The Empire 176

End-time for USA upon oil collapse
Written by Jan Lundberg
Culture Change Letter #100

A scenario for a sustainable future.

It is becoming clear to more and more energy analysts that the United States of America as we know it will not endure for long. However, the U.S. may not last at all, if oil collapse and the birth of a sustainable culture play out freely. Primarily considering the implications of "peak oil," let us explore key unforgiving trends, dispassionately, so as to arrive at a truthful and hopefully constructive vision for the future.
Most scenarios reflect wishful thinking or influence from the mass media, academia and industrial interests. Rather than predictions such as the promise of a technologically green consumer society -- a popular preference -- a clear analysis must include all the main elements however unpalatable. To create a better world we must first deal with hard reality. What is ahead that we cannot change? When that question is faced honestly, the possibility is greater to affect future change in a positive way. And there is hope in the resurgence of community and renewed appreciation of nature.
I am a petroleum-industry analyst, although I last saw any money from the oil industry back in 1988 when I told Exxon and Mobil I was terminating my market research business. My office then became an environmental institute, and I proceeded to get a much clearer picture of oil's place in the world than from my previous sixteen years known for publishing "the bible of the oil industry," the Lundberg Letter. My understanding of oil and energy in the economy and culture has brought me to my present analysis about the end of the United States of America.
Here are my limits on my objectivity: I have no investments other than wanting to see family and friends do especially well in terms of health and happiness in the extremely turbulent phase ahead. I am further biased in wanting the Earth to have maximum biodiversity, but either the web of life holds or it will not. I will shed no tears over the disappearance of General Motors, for example, which is teetering already. Such a corporation -- found guilty for destroying dozens of cities' electric rail trolley service -- is an enemy of the planet and of the people.
The fall of the U.S. may be the swiftest empire collapse in world history. It is obvious that the U.S. population and the nation's infrastructure is heavily petroleum dependent. The U.S. peaked in oil production (extraction) in 1971. The world may be peaking now, as some evidence indicates, or in a few short years. As a severe energy shortage is on tap as soon as the gap between supply and demand is felt by the market, and the Earth gives noticeably less oil than just recently, there will be a cascade of impacts on the economy and people's lives.
So it will not matter how much oil is still in the ground, or if other ways of obtaining and using energy are more renewable and greener: A massive shut down of petroleum supply brought about by market panic and economic collapse will terminate corporate globalism and the political landscape as well. [As discussed in this essay and in links at the end, production of other forms of energy cannot substitute for petroleum and will not be maximized for readiness anyway.] Many aspects of modern society are at a breaking point already, whether one looks at the Iraq war over oil, the housing market bubble, U.S. debt and deficits, or the prospects of damaging weather from the fast distorting of the planet's climate.
Not only will the sudden oil shortage ahead mean the Final Energy Crisis, the present economy only works on growth: so even a plateau of global petroleum extraction -- what seems to be happening now, although it is being called "insufficient refining capacity for poor quality crude oil" -- would mean the house of economic cards collapses on its own. Recovery from such an event, even if not from oil shortage, would appear impossible because supplies of oil would be among the commodities suddenly scarce, and this would have a terminal effect on much economic activity and people's lives.'

Lees verder: http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=2