can one say that that will not happen. Things change. People adjust.

Most of the world’s people will not be affected by peak oil, for they have always farmed without machines. Only in America will Kunstler’s predictions perhaps occur. And surely it would be good to see some of the numerous disgustingly fat and bloated tubs of lard currently in the country having to walk and exercise and not eating and drinking all that junk food.