Everything we envisioned and predicted in the 60's is coming to fruition; it's time to review and delineate my plan to retain a semblance of the status quo.
Wikipedia says: Status quo, a commonly used form of the original Latin "statu quo" – literally "the state in which" – is a Latin term meaning the current or existing state of affairs.[1] To maintain the status quo is to keep the things the way they presently are. The related phrase status quo ante, literally "the state in which before", means "the state of affairs that existed previously".[2]
Americans fear change. We may demand change but we defer embracing it for the next generation and the next decade. Americans prefer the status quo, we like things the way they are. We're upbeat folks who see a rosy future and infinite growth.
The Civil Rights movement of the 1960's demanded change now and got it. There were mixed results. After 30 years, quotas were abandoned as un-necessary, the racist catch phrase, "Forced Busing," has little meaning now, but many attitudes and the organizations that support them are still in place indicating slow change. Still, America got better through change. We are more in line with the ideals of America after embracing the changes resulting from the Civil Rights movement.
Along with those changes came changes in the Status Quo.
Change is fearful because its outcome rests in the unknown and people inherently fear the unknown. To engage change, first change must be necessary and not merely possible. It is possible to change a tire on your car at any time but when the tire is flat it is necessary to change it.
The change that is upon us in the United States, and therefore the world, has to do in part with wealth. Many of the rich in America will be decidedly less rich, many of the middle will be poor, the desperately poor will remain poor. The Status Quo of the poor will not change much, it never does. The poor will survive more easily.
The changes required in America for existence, not progress but existence, in the 21st century are empirical. Wholesale, grand, sweeping, complete change is being thrust upon the United States, on a revolutionary scale, that will make the mess we're in today, "Status Quo Ante," the mess we were in.
These changes begin with and hinge upon the abandonment of our traditional dependence on oil. The problem is immense. I read a letter written to the stockholders of a shipping firm in the middle 70's that warned we may have to surrender our traditional ideas of physical health and well being in order to meet the energy demands of industry in the future. I thought the position was outrageous and irresponsible at the time; only now do I understand it.
The term, "Peak Oil," has begun to drift into popular culture and daily vocabulary. Peak Oil is an industry term that means you have gone past the half way point in a given well or oil field. When you are at just under a half tank of gas in your car you are at Peak Oil.
When an oil well or an oil field is at Peak Oil it means that the amount of oil you can pump out in a given day will be less than when the field was full; production will have begun to slow. We got a warning of this in the 70's and completely ignored it. You can pump oil out very quickly at the beginning of a well but after Peak Oil, if you want to get all the oil out, you have to pump more slowly. Sometimes you have to pump gas into the field to provide pressure so that you can pump out the remaining oil.
The world's gas tank is past half empty, past Peak Oil, production of crude oil will come more slowly starting now and lasting forever. Saudi Arabia, which had a lake of oil equivalent to 1/4th of the worlds supply under its sand dunes, is past Peak Oil, that's why they've begun to explore off-shore oil drilling. The problem with retrieving every last barrel of oil out there is that it after Peak Oil it requires more oil to retrieve than it produces.
So, how does the condition, "Peak Oil," affect Status Quo and signal the call for a revolution?
First, there is nothing on earth or elsewhere that can replace oil. Once it's gone, it's gone, and there is nothing else that will work just as well or even at all. With specific regard to Status Quo there is only one element to modern complex civilization not effected by the decline of oil production, NOthing!
If you have nothing, Not One Thing, you will not be affected by Peak Oil. No car, no home, no utilities, no clothes, no food, no computer; no off-ramp from which to beg, if you have nothing, if you are already dead and buried, and you don't care if they don't mow the grass that grows around your tombstone, then your personal Status Quo will survive Peak Oil.
Every 500ml (16.9 FL OZ) bottle of water you buy at the supermarket requires 200ml (6.76 FL OZ) of oil to produce and deliver. It takes oil to get the water, oil to clean and purify the water, oil to make the bottle and the cap, oil to deliver the bottles and caps to where you have the water, oil to run the machines that bottle the water and screw on the cap, oil in the glue that holds the label on the bottle, oil in the label itself (mylar), oil to box the bottles, oil to ship the bottles to the store, and oil to drive the bottles from the store to your home.
