Wall Street Journal... cover story... 10/10/10... An Oil-Thirsty America Dived Into "Dead Sea"
Read it. Analyze it. Do the math and figure the situation out for yourself.
My own assessment is this. Our childish excuse for an economic model hit an energy ceiling in 2008. Remember $147 barrels of oil in July, 2008? No!? Remember paying $4.50+ at the pump that summer? I thought so.
It's no coincidence that our economy shit the bed shortly thereafter.
Money doesn't make an economy grow. Energy does. Without an affordable, reliable, and GROWING energy supply, growth-based economies fail. There's no such thing as a free lunch, and - contrary to popular belief - one cannot build something out of nothing. When oil supply can't meet demand - and it's happening again right now - our economy is guaranteed to stall if not collapse.
Why are we dangerously drilling two miles underwater to get oil? Why are we destroying pristine areas and wasting massive amounts of energy and water harvesting tar sands? Because we think we need to. Pending massive societal changes, we do need to.
No matter what we exploit, no matter how deep we drill or how crazily we search, continuing down this path is a guaranteed loss. All extreme extraction efforts only stall our fall from oil's global production peak plateau. Once humanity heads down that slope, all certainty flies out the window.
It's time to stop "needing" all that oil. It's time for massive societal changes. We can't "grow out of" the current depression because as soon as we start growing, our oil needs hit the very real ceiling of limited supply. We can't even stay as big as we are because that ceiling is starting to drop.
Read it. Analyze it. Acknowledge it. Change yourself and start talking shit. Our leaders have to wake up to reality... but odds are they won't.
The Fall of 2008 will look like a cakewalk compared to what the next few years will hold.
Prepare yourself.
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