How this country, and the rest of the world, for that matter, will react when our relatively easy and cheap energy sources dry up has been on my mind for a while. Admittedly, I was more worried about the consequences of global warming, but I always had in the back of my mind that we would run out of energy before we could do really, really serious damage (like another Permian Extinction event) to the earth. But I never really thought it through. Apparently, others have.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-howard-kunstler/the-wishing-society_b_21311.html
This post by James Kunstler lays down in pretty harsh details about what is going to happen to our lifestyle and our "imagined wealth". He makes a very good point that when you remove the contributions to the economy associated with building houses and the infrastructure required to support all these massive suburban settlements, the only thing this country has left is cutting hair and open heart surgery. That's a little extreme, but the point is well taken. Our country does not have a national industrial base anymore on which we depend, and if we did, it would take that cheap energy to run it.
This article predicts a move back to a more localized agrarian society, where we just can't afford densely populated cities and miles and miles of suburbs that don't contribute anything. Interestly, he never says anything about when this all might occur. Personally, I had been hoping that things would rather hold together in their present state of affairs at least until I hit retirement age. Pretty selfish, I know. At this point, given the willful ignorance of our "leaders" and a huge percentage of the population, I don't think there is much else to be done but hold on during the ride down.
I should stick to posts about music and movies. What the future probably has in mind for us is actually very depressing to think about.
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