Yes, the transportation infrastructure is terrible in many areas, and road transport is one of the biggest sources of carbon emissions. Yet the solution is simple.

First, more rail:

http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/11/case-for-rail.html

Second, we need car-free cities:

http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2010/02/car-free-cities.html

This is already happening in parts of the world, and there is no reason we cannot do this in North America as well.

Jim: I see that your Handy Dandy Word Mincer is still on the blink. I understand. The times call for blunt language. We sent our Mincer to the recycle bin a while ago at The Nothing Store

We do still season our rants with a few tips for weathering the coming storm.

My girlfriend told me to quit worriyng and being so negative... Normally I brush it off and keep sweating the future. But today I am putting the doom and gloom to the far back corner of my brain, and going out to give some estimates for solar systems... And I promise to start a garden soon... Cheers

This sounds like a better way to live- "never questioning whether the makings of tomorrow's supper would be there waiting on the supermarket shelves, never doubting when I entered a room that the lights would go on at the flick of a switch, never worrying about my personal safety" "they" will take care of everything

Two years ago I took a lot of photos of two feet of powder in the woods here. At the time I feared it could be the last time I would see such scenes. Now the rotten and thin sea ice is racing out of the Nares Straits, unimpeded by ice shelves and arches that used to hold it back. The feedbacks from what's going on around Greenland could run away any time. Maybe my diet is more of a spiritual practice than something that could halt this juggernaut, but don't you want to be able to say you at least tried, down the road?

Lynn
http://www.10in10diet.com/
Diet for a small footprint and a small grocery bill

It seems to me, that the sooner the United States is cut-off from foreign oil, the better. Although this article reminds us of the horrors of what may waiting right around the bend, it reveals that what blooms afterwards is usually better. Too bad we didn't let the banks fail, as we would probably be entering the first phase of recovery by now. We also would know exactly how fortified these bonus boys estates (fortresses) are. Thank God Hitler didn't own one. I'll bet Cheney does.

JHK,

The world is much like a poor student who knows his homework is due - and sort of know how to do it - but just keeps on resisting because there are simply to many other "easier" things to do.

Meanwhile, big brother maintains his one-act farce, talking about how important it is for people to get healthful stimulation. At least as long as it keeps him getting fatter, richer and "happier."

The world will watch and wait, until the homework is due. And only then, when the pain of reality brings some eye-opening, ear splitting screams will your redundant prodding have seem of value.

Richard Heinberg has a nice recent post on "Life After Growth" over at the Museletter web site:
http://heinberg.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/214-life-after-growth/

Hard as it is to see that manure getting ever nearer to the windfarm, it's easier than that jumpy feeling of having it right out of awareness.

And maybe easier still to get in there and work now with what we'll have left to work with after - neighbors, land, and more local economies . . .

http://www.radicalrelocalization.com/
It's coming anyway, might as well get on it!

Americans have no clue as to what is going on around them in the world. As long as they have their cars, prescription drugs and 100 oz cups of soda in the morning they are happy. One thing that I can't help imagine is how are all the old people in this country going to get around when they can no longer get gas to drive their cars. It might be that they will only have their electric golf carts to drive to the nearest prescription drug store outlet.

The airline industry in the USA is a great example of the constant decay we see in our country. Speaking with some fellow pilots in Denver yesterday we chatted about the constant slow death of the airline pilot career. Older pilots are refusing to retire, airlines are slowly devolving and losing money. There are no decent paying flying jobs available right now in the US; they are all overseas in China, India, the Middle East, etc. Yet, somehow the airlines find plenty of young kids to fly for sub $20k a year to fly people around in RJs and Turboprops, while the top paying flying jobs have now all moved overseas. If you are a highly experienced pilot the only way to get a reasonable income is to go overseas. Yet, for those starting out they have to spend $50-100K to get the training they need to be a new hire pilot. Go figure! One of the pilots remarked, after telling me that his company will shut its doors in September, that one of these days they will stop using the phrase "going postal" and start saying "going airline".

Consider the situation we face in our country when well meaning Air Traffic controllers face losing their jobs for letting their kids say "Adios" to an airplane on a take kids to work day? There was no threat to the flying public, the ATC controllers in JFK are top-notch. What happened is that some no-nothing and do-nothings on TV decided to have a field day at the expense of some Dads that help keep everyone save and make America actually work on a daily basis. Until we as Americans wake up and start to value these people that sustain the daily functions of our society, we see a continual decline in the status quo. What does it say about a country where those that are celebrated are those that contribute absolutely nothing to the functioning of the society ? Meanwhile those that do make this society work are continually harassed and punished for small liberties that actually help sustain the overall economic machine.

In the future, I predict that the people that made their riches skimming profits from transactions, and others that only take value from our society will see their fortunes decline. Where we are headed it will be those that add value to society that actually get ahead again. Firemen, Police, Garbage-men, Mechanics, Teachers, Pilots, Bus drivers, Train Engineers, Air Traffic Controllers, Farmers,,,,these will be our heros again someday. I just hope it happens before we see our society collapse under all of the weight of all the leeches the productive people are forced to carry.

Want success in the future? Start with actually doing something that helps society, Build something, Grow something, Do something. If you don't prepare to suffer.

Funny, I went to a Deli on Long Island to buy a sandwich yesterday. The sandwich cost $7.95 and the line was out the door... I thought to my unemployed self...wow... what recession? The sandwich for me was a treat... someone else offered to buy it. We may be sliding into the Long Emergency, but foraging for acorns is a long way off... we still have enough so called money to send boat loads of help to Haiti. We may be living like the Haitians in a few years, but I am sure they can handle adversity much butter than we will.

Who wants to help with my website? There are a lot of great posters on this site. I could use your help as I muddle through my 9th month of unemployment.
http://www.aimlow.com

I posted this towards the end of last weeks comments, but I think it bears repeating:

"There seems to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery.
The second by commerce, which is generally cheating.
The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of God in his favor as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry." Ben Franklin. Ah, poor Ben, he wouldn't even recognize the country he helped found, it is so over taken by greed & avarice.

http://indyamerican.blogspot.com/2010/03/people-that-actually-make-our-society.html

Your article seems to remind me of a patient in a stage of shock. There's the first phase, where the body reacts to the attack, then the second phase where the body does everythng it can to keep things going,then the third phase where everything falls apart because there's no longer enough stuff to keep things going close to normal.

I'd say our economy is now in the second phase of shock. It's making do and making things go as close as possible, but there's plenty of signs that there's unnatural adjustments going on.

Shock seems to be the natural way of dying. Look at the two shuttle explosions: Adjustment after adjustment, then suddenly things fall apart.

I don't know Jim. It seems to me that you've actively started ignoring good news now in favor of the end-topia fantasy you've become preoccupied with.

They've started setting up shop in Iraq and there's enough oil there to keep civilization chugging along for another half a century or so. Iraq will come along; a million or two more arabs will die before that happens perhaps. But Iraq will come along.

And the $80 a barrel oil is finally inducing US out of its irrational Nucleo-phobia. Elsewhere there are devices that will take the horizontally pumped natural gas and make electricity out of it efficiently enough to make the grid redundant.

All of that will give us another fifty years or so to go back to being K-strategist species again. And that's all really that we need to do; overcome our recently acquired new nature.

http://hurricanekatrinakaif.com

It is amazing that millions of people can have their lives ruined by the decisions of a few people at the top.

The ruling class decides to have a war, and millions of young dreams are crushed, while cities are destroyed and children suffer.

For what? The profits of a few.

The really amazing thing to me is that most go along with it.

"The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate."

Here's a thought: The image of Joe Six pack and wifey, gazing hypnotically at the latest ball game on TV at one point in time, and then, a few weeks latter,using the TV as a cook stove, and having to hunt for acorns, squirrels, rats, chipmonks, neighbor pets, neighbors, or whatever provides a protein source. Surely they will be shocked and very pissed off; the latter to the point of attacking any and all they perceive as responsible. That will be the basis for the social dislocations we are about to experience.

