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sobering article
Mar. 4th, 2013 09:05 amNine Meals from Anarchy: Yes, it's about Britain. But the causes are global in nature, the lessons apply here as well as "over there"...
Oil is expensive, getting moreso, and it's never going to be cheap again. (Don't talk to me about frakking or tar-sands or the like - the reason those are being exploited *now* is because the easy stuff is mostly gone. All of the current sources of petroleum products are more expensive to extract in terms of money and energy - we've hit the point of diminishing returns and that also is only going to get more expensive.)
All the things that depend on oil are going to get hideously expensive. Food, clothing, the current plastic whatevers (healthcare! "use once and discard" is the standard, for obvious reasons of infection control)...
This is the iceberg. And there simply are not lifeboats for 9 billion people... There aren't even sufficient lifeboats for Westerners. (The Republicans have been dismantling lifeboats as fast as they can, as if that will do *them* some good. I think it's more "Only we get nice things" than Stross's Fallacy, but there does seem to be a whiff of desperation to the latest round of idiocy...)
Oil is expensive, getting moreso, and it's never going to be cheap again. (Don't talk to me about frakking or tar-sands or the like - the reason those are being exploited *now* is because the easy stuff is mostly gone. All of the current sources of petroleum products are more expensive to extract in terms of money and energy - we've hit the point of diminishing returns and that also is only going to get more expensive.)
All the things that depend on oil are going to get hideously expensive. Food, clothing, the current plastic whatevers (healthcare! "use once and discard" is the standard, for obvious reasons of infection control)...
This is the iceberg. And there simply are not lifeboats for 9 billion people... There aren't even sufficient lifeboats for Westerners. (The Republicans have been dismantling lifeboats as fast as they can, as if that will do *them* some good. I think it's more "Only we get nice things" than Stross's Fallacy, but there does seem to be a whiff of desperation to the latest round of idiocy...)