That's the same route for everything you own touch or see. The steel in the buildings in our cities, diapers, orange juice, and Playboy magazines all go through that same oil intensive process from raw materials to consumption. It even takes oil to process human waste, our caskets and funerals.
I know what you're thinking, "bottles are recyclable!" It takes oil to recycle bottles. Oil to collect the empties, oil for the transportation of the empties to the recycling plant, oil to break down the plastic, oil to reconstitute the plastic to a semi liquid state and more oil to turn it back into another plastic bottle. In the case of plastic bags it takes more oil to recycle them than it does to manufacture them from scratch. Plastic bags are insanely stupid. At least the trees required to make paper bags are a renewable resource, a stupid waste of a renewable resource but renewable all the same.
Much ado was made about the use of ethanol as a fossil fuel alternative during the G.W. Bush administration. A committee was put together to plot a plan to have ethanol run half of all our internal combustion engines by 2015. It takes 14% of all the corn grown in the United States to produce the bio-diesel required to fuel fewer than 1% of all the cars, trucks and buses in the U.S.; the ones that already run on bio-diesel. It takes barrels of crude oil to produce a ton of corn. Ethanol, like plastic bags, is an insanely stupid idea, an effort to save all those internal combustion engines and maintain the status quo. Spending the money to form the committee and do the research to plot the plan for the use of ethanol as an alternative to gasoline was a political ploy to gain favor with "Green" voters, merely.
The most recent increase in gasoline prices has had a dramatic and permanent impact on the global economy. The first casualty has been jobs. In order to keep prices of goods down and keep them selling, in the face of increased gas prices, almost all companies have reduced their labor forces and forced production to stay the same. This effort is working. American industries have not suffered a loss of production with reduced labor, in fact, in some industries production has increased as workers are working harder to keep their jobs.
Unemployment does not merely affect the unemployed. Apart from the decline in the robustness of communities where unemployment is high, the reduction in tax revenues has financially crippled cities, states, and entire nations. At this writing, Ireland and Greece are in receivership and England is on the brink of collapse.
In the United States, for every Baby Boomer who retires it takes nine taxpayers to provide the necessary monies for social security, medicare and medicaid benefits, as provided by law. Oil prices have driven the state of unemployment to the point where there are only three U.S. tax payers for every U.S. retiree. It will get even worse when it's time to retire Generation X. This is the result of the combination of President Lyndon Johnson busting opening the Social Security piggy bank for congress to spend and the laws that are currently in place that define social security benefits. In addition, the Democrats made laws that permit social security payments to be taxed as income. The social security program is already broke and runs on credit; the money is not there, congress spent it decades ago. Social security, Medicare and Medicaid make up the largest slice of both the budget and the debt pie. It's not that the U.S. owes all that money yet, it's that we are bound by law to pay that money to the retirees who put the money into the system over their lifetimes (and the Baby Boomers put a ton of money into the system -- more than any other generation could or will).
Banks maintain our Status Quo on a number of fronts but they are naturally selected for extinction as a result of increasing oil prices and unemployment. Banks depend on Municipal Bonds to make the money to stay open. Banks don't actually have the money they loan and spend; they are dependent on the people to whom they loan money to pay off their loans; that creates revenue. Municipal Bonds have traditionally been the safest investments because they were funded by tax revenues. The cost of gasoline has driven unemployment to the point where there is not a great enough tax base to keep our states out of bankruptcy. Municipal Bonds will default and the banking industry, as a whole, will fail as a result. The people who cannot pay their loans because of unemployment seal the deaths of the banking institutions. The FDIC and The Federal Reserve are both insolvent at this time.
How did we get this way?
150 years ago, when the internal combustion engine and the use of fossil fuels came into play in industry and culture, their use was minimal. One man and a mule could farm 40 acres. Today, one man and a tractor, with 4 attachments, can farm 400 acres but it costs thousands of gallons of gas and diesel. That does not include the oil used in and to produce the fertilizers and insecticides required to gain the maximum yield per acre One farmer may produce more but the cost in energy is many times higher than the fellow with his mule. Harvest is monumentally high in its use of gas and diesel. You have to harvest millions of acres of produce at about the same time, so huge crews travel the farmlands with thousands of Combine Machines, towed by trucks, to harvest billions of bushels of grain and produce during the same 4 or 5 week period each year.