It is very clear that most humans cannot perceive and process non linear events coming at them, regardless of the amount of evidence. Therefore, they cannot and will not prepare. That's why we see the continual harping on coming up with ways to run cars one way or another; the lack of cars is non linear, and thus outside the cognitive set of most people. Remember, the amerikan lifestyle is non negotiable. That is an essential statement of the inability to comprehend non linear processes.

Most people are going to continue doing their things until the world around them shifts and then they start doing something different. But the pain they get from failure to prep will not be slight, and they will lash out at other. Just wait.

Lock and load,

Wardoc

Jim, even though your blog was not as sarcastic and biting as usual which i really like. I enjoyed it you are always able to use just the right words to express what a lot of us are thinking.

I think your art work is great it captures so much emotion.

"I was only following orders"
-Adolph Hitler

I like acorns (the sweet ones) and mushrooms. In a soup...I'll have to try that.

Infrastructure is something three generations of America have taken completely for granted. Almost every day there is another news story about a bridge built in the 1920s or 30’s that needs work, has collapsed, or has been demolished due to safety concerns. The fact that those bridges are still standing at all is a testament to the over-engineering, the massive over-building, and the pride the construction crews took in their work.

The bids have just come in for repairs to the Ogdensburg-Prescott International Bridge – all at least $2 million over bid. Either the state has wildly underestimated the costs to repair (not unlikely), the bidders smell a free lunch (very likely), or reality checks still need to be cashed. By the way, the bridge is judged in “fair to good” shape (but they don’t warn you which sections are only “fair").

How many people really want to drive on a bridge whose maintenance has been deferred and then gone to the lowest bidder? And how many of you are doing so daily?

In a recent Zogby Poll, the question was asked how vital high-speed internet is to overall quality of life and how would you fare if it was down for a day? The fact that internet infrastructure is the focus of a poll should tell us a lot about how far of the radar screen vital physical infrastructure (roads, bridges, etc.) are in most minds.

Last spring a couple of miles of railroad track buckled in the unusually hot spring heat wave on a local spur. After a quickie fix, the same section buckled again in the next heat wave. Luckily, only a few cars of road salt got dumped. But the moral of the story is clear.

Around the world, the exponential growth of state power continues to blur the line between economics and politics.

The Icelanders just gave their government permission to repudiate their debt to Netherlands and the United Kingdom following their spectacular economic implosion last year.

The Greeks have no intention of swallowing Draconian changes in their lifestyle just because their government is broke (courtesy of Goldman Sachs, who exports their shenanigans as widely externally as they do internally). A long hot summer of riots probably won’t stop at their borders, either.

The World Gold Council, who just released their 2009 annual report on gold trends, says that overall investment in gold was 7% higher in 2009 than 2008, no matter how bad the economic conditions. People are nervous – especially the ones who still have assets. Gold closed at $1,133 on Friday.

And here at home, more of that change we didn’t think we were voting for. Although government spending is not growth, you’ll never hear the G-men admit it. The most recent figures show that 8% of durable orders are now bought by the military, up from 4% before the “crises.” Bomb-proof suits don’t lead to genuine growth, although don’t tell the Canadian company that just got a $24 million military contract for their main plant in Ogdensburg, NY.

15,000 temporary Census jobs just skewed the Labor Department’s monthly employment report, with the usual math (and excuses) at work. Payrolls falling by 36,000 is better news than the mainstream analysts expected – hurray, less awful is good! We can all sing Hosannas that the U3 unemployment rate held steady at 9.7% (well, we could if it meant anything). But that never-talked about U6 figure that includes discouraged workers and part-timers who want full-time jobs grew from 16.5% to 16.8%. (More awful is just plain more awful.)

In Philadelphia there is anarchy. Over many months, gangs, numbers estimated at 70 to 120 juveniles on any given date, gather at a coded site in the city and proceed to attack people, business, and police. They use Facebook to set up locations and then, after the attack, they disperse. This week they targeted Macy's downtown. Previously, when the baseball was in season, they attacked a patron of a sports bar outside the Phillies stadium and beat him to death, and they have no problem going after police in patrol cars.

And so it goes…

Thank you for a less sardonic, more humane post this week! You've described perfectly my own hobby, or preoccupation, when I'm driving around "America the formerly beautiful." I guess it's an attempt to escape the ugliness I'm seeing, but I always imagine what people will do and how they will fare in any given area I'm "happily motoring" through after TSHTF. I definitely have a secret longing for the mullein and sumacs "popping through the fissures in the pavement." It reminds me of that Talking Heads song about a post-oil future: "This was a discount store, now it's turned into a cornfield. If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower..."

I was in the north of England a year back and I had the chance to visit sections of Hadrian's Wall. One fact sticks with me. When the Roman equivalent of paychecks stopped arriving in the early 5th century, the Legions just walked away. Some areas retained something like the Latin way of life, and the luckiest retained it a long time.

Overall, however, the times were grim and got grimmer by the year. This factoid from Wikipedia sums up what I read and, with an astute eye, saw among the Roman remains in England:

"By 407 there were no new Roman coins going into circulation, and by 430 it is likely that coinage as a medium of exchange had been abandoned. Pottery mass production probably ended a decade or two previously; the rich continued to use metal and glass vessels, while the poor probably adopted leather or wooden ones."

There's a lovely and sad artifact in the Yorkshire museum about this period of time. It's a simple glass container, and the card beside it notes that no new glass was made after the first decade of the 5th century. The people just "made do" with what they had.

Make whatever parallels (and they are not usually good) between America and Rome, but we have this: how many Americans who pick glass into the trash can can even mend a broken window, let along blow glass?

Remember Pompeii and its fate of volcanic destruction? The people who lived there certainly saw the smoke and glowing lava for weeks before the explosion and had warning. They got used to living with the danger and learned to ignore it. Then one day came a tremendous explosion and the people ran down the streets toward the supposed safety of the sea but were overcome by 200 mph pyroclastic flows and died in their tracks.

There's probably a lesson here for our nation and our civilization.
Jim captured it in his title: "All at Once".

Last line should be:

"how many Americans who PITCH glass into the trash can can even mend a broken window, let ALONE blow glass?"

Shoddy proofreading, and a mania for recycling, got the best of me.

PS to the comment: most soldiers in what is now England and Wales in the 5th Century were natives, so they had no great allegiance to the idea of Empire when the pay stopped. These men took their fighting skills, gathered friends, and went home to defend their families and grow food.

Make whatever parallel to THAT you wish.

Smokeyjoe: Interesting that we both independently thought of Roman Empire metaphors at the same time. It might be a good time for some to drag out the history books or online encyclopedia,

JHK sez:
"Everything we know about it seems to indicate that human beings happily go along with the program -- whatever the program is -- until all of a sudden they can't, and then they don't."

Yes, that's what I'm shown time and time again; things [and behaviors] that can't go on forever... don't. Why doesn't anybody (excepting most of those "here") seem to get that?

I guess that might be why I'm so vehemently opposed to false hope?

I'm interested to read comments about Roman Britain, because I think this is probably the finest historical model of the "powerdown" peak oil scenario.

I studied the Romano British era for a time. The Empire crumbled, but the people kept trying to keep up appearances. Gradually, less and less villas were being built, and the people went back to native building styles - which were arguably more suited to the (cold and wet) northern British climate. The Brits were enthusiastic about Roman rule, and really wanted the richess to continue.

What followed has been called the Dark Ages, but this label is based on snobbery - people using that term are on one hand, a bunch of clacissists hung up on Rome, and on the other, religious fanatics.

