The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle
Commentary on the Flux of Events
Americans are going to have a very hard time understanding and adjusting to the end of the cheap oil age. Given our enormous media industries, and the frictionless, massive broadcasting of news, how do we explain the vapidity or the irrationality of the public discussion about the changes we face?
I attribute it to cognitive dissonance, the mental static in our collective cultural imagination. In times leading up to turbulent change, the cognitive dissonance is always greatest. A wealth of "information" does not necessarily produce knowledge, wisdom, or the will to act. There truly is a thing called a public consensus about reality, and without a pretty firm consensus that comports to the way things actually are, individuals and societies have a lot of trouble making sense of their situation.
Unfortunately, the existing public consensus in America is not consistent with reality. Americans are not entitled to a certain way of life -- namely, a fossil fuel-addicted drive-in utopia -- and the world does not owe it to America.
In the years ahead, as the world passes the critical milepost of global peak oil extraction, the allocation system, a.k.a world oil markets, will respond by increasingly sharp oscillations up and down. The price will shoot up, the price will crash. The overall trend, though, will be remorsefully upward in price, and the trend for reliability of supplies will be remorselessly negative. I think this is all going to happen within the next five years and certainly within ten. In fact it has already begun. So what we're facing is a permanent emergency.
The public response so far has been simple denial (whaddaya talkin' 'bout; there's still plenty a'oil). The second one will be violent opposition to the remorseless facts. It will manifest itself first in a general conspiracy theory, in particular that oil companies are colluding to gouge "consumers" -- as citizens have pitifully come to label each other. Probably politicians will be included in the general conspiracy. But all the finger-pointing imaginable will not avail to restore our entitlements to consume. American life will become increasingly chaotic as our suburban arrangements become more and more untenable, and the so-called economy based on suburban construction, furnishing, and servicing grinds to paralysis. The next stage is political turmoil of the kind that produces revolutions, third reichs, and murderous despotisms.
Among the delusions currently popular is the idea that fuels other than oil and gas will save our way of life. This idea was unfortunately reinforced when President Bush more or less promised the nation we would be delivered into a happy hydrogen-based economy in this year's State-of-the-Union speech. Forget it. There isn't going to be a hydrogen economy. It's a fantasy. It doesn't pencil out. It doesn't scale. Ain't gonna happen.
There really is only way that this country is going to save its ass, and perhaps you heard it here first: we're going to have to downscale and reorganize all our activities and reactivate local networks of economic interdependence. It will probably entail a reduction in standards of living -- but that is something actually not so easily measured by statistical analysis. We may never see another Pop-Tart after the year 2011, but we may get to spend more time working and playing with our friends and loved ones. Schools may no longer run state-of-the-art computer labs, but children may know all the teachers in their smaller schools, and the transmission of culture may be more meaningful.
It is certainly imperative that societies live within a framework of hope -- the alternative is nihilism and suicide. This nation could start today with many decisions and actions that would lay the groundwork for a better future. Can we agree to start with one do-able comprehensive national action: to restore railroad service? It's something we know how to do. All the methodology exists and is proven. A lot of the infrastructure is still on-the-ground, though much of it is in poor condition. It would not be nearly as costly as the highway projects currently underway, it would put a lot of people to work, and it would begin to move the nation in the right direction.
Why aren't we talking about it? Why not start? Talk to somebody today about restoring railroad service in America and ask them to tell two other people. Break the ice with a joke. Tell them we have a railroad system that the Bulgarians would be ashamed of.