150 years ago the population of the planet was 1 billion people, today that number is nearly 7 billion; 1/3 of whom are starving because gas is too expensive to produce and deliver food to them.
150 years ago oil production was on the upswing. Today, oil production is trending down at nearly 10% per year while demand is increasing. Oil companies have nothing to do with these problems by the way. We, the people of the world, in our growing need for an improved status quo, have driven this trend. Oil companies have merely tried to keep up and now they can not and never will.
On the nightly news, when oil companies are asked why oil prices are so high, they answer by saying, "production is down." No one ever asks, "What does that mean?" and no one ever says that production will never go back up again.
Iraq's oilfields, using equipment built in the 1950's, were wasting the commodity on which our civilization is built. In order to conserve the oil that remains in Iraq a regime change and infrastructure upgrade was demanded. The war for oil, which is by no means over, is a great deal less about profiteering, as many would have us believe, and a great deal more about getting cans of soda, elbow macaroni, and pornography to your doorstep.
The United States military will never be out of Iraq. Remember when president Obama, and his newly appointed Secretary of State promised in their campaigns to get out of Iraq in 7 months? As candidates they were not privy to the whole story in Iraq. As incumbents, now they know the whole story and know well the reality of exiting Iraq means leaving control of its huge oil deposits in irresponsible hands. One of the largest military installations on earth is now in Iraq and it is not Iraqi but American. Inside that military installation is the U.S. embassy compound, which is the biggest on earth, it's bigger than the Vatican. Protecting Iraqi oil production is insurance against a revolution in the United States. It is too little and too late. All the oil in Iraq would only answer the world's demand for a few days.
Take a look around you. Every single object on, near, around, and in you (food, amalgam for your teeth fillings, prostheses, tattoos, hair plugs, nail polish, etc.) was manufactured with or through the use of oil. Everything, without exception, you see, hear and touch was delivered using trucks driven by oil. So, it was not the blame of the oil companies; everyone is guilty of something and we, as the components of everyone, are all guilty of creating the oil crisis through our incessant need to improve our status quo.
Electric cars are not the answer. They may have been if we'd made the switch 30 years ago but now it would take too much oil to make all the electric cars necessary to convert. Electric cars are made of metal forged by coal-fired plants. The coal is mined by drills and delivered by trains and trucks driven by oil. The batteries and light bulbs were made by oil driven machines and there are 7 gallons of oil in every one of the tires of your electric car. The roads on which you drive are made of asphalt (oil and gravel) and the gravel in the asphalt was dug and reduced to the correct dimension by oil driven machines.
The seeds with which you plant your victory gardens were delivered by trucks powered by oil. Every calorie of food that is consumed in America took ten calories of energy to produce and deliver to your table.
In the end there is no such thing as a "Green" industry, only more green and less green.
What is demanded in response for the immediate, intermediate, and distant future is not merely change, but sweeping, total, and radical change. Much of what is to come is coming irrespective of what we can do over the next ten years.
First, we have to change the way we look at ourselves here in the United States and how we conduct ourselves as a nation and partner in planet earth. Yes, we are 5% of the world's population using nearly 1/3 of it's natural resources but of every three dollars spent on manufactured goods world-wide Americans spend one of those dollars. Said another way, one out of every three dollars spent world wide comes out of American pockets. Everyone depends on us to maintain their status quo. So, the Chinese are happy to lend us back our money or they won't have anyone to buy the products they manufacture.
If war with Iraq and international commerce don't make clear the magnitude of the changes demanded, we breach the subject of international relations toward compliance with the status quo.
Here is a recent example of foreign policy rooted in American Status Quo. The reason the U.S. does not intervene in Darfur, and end the genocide there, is because 80% of the oil produced in Sudan is exported to China. If we interrupt the flow of oil to China we will have to pay more for t-shirts and tennis shoes at Wal-Mart. So, Status Quo comes at the cost of genocide in Darfur. Darfur doesn't produce anything and China produces everything. Quit shopping at Wal-Mart and we may be able to save Darfur from extinction. To interfere in Darfur we would exert tremendous energy for minimal return; Darfurians don't contribute to the status quo.
The Revolution.
My High School graduating class voted my best friend, "Most likely to start a revolution." They voted me, "Most likely to lead a successful revolution." The difference between me and my pal? I had a plan.
