Oil Collapse

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 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.

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6&Itemid=2
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=2


Further reading:

The Nature Revolution, short story by Jan Lundberg: http://www.culturechange.org/e-letter-6cont.html

Energy production ratio (or net energy, or return on energy invested:
http://www.eclipsenow.org/Facts/alternateenergy.html
http://www.abelard.org/briefings/energy-economics.asp#eroei

Ted Trainer's writings, including The Simpler Way:
http://www.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/
and Ted Trainer's Thoughts on the Transition to a Sustainable Society
http://socialwork.arts.unsw.edu.au/tsw/D75.ThoughtsonTrans.html

Stuart Rodman's "Last Days of America?" on this website:
http://www.culturechange.org/issue20/Last%20days%20of%20America.htm
http://dieoff.org/

The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005, New York, NY. www.groveatlantic.com

Green Cities and the End of the Age of Oil
http://www.commongroundmag.com/2005/cg3206/greencities3206.html