Oh, and apologies for being such a keener, but I can't help but love JHK's line: "The mind could go two ways: into the past, when wooden sailing craft were built in yards along the river; or into the future, when it would be easy to imagine wooden sailing craft being built there again, only twenty miles or so from the great sheltered mini-sea of Long Island Sound."

It's exactly how I feel right now. (Often, however, I feel a lot less cheerful!)

Damn Jim, you ought to try and enjoy life a little more. Driving around seeing everything as some sort of trailer to the movie “2012”, ain't good for ya man! You'll likely be dead by the time any of it happens anyway. Have a drink, hell.....get drunk.....you need it.

Dale, you're not saying anything he (and we) haven't already heard. Or is it your Xanax talking?

Observing the suburban and urban landscape from a speeding car doesn't reveal the breakdown in social organization that lies underneath. You can find stories like these happening all around the country.

City of San Francisco to layoff 15,000 employees to help cover a $500M budget deficit. The employees will be "invited" to reapply for their jobs at lower wages and benefits and shorter hours.

Detroit has cleared or demolished enough city blocks to equal the footprint of the City of San Francisco.

City of Toledo, Ohio (typical of auto rust belt cities) is trying to close a $50M budget deficit and will layoff more city workers, close parks, etc.

Kansas City, Missouri plans to close half of its public schools.

UC Berkeley students protest a 30% increase in student fees. Back in my college days we used to protest against the Vietnam War and American imperialism.

The combined budget deficits of the 50 states over this year and next will be $350B. There will be no bailout from the Federal government for the cities and states. All of the government's capital and financial guarantees (in the trillions of dollars) have been handed over to the banking and housing sectors and when these fail we will be on the hook for the debts and losses. Just think Iceland and its financial collapse and multiply by several orders of magnitude.

I'd say it is about time for some grown-ups in positions of authority to start telling everyone to prepare for a decline in their standard of living and to expect less of everything...fat chance. They would rather start World War III than admit that the U.S. is in terminal decline. Dreams of empire die hard.

Hey folks,

Can we ease up on all the links to "your" sites?

I don't mind all the links to additional information, etc. But the shameless self promotion is tacky. Especially when some people do it over and over.

Meanwhile, in my hometown of Kansas City, Mo., they are about to close 1/2 of the public schools in the city. The schools, linked to property taxes, are about to fall harder than the flipped properties that brought them boom times and now disaster.

When I'm out in public and at work at the local hospital, I look around and wonder when "The Anger" will be inflicted on our illegal guests before it consumes the general public. I hope they have the good sense to get out before it really gets crazy but I'm afraid they are just as clueless as the rest of the white trash america.

The Roman Empire didn't go down to be replaced by lawlessness and anarchy. It was the opposite event, the Roman Empire could not control the lawlessness and anarchy anymore, and so it went down. The barbarian lords were then tasked with trying to govern the mess the Romans left in partnership with the Roman Catholic Church.

I'm predicting the same thing is happening right now, the old empires are consuming and destroying everything, and by the time they consume themselves we will have to figure out how to live on our own: http://globalsovereignty.wordpress.com/global-sovereignty-and-the-future-of-the-state/

The only difference today is that it is all happening much faster.

I'm really quite amazed at the number of people that believe the global warming fantasy on this site. I sort of expected that realism prevailed here but it seems not. Read the latest proper science and you'll see it's not real, added to which are the recent revelations that a lot of the figures used by the warmists are manipulated, incomplete or just plain wrong. Get real people, climate change depends on the sun and the last 10 years have shown no increase in temperature. Almost nobody believes it except the ones that gain from all the new taxes.
Worry about the oil running out and civil war over the remaining food not some imagined future 1 or 2 degree increase that would be largely beneficial anyway.

And it just keeps getting worse...

The Los Angeles Unified School District plans to layoff 5200 employees.

Jackson Health System plans to close two hospitals in Miami and layoff 4200 employees.

Shaws announced it is closing all of its supermarkets in Connecticut and will layoff 1000 employees.

What recovery? Over 400K jobs would need to be created each month for the next 36 months to equal the number of people out of work using the U3 measure of unemployment. To equal the number of people in the U6 measure of unemployment over 400K jobs would need to be created every month for the next 65 months.

Things are getting out of hand and it could all do down hill very quickly as the human misery from joblessness spreads to a larger percentage of working Americans and their families.

What is the Obama administration prepared to do? Next to nothing...give tax credits to employers is their plan. They actually think the so-called private sector will be able to create jobs in unbelievable numbers. They really need to re-think just what they are going to have on their hands.

End of Times: You believe lies that have been bombarding you for the past 20 years and are sponsored by Exxon/Mobil.

Climate change is real. Else, why is the permafrost melting? Why are the mountain glaciers shrinking? Why are the polar ice caps melting? Your Ministery of Propaganda can't even mention these obvious facts or even you might begin to doubt their Big Lie.

Unless you are paid to repeat that Big Lie.

Just nice to see you taking the time to contemplate and document. I spent several months last year as a liveaboard on out ketch, and yes, I was grateful for the opportunity...to review everything I used, all that I did throughout the day, and it was remarkable to realize not only how little I needed but how quickly I didn't miss all the emotional angst involved in believing I still have a desire to acquire anything beyond the basics.

I do not think that the collapse will come all at once. I suspect that some regions of the country will do better than others and those that are still in the "have" group will demand greater and greater autonomy from the federal government.

Take California as an example. Though the state is bankrupt, it still is capable of exporting food and it is an energy producer. Also, it still retains some manufacturing and high tech industries.

Places like California will probably do better than the flyover states. Also, with a population of 38 million, it can probably field an army all by itself.

Just like the Roman Empire split itself because it was ungovernable, our nation will slowly split apart as states with more refuse to continue to help the states without.

Good column this week, Jimbo! *golf clap*

Keep it short people. If you want to write more than a paragraph, try getting your own blog and linking it. ;)

Europe is a big ole country where they eat a lot of wine and cheese.

Bonanza Bus Lines has 2 buses each day that take 3 - 4 hours to go from Albany to Hartford. I know you can drive it in less time but you know they kill people for the oil you consume driving there. Does participating in the slaughter of innocents by the hundreds of thousands mean nothing?

Every time I travel to see my parents I take six hours to go by bus a distance it takes 1.5 hours to go by car. There is only one bus per day and it leaves at 5 AM. If you think I enjoy getting up at 3AM and trudging 4 miles to catch the bus so I can arrive in my hometown by 11, you're nuts.

The image I get from this blog of people who are certain that a shortage of oil will soon result in widespread starvation consuming that scarce oil to drive around aimlessly and wonder at how fucked everybody is, is not a positive one. And don't bother waving Jevons' paradox at me.

It's great that our little insider group knows what's coming (each little insider group of course having its own lock on the truth). The great unwashed herd has no idea of what's coming, but we do. The part of this blog exchange that really chaffs my ass is so many people trying to convince others of their truth. "If only they'd ... X (or Y or Z) it would fix things."

I see a lot of merit in John Michael Greer's distinction between a problem and a predicament. We think we have problems, which imply solutions, so we look for or expect solutions. What we actually face are predicaments -- which by definition don't have solutions, only coping or adjustments.

Stop wasting time trying to fix from the top. The top is irrelevant. Work on personal, family, neighborhood, and local adjustments.

Jim, you forgot to mention another omen from last week: Germany's insistence that Greece sell off land to pay debt. Forcing a usta-be sovereign country to extinguish itself so that Germany and France might live does not bode well for Spain, Italy and Portugal does it. I've always been skeptical about the EU holding together and last week confirmed my suspicions.

"It blows my mind that California is bankrupt especially with silicon valley and hollywood on its turf. I would have thought it would be raining money. Actually, maybe it is. It's just that the California govt somehow can't get its mitts on it."