The revolution has begun. The Middle East is riddled with revolution. The revolution is between the "Haves" and the "Have Nots." The people in the Middle East revolutions may not know what they want but they've had enough of what they don't want. The international powers that replace the former leaders of the Middle Eastern nations who are deposed, replace them with more politicians who will go along and maintain the status quo. The have nots in those nations will never see more of what they want but their existence may be less brutal.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist but it is reasonable to believe that the first revolution in Tunisa, the one that started the dominoes of revolution in Middle Eastern countries, may certainly have been started by the CIA. I am further certain that the impetus for invading Iraq and securing the oil there was the staged terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 2001. The revolutions in the Middle East were not planned by a shadow government or executed by a global agency, however. The first revolution was started with the need to evade revolution in Europe and the United States.
The need was this; to stabilize the region in which the most oil is produced, that ensures Status Quo. That had to begin with a permanent military presence under the control of the civilized nations. Yes, I called them "the civilized nations." It's just dramatic shorthand that makes my point and gives a brand name to the powers that be. With a strong demonstration of military superiority and a permanent military presence in the region, the civilized nations make clear that they can handle emergencies in the region, make for a smooth transition to puppet governments, and control oil production. The CIA did not come up with the plan, they are only one part of the team responsible for executing the plan. The goal remains to evade revolution in the civilized nations by maintaining status quo for as long as sustainable.
The first regime change was the most costly as it had to have a strong reason for the people to get behind it (terrorism, a villain; Osama Bin Laden, and weapons of mass destruction), followed by the demand for sustained military action and occupation.
Once that military presence was established then the protests and resulting revolutions in the neighboring nations could begin and those Middle Eastern governments unfriendly toward the civilized nations could be surgically transplanted with friendly leaders who will do as they are told in order to insure the status quo of the civilized nations.
The problem with this plan is that it was executed too late. Revolution in the civilized nations is imminent. The collapse of the civilized nations is underway and like the Roman empire, the Mayans, the Incas, the Egyptians, the Greeks, and all the other complex societies that flourished and failed on this planet; the coming revolution will manifest in starvation and survival of the poorest. The poor know how to survive on nothing; the fittest don't know how to survive without oil.
All the answers to survival among the fittest will begin with the words, "We'll get some ..." They will not be able to break out of the mindset that they can order their answers online and have them delivered. The poor, the homeless, will just go on about the business of scavenging their meals from whatever they find. Eventually, they will run out of alcohol and other inebriants and in a few generations they will grow stronger and genetically mutate beyond the predisposition for fetal alcohol syndrome.
The new rich will be dirt farmers; people who can grow enough food to feed their own families (if they can find seeds that have not been genetically mutated). That is a description of post apocalyptic America.
In Los Angeles, a conglomeration of cities with 18 million inhabitants, there are merely hundreds who know how to slaughter and butcher a pig or a cow, then preserve it, and they all work for packing plants. The problem is that none of them know how to get pigs that are not delivered by truck. The origin of pigs; Montana or Reno, someplace like that, is a mystery to them. Then too, refrigeration is dependent upon oil.
So, with the failure of the plan from the powers that be; the plan from the shadows of the civilized nations, the plan that has come too late and will only delay erosion of the status quo and resulting revolution, there is need for a new plan.
Here's my plan and a comment on the future.
It begins with a united recognition for the need to execute the plan. That will never happen so this is in whole an intellectual exercise on my part.
Part of the plan of the civilized nations is correct; we have to replace the people we can not trust with ones we can control. WE being "we the people." What's called for is neither capitalism, socialism, a democracy or a republic, but an integration of what works from all of these systems. Let's be clear, capitalism hasn't worked out much better than socialism, just more comfortably. The status quo of the people, the general populations of both systems, suffer from the same malevolence of autocracy. For most of the responsibilities of government we need a republic but for many more of them than we know at present we need a democracy.
With the internet we can vote on a great many things that were previously left to congress, the special interest groups, and lobbyists. We still need oil to have the internet but its systems can be replaced with non-oil alternatives with some imagination and innovation. Voting to approve federal money to pay for corporate interests should never be left in the hands of an elite 600 persons who can be influenced and paid off for a fraction of the grant in question. A lobbyist cannot pay off the people. A special interest group cannot influence, bribe or blackmail the people.
