Hostile Territories

Global oil is nearing peak production. This is my assertion. It's as much a wish, really, as it is founded in reality. There is no doubt that US production has been declining since 1970...the same with Mexico, Ecuador, Indonesia, Great Britain, and others. But its detrimental effect on our economy is substantiated simply as a wish. Truthfully, I wish for complete chaos, financial Armageddon, a collapse of our current way of living.

I wish for this, not for the during, but for the end result. My expectation is that we become a better people. We may well learn to sustain ourselves on our own ingenuity and our own productive efforts again, unlike the current state of affairs where we blame others for our woes, blame our economic malaise on big banks, big government, competing nations...everything but ourselves.

It has been my wish for a few years now that global peak production in oil will be the catalyst for this change, because nothing else will do it, methinks. Consider that our multinational oil companies have to venture into ever more hostile territories to get the energy us Elk Grovians need to drive to our malls to conduct our annual rituals of wanton consumption. Indeed, these environments are more hostile both physical and political every day. To understand the physical and environmental costs, travel to the Alberta oil sands. To consider the political costs, travel to the Niger Delta.

Oil costs more to produce in the exact same way that health care costs are increasing. These two components will consume a growing share of our GDP going forward, and in my opinion, as we continue to increase our dependency on both we will continue to erode our standard of living for all but the extremely wealthy. The trajectory of the price of energy is structurally up.

My hopes for a different sort of America are clear, although I really hold no expectations that they will ever materialize. I want a future America that doesn't pin its short term economic hopes on the consumptive sales of imported merchandise around the supposed birthday of a spooky, incompetent Father figure. I want a future America that values community. I want a future America that values workmanship and pride in manufacturing. I want a future America that uses only as much energy as itself produces instead of relying on a growing share of foreign resources. I want a future America that doesn't have to invade, bombard, or occupy other nations for hegemonic needs.

No. My expectation is that we will self-destruct well before we reach any of these markers, because we can't help but assume ourselves as somehow privileged, somehow exempt from the articles of natural limits. This is exactly why I hope for a total meltdown...so that we become a people who can recognize our proper place in a sustainable future. We are not there yet, not by a long shot...