I live in California. It isn't that difficult to understand. They capped property taxes awhile back, and....um...property taxes generally pay for EVERYTHING in local government and a big chunk of state services, too. So now they have a 10% income tax, while people who have lived here like 30 years pay $600 in property taxes per year (yes you read that right).

And the state of California basically wants to run a mini socialist state on this tiny income, including comprehensive social services, an incredibly lavish education system, etc. Of course, this is a recipe for fiscal disaster. Not even the federal government can do this, and they take in, what, like a 30% of most people's income?

Plus 30% of the welfare recipients in the entire country are in this state.

And the citizens here can vote in these hair-brained initiative programs, so what usually happens is the citizens choose more services and less taxes.

And the Governor...yeah, totally incompetent.

Let me know if you want more info. I can rant awhile on that topic. Apologies though...I should prolly get my own blog. :)

If I were an Iraqi I'd wear bullet proof underpants.

I actually think upstate New York has its own kind of beauty. I like all the trees and hills and the farms. At least, it is more ascetically pleasing than say, 95% of the state of New Jersey.

Trying to spread the "WORD" reminds me of two stories. One is "Watership Down". Nervous little "Fiver" tries to convince the Chief Rabbit of the danger looming. "Something bad is coming! It's so bad! We have to move!"

Chief Rabbit turns his butt to Fiver, and munches his lettuce. "Now, in Mating Season?" he muses.

Not very likely.

Another story is by Doris Lessing. I can't remember the name. Some ET's from a far-off place realize they must warn the earthlings of a disaster coming to California. At great expense to their culture (and forcing them to put other important projects on hold) they send a team to earth to try and clear out the state.

To their amazement, they finally figure out that the people of California KNOW an earthquake is coming, but they still won't move. Fatalistic in the face of scary change.

They think the young ones might be more flexible; instead when they convince the young earthlings of the disaster to come, thy young ones do nothing, except make up sad sad songs.

Me and Doris Lessing are a lot alike, except for the Nobel, of course.

If i'm not mistaken the California real estate tax cap goes with the property. Therfore, the properties' sales price is artificially inflated, much to the delight of government statistical engineers.

The infrastructure decay our host describes have been more obvious in the Northeast for a while. You notice when you go to the fast growth areas in the South and West. The parking lot at GE in Syracuse, New York, once full of office workers' cars, is fast becoming a patch of Goldenrod. Old masonry buildings in small towns around here are crumbling, with engineer friends of mine hired to knock them down, the time for saving them having long past. The good news is more and more people seem to be looking off-the-grid for activity and amusement. If our species survives, we may be better off without burning so much more juice than we really need.

Um, yeah, sorry guys, the property tax cap does NOT work when someone who has lived there for 30 years pays $600 dollars on a half million+ property. Doesn't make any sense what-so-ever. Then income and sales tax get jacked way high to make up for the short fall.

Paying for roads, fire, police, and schools is not being a "vampire". Don't be a freaking dullard. Invading other countries with our $1 trillion dollar a year military, let's talk about that, how about?

To put it in simple terms, the cost of government services is constantly increasing every year due to inflation and recently from things like increases in prices of raw materials. Therefore, property taxes need to keep pace over time or the state train wrecks.

Are you following me here?

In response to 'i can't believe california is broke', I repeat again; the concept of money was invented and reinvented primarily for the express purpose of enabling legal theft of value from the lower class masses who not not have a degree in law or economics and therefore cannot grasp the complexities involved...If one did grasp the reality of it, one would very quickly stop playing the game and try to distance oneself as far as possible from the money changers, perhaps establishing smaller local cooperatives with good simple rules and transparency...What we are seeing now are the cumulative effects of the elite class draining the system of value in any legal (or not) way possible...this is why there's no money to send kids to school at the same time the elite class is at their zenith of fabulous wealth...now who do you suppose would be calling the shots?

Meanwhile, stay away from credit in whatever form it takes...the dice are loaded and not in your favor...

Jim, having eagerly started my Monday mornings with Clusterfuck for about a year now, I've never felt compelled to comment until now. Today's post struck me. Seems to be the whole idea of imagining those around oneself in some radically altered situation. I find myself doing that a lot, and its particularly nagging considering I'm young, and a parent.

My little nuclear family has lived in the SF Bay Area for nearly four years. We're planning to move out to Sioux Falls, SD in a few months. Sounds crazy? Well, there's a chilling feeling that things in the Bay Area are hopelessly and permanently cracked and crumbling in their deep foundations, and I don't see this place as being any more prepared than anywhere else for something like a leap in gasoline prices. There are far too many people here, and the sort of liberal harmony that Bay Area folks are so proud of seems about as thin as Saran Wrap when you live here. At the same time there's endless faith in California in general that the end of the financial crisis is around the corner, but I have yet to hear anything from anyone about a plausible solution. I work for the state and must report that my experience does not instill confidence. Lots of hope, and lots of business-as-usual, until, as you say, all-at-once. What's going to happen to popular faith if things don't get better? Funny how earthquakes are the least of our worries of footing these days.

So, fears and horrors (such as that our local elementary school plans to shed one teacher for every grade) are prompting us to flee back to my home state. Eastern South Dakota feels almost like Sweden in comparison to California -- and not just because everybody's blonde. There are plenty of jobs, and there's that frontier tradition/mentality (naivety, Californians might call it) of helping your neighbors and even strangers. For $76K we got a big 1912 house with a big yard that's in walking distance from the rather nice pre-WW2 downtown area. Sure, suburban sprawl eats away the countryside outside the city's core, but I'm encouraged by the fact that the sheer number of people is so much fewer than in a lot of other places. There are many rivers and lakes, and a strong agricultural tradition straight out of the old world, and, of course, I've got family there. Generally, it feels like there's more future there than past.

Our move is totally personal and practical, not the least bit ideological or wacko-survivalist, and unfortunately it seems to fit exceedingly well into the sum things-to-come picture you paint in your books and this blog. Not two years ago we were considering a $400K mega-loan to buy a house (not a "home", mind you) in a Bay Area suburb, and accepting the "sacrifice" of commuting. Thank the gods we wised up before doing so. How unexpected that imagination, and not strictly science, is probably to blame.

"No offense, but I agree with the cap on property taxes because I do not believe any state should be a vampire on the people who live there. And just look how out of control California was even with the cap - now imagine how huge it would have been without the limits!"

This paragraph is just one big non-sequitur. I want to call "tea bagger" on you, but instead I'll explain my position and you can reply, hopefully in a logical manner that doesn't equate state government with some mythical blood-sucking beast.

Firstly, I am not offended. You can write whatever you want. I think you're kind of thick, but I'm certainly not insulted by your comments (even though you're dead wrong).

The idea of a US state being a "vampire" is downright laughable. The USSR was a vampire state. Attempting to pay for roads, sewers, police, and fire is so far from this that I wouldn't even put it in the same category. Yeah, there is some bloat, but the state is NOT a vampire. Get that stupid analogy out of your head. There are common services we need and we have to pay for them with taxes. It is a pretty simple, idea, really.

The state of California is not "out of control". The state government here in terms of number of workers and services is fairly lean compared to the population size and to many other states (well not to Texas but that state is kind of in a category by itself). In fact, the state government does not collect enough taxes for the services that people DEMAND year after year with their bi-annual set of pork-ladden, pie-in-the-sky propositions, all of which are VOTER MANDATED, not driven by the needs or desires of the state government or its works. It is direct democracy gone awry. Blame the people of California for this.

If there were no property cap, then the state budget would be balanced and property tax income would be at appropriate levels for what the state needed to fund essential infrastructure. The sales and income taxes would be far lower, because they would not need to be so high to make up the gap. The tax cap is what has screwed California big time. All you have to do is look at a) the state budget deficits b) the state of the infrastructure (schools, roads, etc.) from the date that Prop 13 passed. Hint: There was an easily recognizable trend. California used to be known as a state with great infrastructure. All that started to change once Prop 13 put a stranglehold on property tax collection.