The people can vote managers into management positions and directors into positions where they can propose direction of action. We the people can then vote on whether it's a good direction based on our understanding and after substantial public debate. Again, the internet plays a vital role in new government.
So, new government becomes very small and comprised of managers and directors who are elected based on their performance and credentials. Government functions are then awarded or contracted to private companies which can be held accountable and charged damages if they don't follow direction or are irresponsible in some way. A little socialism, a little democracy, a little capitalism.
The people will debate publicly, via the internet, and vote, via the internet, on all matters that impact the people. When there is a clear yes or no question to answer, or a choice between a number of plans to execute, the people can vote via the internet.
The people cannot trust the individuals who run the oil companies, the trucking industry, the rails, the shipping industry, utilities, insurance, banking, medical care providers, public schools, colleges and universities, the pharmaceutical industry, the media, the prison system, the courts, and any number of other industries and institutions that exist to serve the people. We know the people who run these services cannot be trusted to act in the best interests of the people from our experience; it's not arguable. So, we the people will nationalized them all and elect managers and directors to follow the plans agreed upon by the people after public debate and a vote.
Interestingly, when two ideas receive like numbers of votes, say two ideas garner 35% of the vote each and six other ideas split the remainder, we can fuse the right ideas of the two majority held ideas to find one that is best for all the people.
What to do with the remaining oil? First and foremost, no more Privately Owned Vehicles (POV's) of any description. Two mass transit systems will serve everyone; every hamlet, village, city and town. One system for shipping and another for people. A percentage of the remaining oil production will be dedicated to the construction of a mass transit system and the necessary infrastructure for a complex society of such a design as to eliminate the need for further use fossil fuels. Personally, I think the solution for transit and shipping will come from magnetism; harnessing the planet's own magnetic energy to move objects and people.
Emergency services, a scaled down military, trucking, shipping, and all the utilities that serve the people, will use the remaining oil production and reserves in the creation of our new world. We will only keep internal combustion engines running in order to manufacture the solutions to their elimination. Our new world has to be centered on organic/agricultural answers to providing for the people and the new status quo.
Pig farms will feed fish farms that will provide food and fertilizer for fruit and vegetable farms. Human waste and solid waste management will fuel the agricultural needs first (used hemp paper can be a growing medium; urine is a great source of the ammonia needed to replenish the soil). Human urine and feces can be neutralized to the point where they can be used as fertilizer without the use of fossil fuels for processing or even shipping. The people simply have to adopt a plan and stick to it until a better idea reveals itself.
Hemp, bamboo, and other fast growing, renewable agricultural resources, will answer many of the needs of the people; with products from paper and clothing, to building materials. Logging requires too much labor and takes too long to replenish to satisfy the routine needs for a complex society. Labor will be manual until we find another solution that does not include the use of fossil fuels or the internal combustion engine. We the people include a great number of smart individuals. As soon as smart individuals get tired of manual labor they quickly will come up with the innovations and solutions that work without fossil fuels.
Prison systems are complicated. Those convicted of non-capital crimes will be put to work in sewage treatment and waste management plants. Those convicted of capital crimes will lose their citizenship and be marched to the nearest border and locked out, forever. Military installations will run the length of our borders. Security of the people will always be a priority. Tragically, when liberty is threatened elsewhere in the world the United States will no longer be responsible for preserving any but our own.
This will be a complex society where everyone rises to their highest individual level of competency. Good teachers will remain teachers and will be provided with the security and rewards they deserve. Good managers and directors will rise up the ranks of management and direction to the point where they can be of the best service to the people. The human resource will become our greatest natural resource.
Personal travel will suffer in the beginning. Tourism will all but vanish until the problem of personal transportation is solved. Lubrication products needed for the production of hydro-electric power will have to be stockpiled until a new solution for the generation of electricity is developed. There is a balanced organic solution out there in the human imagination. It does not appear to be wind or solar power at this point; both of those methods use an enormous amount of oil to build and set up.
The guiding principle in the revolution is that all solutions must serve the whole of the people, require no oil, and must yield a positive net return on the energy required to bring the idea into existence. In essence, we have to increase the benefits of being a complex society. It is only through the success of the middle, the largest contributors of the common wealth through tax revenues, that our complex society can survive, grow and prosper toward a greater Status Quo.
Every business, church and individual will pay ten percent of their income and collections in taxes and 20 percent will go to savings to create the fund from which banking can begin. Those who don't save the whole 20% will pay the difference in increased taxes. Interest on every loan for business or individuals will be three percent. There will be no credit cards and no imaginary money. Banks cannot loan money they do not have. When a bank runs out of money to loan then it will have to wait until other loans are paid off to replenish their loan fund. Banks, like waste management, the military, education, and every other utility, will be nationalized and managed by people who have proven they are qualified and elected to management by the people. Pay will be standardized with men and women paid equally and jobs with more responsibility paid better than jobs with less responsibility.
The rich will be considerably less rich and wield no power, the poor will become the working class, and the working class will integrate with the middle class as the people roll up their sleeves and go to work, physical work. All that work will take a lot of energy, a lot of calories; food production and distribution will take precedence over every other effort.
The people will buy goods and services made in the United States. Production and manufacturing will come back to the United States. Without global shipping, until we can find an oil-free solution, there can be no import or export. Returning to wind powered shipping may or may not be possible without the use of oil to produce great ships. Innovation and imagination will dictate that. There will be no more strikes or labor unions as minimum working conditions will be mandated by the people.
A certain amount of oil will be dedicated to the production of computers and peripherals (not printers, this will be a paperless society -- the only things for which paper may be used will be artistic creations. Paper will be made of hemp).
With regard to oil, starting today, we will offer the oil producing nations $10 per barrel of crude oil. They may either take it or leave it. They are free to sell to anyone they like but if they want to sell to us we will only ever pay $10 per barrel, for high grade oil. When they run out of high grade we will buy medium grade and when that's gone we will pay the same $10 per barrel for low grade crude. We will incur the costs of refinement and refineries will be nationalized along with all other utilities.
Pricing for American made goods and services will go back to levels in the 60's along with pay scales. A loaf of the best bread will cost $1 and a busboy or dishwasher or the fellow who mows and rakes a lawn will earn $1 per hour. The more responsibility and competency required of a job, the more it will pay.
The automotive industry will have two years to find a carburetor system that will deliver 100 mpg and retrofit to all existing internal combustion engines. All manufacture of automobiles and internal combustion engines in the United States stops now and will never ever begin again. All import of cars, internal combustion engines or any object requiring oil to perform ends now. Any thing, that requires the use of fossil fuels for it's manufacture or operations, in any way, ends now. If the automotive industry can come up with a carburetor that can be retrofit to existing models of cars, trucks, boats and planes, that are in use today, they may begin manufacture of that carburetor system as long as it uses no oil or petroleum products to manufacture.
Delivery companies may finish delivering what they have in their trucks and way stations now. After one week they must have all their deliveries made and then they will shut down operations, the same with all privately owned vehicles. All existing gasoline and oil will be siphoned off of those vehicles for use in emergency vehicles.
The trucking industry will be nationalized and trucking will continue until the new infrastructure is in place or the world runs out of oil, whichever comes first. Food production and delivery, medicines and medical supplies, and delivery of materials needed for infrastructure will be the only things delivered by trucks.
The pharmaceutical industry will be nationalized. All research will be done without the use of oil within ten years and manufacture of currently approved medicines will be produced without oil in three years.
The U.S. Mail will continue operations for the delivery of some letters, medicines, medical supplies and some medical equipment (smaller than 30 lbs) along with mail. No package deliveries will be made by the U.S. Mail any longer
Ambulances and firefighters will continue to respond to all verified emergencies (a verified emergency call is one that has been reported by at least two separate sources). Any two parties who call in false reports of need will be prosecuted for endangering the lives of those in genuine need. Ambulances and fire fighters will no longer respond without verifying that there is in fact a real danger. Ambulances will park until they get a call, not drive around aimlessly and without a destination. Taxi cabs will be gone entirely. All emergency vehicles will automatically turn off after 60 seconds unless they are at an actual emergency and need generator power. There will be no zero mile per gallon idling engines for which the people must pay. Law Enforcement is now a federal job. City, county, and state police are encouraged to apply for these jobs, but potential officers will be tested for knowledge of the law, schooled in some of the new laws and new law enforcement operations and techniques and many who are currently employed as police will not make the cut. All city, county, state and federal databases will now merge into one database. Crimes against the people will not be tolerated.