P.S. I rescind my call for all the verbose people to get their own blogs due to my own state of complete hypocrisy on this matter. ;)

My top 4 possessions in 1978 : Corvette, New Townhouse in town, wife, .357 Python. 2010 : Home with land, rototiller, woodsplitter, .357 Python. AAAAHHHH! Do a lot more bitching today but life has never been more simple and enjoyable. I can almost smell the dirt after three days of sunshine.

"My little nuclear family has lived in the SF Bay Area for nearly four years. We're planning to move out to Sioux Falls, SD in a few months. Sounds crazy?"

Um, no...being a Bay Area resident for 5 years, that sounds perfectly sane to me. :)

Um, Mook, I think your wife (guessing ex wife?) would take issue with being labeled as your "possession". :)

From my tiny corner of the world in South Central Kansas, I can report that donations to the small college where I work are definitely down, but have hardley cratered. People are hurting but still giving--for now.

On the other hand, I'm quite worried that I haven't been seeing the vast fields of green shoots from the emerging winter wheat that make our rolling landscape quite attractive this time of year. My farmer friends are reporting nobody planted their usual full allottment last fall. Because of squeezed finaces and soaking rains, many only planted a third of their usual crop and some planted none.

Fields of sunflower heads hang blackly here and there because they have to be completely dry before they can be cut from the plant. The brown and the barren fields are like nothing I've seen in my lifetime.

I hope other places in the country can pick up the slack. We might be paying a lot for a loaf of bread this summer.

Turkle, states may not be "vampires" upon their citizens, but municipalities are becoming just that.

I live in Chicago, which has just raised property taxes to consfiscatory levels, and most of our suburbs are still worse. I have a friend, a man and his family who have a house worth perhaps $180K at the outside, who received a tax bill for $8500. His wife was just laid off, and these people, who were having no problems paying for their house even without her job without this most recent hike, will probably have to walk away from it, though they've owned it for 10 years.

Worse, residents of impoverished Chicago neighborhoods such as Garfield Park, Englewood, Gage Park and Cottage Grove are being hit with bills of $4000 or more for little shanties that might fetch all of $40K on today's market. These are not welfare recipients or bums- they are the low wage earners on whose back we've built our economy, and most of them work two jobs per person when they can get them, to buy their little houses. This is while Streeterville condos priced at $1M or more are paying perhaps $6000 per year, or slightly more. Where is the fairness here?

The property tax is the most brutally regressive tax of all the taxes we pay, in that the lower your income, the harder you are hit. I would do anything to get rid of this tax. Not only does it tax regressively, but it makes people keep on paying for what they already bought and payed for. It punishes those who buy within their means and pay down their home loans and maintain their property well, by taxing them for added value every time they do repair& replace, and it makes you pay, and pay, and pay, for what you already bought and paid for. It means you never own your property, and most of all, that you cannot keep your expenses level simply by buying and sacrificing to pay down your mortgage quickly. And it increasing means that if you are retired, or a low earner, that you will end up homeless even though you paid for your place and maintained it and pay your utilities.

Yes, yes, I am willing to pay for police and fire protection, as well as other community services and amenities available to all residents equally such as roads necessary for egress, basic education, and libraries.

And if that is all citizens had to finance, we would not be being taxes out of our houses, OR our rental apartments- in most locales, large multi-family buildings are taxed at double or triple the rate for SF homes ,even though they have a much lower cost to the city and environment, calculated on a per-household basis, than SF homes.

But we are being raped, absolutely destroyed, the poorest among us first and the most, to pay for politicians who vote themselves 20& pay hikes while the rest of us lose jobs and/or have our pay and hours cut. We pay to subsidize the new Target or Walmart ($4M per store on the average), for the 150 "affordable" subsidized apartments that cost over $400K a unit to build, for the Olympics bid, for a new high-speed limited-access road that the neighborhood does not want, for public service workers pensions that will pay them 10X what they put in, for thousands of bureaucratic "fluff" and "spoils" jobs at City Hall .

What we need is spending caps, or more to the point, strict limits on what taxing authorities can spend outside clearly defined necessities. And a hike in the state income tax, or a city income tax, which are progressive taxes, should carry the load, and the property tax discontinued.

I am a democrat and a "teabagger". If all you have is calling me a racist Jew hater you don't have sh*t. Your writing is techincally wonderful, but very short on imagination. Truth is you don't have any idea, and neither do I, because we don't know the future.

I think one thing. This is the civil war but it is going the other way this time:small local governemtn. Big government is all done. You and all the media misfits are going to be dead as*broke, because you supported idiots like Obama and Princess Pelosi. BTW BUSH SUCKED TOO!

It's too bad that your language in writing non-fiction is too flowery for us simple poor folk to understand. Ever thought of hashing out a brutally honest, no holds-barred, dumbed-down list of things us simple folk who are poor living off the "Wall Street" grid can easily understand? There are so many of us out here in the midst of wheatfields and cattle that do not care for flowering "Northeastern" talk and it helps to "dumb it down" for us. Not to degrade anybody, we just aren't as smart as you (big smile). I live in a small town of only 300 people where we don't have stoplights or traffic and there's so many small towns like this scattered across the nation that I wonder if there are other like me who want the truth without all the english writing rhetoric. Many thanks for your insights in helping us all out with what is to come.

Whoops, I had the tax rate wrong.

From whitneyforgov.org

"Our tax structure in Illinois is fundamentally unfair, placing far too much of the tax burden on those least able to pay – the poor, and low-to-middle income workers and farmers, and small businesses – while giving most of the breaks to those most able to pay, the big corporations and the extremely wealthy. That is the main reason why our State is under funded. According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Illinois is the 6th worst state in the nation in terms of being regressive, that is, in terms of taxing lower and middle-income taxpayers at a higher rate than the wealthy. When all taxes are taken into account – income, sales, excise and property taxes, and the effects of federal offsets, the poorest 20 percent of Illinois taxpayers pay 13.1% of their income in taxes, the middle 60 percent pay, on average, about 10.1% of their income in taxes, while the top 1 percent – people with an average income of $1.3 million per year – are only paying 4.6% of their income in taxes. Years of special tax favors to big corporations also means that these wealthy non-persons are also not paying their fair share of taxes, either.
Meanwhile, although the personal income tax burden in Illinois is more than twenty percent below the national average, its property-tax burden is about twenty percent above the national average, imposing an unjust burden on working and middle-class homeowners and on our farmers, orchard growers and wineries."

I imagine I'm well-informed because I follow this site and others, but I had to read in a stupid magazine, Wired, about the Ug99 fungus, even though that news has been out for a year. Does JHK know about Ug99? There's a couple videos on YouTube, for starters. It's a disease of wheat.

One of the many ridiculous ironies of American politics is the strange disposition of people from so-called conservative states to disapprove of California and it's presumed lifestyles (all stereotypes of course). What many of these people don't realize is that a number of the so-called conservative states are essentially welfare cases of CA. That's right, CA has been a net exporter of federal tax money for a long time while many of the southern and conservative mid-western states have been living off that exported tax money. Hence, if any state would benefit from leaving the union it would be CA. If they actually did it, it would be enormously beneficial for it's people, while most of the Southern states would languish in even greater poverty.

Maybe a U.S. split would be a good thing. Let all the "conservatives" have the south and midwest, and the "progressives" have the two coasts. Man....if that happened I'd pack my bags and head for the Pacific in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, I doubt my property in Idaho would be worth spit if it happened.

My Lai massacre....
I was only following orders
Waco...
I was only following orders
Hiroshima...
I was only following orders
Nagasaki...
I was only following orders
Dresden...
I was only following orders
Grenada...
I was only following orders
Desert Storm...
I was only following orders
Iraq unprovoked attack and murders...
I was only following orders
Afghanistan unprovoked attack...
I was only following orders
Genocide in Palestine...
I was only following orders
65 year military occupation of Japan and Germany...
I was just following orders
etc,etc

Who is giving all these orders??Hitler??

I've been trying to understand how Cuba survived the "Special Period". I think the mild climate is the only thing that saved them, we won't be so lucky I think.

I left my copy of "The Long Emergency" on the table in the kitchen at work, it disappeared. Hopefully I planted a seed.

The property tax is an odd beast. At first glance, it sounds good. I mean, those dang property owners. They have money, right?

Well, not always. And they're not the people paying either.

I own 6 investment properties. Obviously, I pay taxes on them. At the moment, I'm lucky and all are rented.

So what happens when the local government decides to revalue my property (something over which I have *no* control) in order to extract more money from me?

I raise the rent to cover it. So who's *really* paying property taxes? Every renter. That's who.

But I'm lucky. I can raise the rent, and so have a mechanism by which I can pay. My neighbors aren't so lucky. They're retired and on a fixed income. When the local municipality tries to squeeze them for more money, guess what happens? They lose their house. They're forced to sell to people like me, who buy them as investments. Then, I turn them into duplexes and I rent them out. To who? Other older people who've been kicked out of their houses and are forced to downsize.

Property taxes look like they are targeting rich people. The thing is, it never works out quite that way and it's the poorest who ultimately pay.

All of the talk about the decline of the Roman Empire and several of the States of the United States breaking away reminds me of Joel Garreau's 1981 book "The Nine Nations of North America."

Garreau points out that in many ways our current political boundaries are quite arbitrary. Creating more logical regional and cultural "nations" out of North America could allow us to survive without supporting the endless energy and resource needs of capitalism and the never-ending "war on terror" political obsessions of something like the United States of America.

If we move to Orlov's third stage of collapse, which is political (we are already in stage two, which is commercial collapse and past the first stage, which was financial collapse), we might be able to create something like the nine "nations" of North America and stave off the fourth (social) and fifth (cultural) stages of collapse. It would require regional leaders and the people living in each region to realize that they have much more in common with one another than they do with the old political order.

Here's hoping we can succeed in doing some like Joel Garreau wrote about and halt the slide into Orlov's stage four social collapse and stage five cultural collapse, which if it happens will leave us all in a "Mad Max" like world as depicted in Jim's novel "A World Made by Hand" and in other books like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road".

Wardoc, you're right, LOCK & LOAD. If you have the necessary supplies, ways of growing food and a self sufficient homestead, you will be a target. BE PREPARED ! This is more then the Boy Scout motto. It will be what saves you and your Team. Agricultural tech, weapons & ammo and a secure perimeter with water and good solar gain will be most helpful. Stock up now while things are still cheap and available. Stash it securely ! Buy calibers of ammo for all your weapon systems and some for ones you don't have. Ammo will be a valuable barter item, as will toiletpaper, tampons and paper towels. And don't forget the MED supplies. For those days when Rite-Aid isn't open.

Somewhere in the future our values will shift. Now you can get gold for $1000 an ounce and butter for $4.99 a pound. One day it might be just the opposite.

Stay Frosty

Nice post, Laura. Very well put.

I'm not for running little old ladies out of their houses! But when you see people in California with a BMW and an SUV in the driveway next to their boat in front of their million dollar home claiming they can't pay one more cent in taxes or they'll go broke, I call foul. We've basically enriched the private realm in this country with eight hundred different varieties of BMW's, three bathrooms per house, and the most retail space per person on the planet, while our essential services like schools, road construction, police, etc. are absolutely starving for money.

For instance, what did people spend their $1000 tax rebate checks on a few years back? They bought flat screen television sets. They didn't make an extra payment on the ole underwater mortgage. They didn't pay down their debts. They bought fancy idiot boxes.

Furthermore, I am not necessarily against limited property tax caps for owner-occupied residences. It sounds to me like Chicago is kind of out of control, and I think its a logical, sane idea not to run people off their property with these taxes. But giving the same tax breaks for investment properties, rental properties, and commercial properties is a huge racket and a mistake.

Forwarding property tax hikes on rentals to the renters is, of course, logical. I don't see the problem with that, myself.

Why point to fiction for your worst case scenarios when we have real life ones like The Congo, Somalia, parts of the former USSR, etc.

Not to rain on the parade, but thinking you're gonna fight off the rampaging zombie hordes from your fortified compound is a bit far-fetched. You'd be better off simply moving to another, less violent, stable country with a cheaper cost of living (Costa Rica, Thailand, etc.). And if the "entire world" goes to hell, where exactly do you think you'll be able to hide? Some quote about everyone being in the same boat comes to mind.

I dunno, though, Northern Canada could be nice, especially in about 20 years with a bit of global warming. They have the tar sands, too!

Mr. Shambles,
there is a more modern example of a "powerdown" and that is Cuba after the fall of the USSR, the so called "Special Period".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period

From wiki,
It was defined primarily by the severe shortages of hydrocarbon energy resources in the form of gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum derivatives.

Speaking of Hadrian's wall, 75 miles long, 10ft wide and 20ft tall, built in 11 years and still standing, despite the theft of much of the the stone by local farmers/road builders, 1,900 years later! Puts those bridges built in the 20's/30's into perspective.

After following this blog (and Jim's fantastic podcast) for some time I finally registered to comment.

In New Zealand we get the latest Clusterfuck Nation on Tuesday morning and I eagerly devour it with morbid fascination. While kiwi land is not immune to the main forces of the long emergency we are quite a different culture from the US (despite our governments attempts to follow the 'leader').

While the majority of what is discussed here is American centric it is interesting to me as it seems to embody the 'worst case scenario', USA being at the leading edge of so many self destructive patterns.

Thanks to all who have helped validate or support my observations and visions of where we are headed. I have taken real steps. Last year I bought a rural property with 85% deposit and the remainder a no interest loan from family. We have established a large garden and with the existing orchard are now self sufficient in organic vegetables, fruit and eggs. Working from home via internet my main reliance is on power grid (a large percentage of the electricity being wind generated) and internet links.

Part of me welcomes the coming re-simplification of life but I also realise it will come at great cost.

Our southern hemisphere rural adventure is document at www.blockhill.co.nz

PEACE

kunstler's motto:

whadda we want? APOCOLYPSE! when do we want it? NOW!!!!!

There is going to be a post-oil special tonight on the National Geographic Channel. It occurs at 10:00 P.M. in my Pacific Time Zone. I have no idea how good it's going to be but I guess we can all figure that out together as we watch it.

trippticket wrote:
"...I highly recommend following the lead of the transition initiative, permaculture, or any other group promoting local economies, perennial food systems, and passive solar architecture."

Trippticket, I hate point this out, but walled cities existed for a reason.

Unless your lovingly designed permaculture community is protected by some serious defenses, it will last just as long as it takes for it to be found by the local street gang, motorcycle gang, or rogue national guard unit looking for a meal. Once found, it will be either occupied, with the original inhabitants reduced to slavery or serfdom, or simply pillaged and abandoned. There will be no big daddy American government to protect you.

As I've pointed out here and elsewhere, no permaculture community will be worth joining for the first year after a significant collapse. This will weed out the weak ones and leaves you a choice of those that haven't been occupied by gangs.

VLAD:
you had mentioned something a few days ago about steep decline in education. so i found the info:
THE BELL CURVE......p 419

1885 NJ HS entrance exam....well i have a degree from a university and i couldnt get any of the 3 sample questions right.
1....tough grammar
2...tough math
3...name 3 major events of 1777

If we're looking for that special something that's gonna take this empire down, it's the difference between wages and the cost of living, Jim. I'm sure you know that.