Education is now the principle goal of every citizen. Everyone will pass. Everyone will keep taking every class over and again until they pass, until they learn. No one will be left behind in their education. If you go to prison you go to school for the duration of your sentence. A way will be found for all prisons to be productive and serve the people. Every citizen will serve in the armed forces for four years on completion of secondary school. Your primary job in the service, after the security of the nation is served, will be education. The military will have all the gas and diesel it needs to do its job. No one will be exempt from military service, provisions will be made for every citizen, irrespective of disabilities, to serve, and the jobs they learn in the service will prepare them for parallel jobs in life.
Mining and logging, along with hundreds of other oil intensive industries are over. Machines will be parked in an orderly yard and left as a museum of decay and irresponsibility.
As a result of the absence of oil many American citizens will die. Starvation will be the leading cause of death for the first five years, until the gardens are in and producing and delivery without oil can be established. Starvation will takes its greatest tolls in the cities like Los Angeles, where 30,000 truckloads of produce a day are required to feed the populace. No oil, no trucks, no trucks no produce, no food no people. The city that runs from Boston to Washington will be hit the hardest. Therein lies the greatest density of people and the least amount of arable land. Fighting over the last bagel, people will begin to plant on the green in Central Park. Cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas; built on desert sands, will evaporate. This will happen because there is not enough oil to meet the needs of the status quo.
Possible, science fiction like, futures.
First camps then villages will appear at roadside rest areas as people race "home" and run out of gas en route. The water will keep running for a couple of years before the unheeded need for repairs cause breakdowns in the old infrastructure. Close knit communities, families and friends will survive for quite a while without oil.
Roads will come to represent something but one can only wonder what. Highway construction sites, halted mid job, gargantuan machines rusting and peeling, will become targets for migrating sharpshooters. Crime will not merely survive it will flourish as those who are both willing and without remorse take freely from those who are civilized. Church groups will bond in a new way with fervent prayer, dogs, and ammunition.
The communities and families that flourish will be those in temperate climates with long growing seasons. The San Joaquin valley in California and the entire American Mid-West will thrive. Already populated with farmers and close knit farming communities, if they can find organic seeds that yield plants which yield more organic seeds they will feed themselves and prosper. They may even get to the point where they can grow enough to sell and trade.
Alaska will thrive and prosper. The people there already know how to survive in the harshest conditions without electricity and fuel. The gardens there grow spectacular produce and fish and game abound. Learning to make their own gunpowder without blowing up the kitchen and retrieving spent lead from Elk carcasses will tax many of their skills but this is an area where comfortable survival is a matter of routine. It will only be hard the first winter without oil and in the aftermath of natural disasters.
As observed earlier, the poor and the homeless will survive. Not much will change for them in a world without oil. No wonder begging has traditionally been an honorable profession. We will turn to the homeless for advice on how to survive with nothing, in our world without oil. The rich will perish by doing what they have always done, trying to pay their way with as little as possible, protecting their wealth above all else.
Along with starvation, stupidity will take a major toll, costing millions of American citizens their lives. Panic will kill many in the beginning, fear will take many more, but stupidity will kill as many as starvation. Panic, which cannot stab you, shoot a gun, or drop a bomb; fear which wields no sword; stupidity which can barely read and write will kill more Americans than all the guns, knives, swords and bombs put together.
Within 40 years a new complex society with a new status quo will arise. People will be clean and well fed again when they've conquered the food storage problem and reinvented themselves. Books will become treasures.
Those who can tolerate the plan may win back their industrialized past but the future has never been dependent upon the past; only sometimes has it learned from the past, and the two have never mixed for a single moment in time.
We have already lost the status quo, just some of us don't yet know it. The status quo ante is behind us. The best of the industrial age is history. It is the dawning of the age of Aquarius. A single event may come along that forces all this into motion; a real terrorist act or natural disaster but the decline and fall of the American empire, and those European empires dependent upon oil, are about to come crumbling down around us. Only a concerted plan can save the most people. As gas prices begin to climb ever higher, it may not be until the price at the pump hits $10 and $12 dollars a gallon and people have to start choosing between forced busing and eating, that the plan will start to look appealing.
Okay, I've said my piece.
The Last Spotted Owl
April, 2011