Deflation is what the powers that be are really afraid of. They are terrified of it. You should be mapping the CPI out on a big poster board on your bedroom wall, Jim. :)

Here in San Francisco, they had an article in the free publication Examiner specifically addressing this issue. The title had to do with who would blink first--the consumer or the retailer.

Deflation. Deflation. Deflation. Keep your eye on that ball and you'll have all you can handle.

James, I feel a change going on in your mind and soul. You have been going through Kubler-Ross' -like stages-of-grief process in some way.

At one point you showed stability to the eventual changes in our new evolving national paradigm shift away from the way we have been over the last 35 years, to something very different and scary for many. You wrote about the coming problems and changes with a sense of stability. Next, you jumped into denial, not your denial but Bush's denial. Then, once Obama took office, the anger came out because this president failed to perform as he promised, or we thought he had promised. We thought he would do better and choose better people to turn the problems around.

Then I felt, in your writing a brief moment of feeling sad, a sort of feeling of depression over the Obama failures.

Now, this piece feels like you are testing your emotions over what will likely be in the coming years. There is a new calm coming over you.

You feel the disconnect between those you speak to for fees, and what you actually understand and know is likely to occur to them and to others.

I like the feel of how you are writing your observations and perceptions of your environment. You are the main character in a reality based novel.

You are writing to an audience who also understands. We get it! We, too, see it similarly. We, too, see the slow decomposition of those boom years in empty strip malls, decaying roads and bridges, inadequate mass transit systems, empty office buildings, rock bottom hotel rooms, and rising commodity prices, such as gasoline.

Life will never be the same as it is even now. It will slowly decline. There is not the political will or an aware and insightful powerful tour-de-force figurehead commanding attention helping Americans to "get-it", too.

Keep it up, James, and thanks!

http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com

Shambles said:

What followed has been called the Dark Ages, but this label is based on snobbery - people using that term are on one hand, a bunch of clacissists hung up on Rome, and on the other, religious fanatics.

Shambles, it sounds as if you might be the fanatic.

While Europe was experiencing its "Dark Ages," the Arab/Islamic civilization was at its apogee. It was this same Islamic civilization, with its many contributions to science and the humanities, that paved the way for the rise of the West to its present prominence.

The Dark Ages were anything but dark in other parts of the world. The Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa studied and improved on the works of the ancient Greeks while civilization flourished in sub-Saharan Africa, China, India, and the Americas.

Beautiful post.

"...the kids had been properly trained in the intricacies of flight control (no mean feat)..."

The kids were transmitting flight data, including numbers, (not just saying adios).

Suppose they transposed a number and several hundred people died.

Would anyone be saying "how cute that daddy shared his workplace with his kids"?

There would be lawsuits galore, because what that father did was illegal and irresponsible.

I was listening to rush last week, a lady whined about ' enviornmental wackos'..well this is just of google or yahoo news:

WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth's oceans, particularly off the United States' Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.

They warn that the oceans' complex undersea ecosystems and fragile food chains could be disrupted.

JIM:
'I'm thinking: how many of you might be grubbing around the woods six months from now for enough acorns and mushrooms to make something resembling '
....uh..no...

There was a news report on some west coast immigrants, they went mushroom hunting [ i forget the fancy term] and all died.
BUT THE DEADLY WEST COAST MUSHROOMS LOOKED JUST LIKE THE EDIBLE MUSHROOMS IN THEIR HOMELAND.

I may have said this here before, but I really don't see "our" collapse happening in the space of a few months, or even years. Like any great empire,the decline will be slow and painfull. Many will argue that it's not a "decline", but an adjustment, or even an opportunity, to re-orient society and profit from the coming "green" economy. And the ideology of "our" ruling elite continues to dominate our discourse. But really, arming ourselves, planting gardens? 2012 fantasies ;entertaining,I admit (I love target practice),but c'mon!

The easiest way to make land tax non-regressive is to have a means test - starting at some point in house value (say $1A,000,000), and above hardship for working and middle class home-owners - in all Australian states that have land tax, they do this.

Local governments charge rates on all properties, to pay for local services (garbage collection, local roads, libraries, parks, services, and so on). They are either standard for each property type (about $A1,200 on average for a house or apartment) or based on the unimproved capital value of the property, ie, just the land value. So if you improve the building, there is no rates penalty.

States cannot impose taxes, although they can charge fees for services, like car registration, hospitals, and so on. The vast majority of state income is from a share of the federal tax take - mostly in the form of a 10% VAT tax on most transactions (but not basic foodstuffs, and a wide range of other fair exemptions).

The stories above about huge land tax burdens are awful - and very foreign indeed to the Australian experience.

"All at Once..." inev...tuhble;
There ain't no tressels now;
Paint on rust,
fate darin' time,
No bridge tempts silent sounds

The fallin's past, 'side amber waves
Tis all done come by now
The hurtled voids
take optimists
Yet pessimists fall down

Never mind a cure a fix
Oh never mind that cure...
all at once,
she's comin' now
to feed on sacred ground

All at once
All at once
all...at once.

In 2008 a rolling "brown-out" of gas shortages hit a series of major southern cities: Nashville, Atlanta, then Charlotte. One morning, out of the blue, plastic bags covered all but the premium brands. A few hours later, those sources were gone, too. On the first day, one could drive a few blocks and find a station with gas - and a line of cars. On the second day, one had to listen to the radio and drive across town - faster than everyone else. By the third day motorists were following tanker trucks as they got off the interstate, content to wait until they reached a fueling site and unloaded their liquid cargo. I remember the 1970's shortages, and this was on a different level. At one point I drained the last half gallon from the lawn mower gas container in hopes I could reach a convenience market with any gas at any price. It was a sobering experience.

One geopolitical event, say war with Iran, could put us there again, or it may be as some here suggest - a slow, inevitable slide into higher prices and fewer options. Either way, the destination is the same.

What few understand is how limited our options are going to be. Airlines are already charging for everything short of cabin air. Few air routes outside of LA-NYC will survive. Greyhound continues to cut its routes and now carries fewer passengers than Amtrak. For many small towns a local cab driver (if one of those even exists) is the only public transportation out of town. By contrast, those same towns in the 1950's had bus, train, and even a nearby airport with some form of regional service. Now it is the private auto or nothing. If you can't drive, (and don't qualify for the narrow options of federal rural transportation services) you don't move except by the kindness of a family member, a local church group, or an old friend.

As Jim points out, we can't just go construct a network of high-speed rail corridors. The right-of-way acquisition and environmental permitting alone would take more than 10 years. High speed rail requires spiral curves, which rules out most Interstate medians (assuming they haven't already been converted to asphalt). Our rail system was over-regulated until the Staggers act in 1980, and thus greatly undercapitalized. Even now, railroads have 20-30 years of catch-up at the current rates of infrastructure upgrades. With Congress requiring positive train control on all passenger routes, the number of rail lines that can be economically upgraded (at more than a million dollars per mile) is quite limited.

Folks, when it goes down, even we on this board are going to be shocked at what we suddenly don't have. And I still remember pouring in that last half gallon of gasoline that summer.

While never managing to seriously discuss it, JHK generally manages to slip in a sentence about something we are not meant to notice while flagging his loyalty to his tribe. The implication is, of course, that even if we do notice it is beneath contempt to discuss it or to draw any conclusions from the facts.

I was plying the interstate highways of New England this weekend... marveling at the vistas of normality all around me... "I see dead people..." said the kid in that horror movie. I see dying ways of life.

Instead of picturing the stockbrokers in Westchester foraging for roots and grubs in the aftermath of Götterdammerung, why not buy a forty-ounce malt liquor and imbibe it while lying on a picnic blanket located in a sunny spot near the local community college? Watching sorority sisters in shorts throwing a Frisbee around can work wonders for a man's disposition.

NB: Although I'm not a member of any Tea Party (I'm far too great a snob for that), I do know a few members, and they are to a man philo-Semitic. Eustace Mullins is with Exra POund at last, and plotting against the cosmopolitan Jewish banking conspiracy is more a Muslim thing these days.

To sum up: all work and no play make Jim an agitated prophet of doom. My Rx: have a brandy, read a comic book, maybe listen to an old Rush record or Blüe Öyster Cült album or something. As they say in Charleston, Dum spiro, spero.

Jim,
You worry too much.
Take a valium.

JK... man you are depressed... and depressing.

With so much attention on the negative you will only sow negatives in your life.

You need help. You need to change your mindset quickly.

Just allign yourself with a cause or group that you feel can do something positive about our current situation and get to work. Believe me you'll feel a lot better going down fighting than just going down.

We're on the brink of major change in all areas of existence. Embrace it and lend a hand to help steer us into better waters.

Are you listening to your readers, James? You're depressed. Go on vacation and do something that feeds your soul with joy. DRIVING around on a sunny day bumming yourself out? Yikes! You're no fun! Much too serious to take seriously. Take a week off. We can handle a Monday without your depressing post.

Hey Jim. I have to agree with some of the others that you seem a little down. That's understandable where you're coming from. But, it was you who coined the phrase "The LONG Emergency". I stressed the word LONG because you seem, with this article (and, don't get me wrong, I enjoy your writing even if I don't always agree with it), to be lamenting a quickening dread. I would suggest that the next time you go for a drive, point the car toward a wilderness area and go walk a trail for the day, rather than ride around behind the wheel sneering at "vistas of normality" and "see[ing] dying ways of life".

'The Nemesis of the Inferior' -

"It is folly to keep up the delusion that more democracy and more education will make over these ill-born into good citizens. Democracy was never intended for degenerates, and a nation breeding freely of the sort that must continually be repressed is not headed toward an extension of democratic liberties. Rather, it is inevitable that class lines shall harden as a protection against the growing numbers of the underbred, just as in all previous cultures. However remote a cataclysm may be, our present racial trend is toward social chaos or a dictatorship.

Meanwhile, we invite social turmoil by advancing muddled notions of equality. Democracy, as we loosely idealize it nowadays, is an overdrawn picture of earthly bliss; it stirs the little-brained to hope for an impossible levelling of human beings. The most we can honestly
expect to achieve is a fair levelling of opportunity; but every step toward that end brings out more distinctly those basic inequalities of inheritance which no environmental effort can improve. So discontent is loudest in those least capable of grasping opportunity when it is offered."

- from THE REVOLT AGAINST CIVILIZATION by Lothrop Stoddard: http://users.mo-net.com/mlindste/revtciv3.html

Jim's missive was vastly different than
last week's but struck a chord with me.
I, too, as a teacher, feel like I'm
waiting for the last swoon of the
California budget to cause instant
unemployment. Things are okay TODAY
but how long can I rely on students
who retain the forlorn hope that my
instruction will get them JOBS like
it HAS done for the last 21 years??

It's as if my whole Department of
Computer Science is relying on the
delusions of the unemployed or the
underemployed because, bottom line,
there are NO jobs.

That's why Jim's fearful sense of
the ephermerality of things that
look okay TODAY really hits home.

I like the way Jim can go from a
style that's full of piss and
vinegar to an almost Kafka-esque
surreality. That's a sign of a
skilled writer.

Eleuthero

no country for old men:

"you can't stop what's comin'... "

I just love all these dingbats telling
Jim to "chill out" and "have a bong hit".

I think people like this are unwittingly
symbolic of the disease that Jim writes
most persuasively about ... DENIAL. It's
only people who are underexposed to the
social world who seem oblivious to about
a hundred things that more observant people
notice every day: Nobody thinks about or
even wants to talk about SPECIFICS about
the future (it's branded as "negative"),
just about ALL of our public institutions
(especially schools) are ROTTING, almost
NOTHING we buy in a store was made in
America. I could make a 100-item list ...
no problem!!!

I just want all you "cool dudes" who are
chilling out with a few bong hits (not
that I disapprove) to get out of your
THC stupor long enough to notice a few
things beyond how your nest is doing today.
This just in: There actually IS a "tomorrow"
and a "next year". Then there's this thing
called "planning" which requires, among
other things, FORESIGHT.

And foresight is based on a sublimely accurate
reading of what's happening RIGHT NOW. My
wish for all you cool, unconcerned hipsters
is that you get out a little more, observe
a little more, interact a little more, and
stop getting your ideas about what the world
is like from a purely narcissistic point of
view.

"Negativity" is NOT negative if it is squarely
aimed AT negative situations. That is not only
CONSTRUCTIVE negativity. It's the essence of
the desire to LIVE by being objective about
the present!!

Eleuthero

Am I the only participant on this blog who has to create a new password every time I come here? What gives with the interface, its getting annoying.

Say what ya want about MA & CT lookin' down for the count. Just remember that pre industrial age people, both native & immigrant, survived there well enough for quite a while (250 years?) thanks to the arable land, hardwood forests, & abundant waterways. Buildings & asphalt highways may come & go, but the CT river isn't going anywhere. And neither is that glacial lake bottom soil.

It constantly amazes me how many people log into a peak oil blog to complain that it all seems a bit negative, and to tell the author to cheer up.
Well. . . what exactly did you expect to find?

I expect many of these people then log into porn blogs and ask in amazement what's with all the naked ladies?

(Do people really think the column should match the weather; it's sunny outside so JHK should be cracking jokes. . .)

Rush Limbaugh gives Democrats a big push to help pass health care reform:

"I don't know. I'll just tell you this, if this passes and it's five years from now and all that stuff gets implemented -- I am leaving the country. I'll go to Costa Rica." -- Rush Limbaugh

What better motivation for Democrats?

Are you ready to receive our friend Limbaugh, DeeJones?

What's the deal with this Blog anyway? I like bitching and moaning as well as the next guy, but what's with the "giving a flying fuck" about what anybody post here anyway?

I thought this space was for ranting about whether or not we (as a society) can transition our living arrangements away from from such a petroleum-based existence.

And whether or not this will be sooner or late, and whether or not anyone can to anything to affect the best possible outcomes for the greatest portion of the population.

Comments about all the other McCrap is simply inane with respect to this web space.

Tsk, tsk.

About this week's post, "All at Once"... the tone is consistent with doomster psychology. What is troublesome is how seeing normal life continuing, years after JHK has been predicting normal life cannot continue, JHK is now invoking an even more fearful possibility: instead of the comforting "Long Emergency" (which will last 47 years based on peak oil data) we are now presented with an imagined horrible future which must be imagined by ignoring what is normal life reveals by direct observation. We must deny the reality in front of us.

The dreadful, horrible, lurking future supposedly can arrive now in an instant, kind of like we are at a tipping point. This is a change from the usual predictions of "soon" (usually one or more Friedman units), or "this coming summer" or "this coming winter". (damned winters aren't as cold as they used to be anyway to burn that heating oil)

Of course, also as usual, there is absolutely no evidence to contravene the continuation of normal life: which seems to upset JHK greatly.

How can these people continue driving their cars, shopping at WalMart, and living their lives normally? Don't these "yeast people" know they are on the cusp of a new Dark Age and they are about to suffer untold hardships?

And the evidence offered is crude is now $81 a barrel?

Nope, gas could be $100 a gallon and the system would adjust and people would continue living normal lives. We proved that in March 2008 when crude was at $112 a barrel. Nothing crumbled, nothing fell apart, no riots in the streets.

JHK is living in fantasy land along with many of the posters to CFN.

But perhaps reality is dependent on how you feel. Cheers

Correction:
Nope, crude could be $100 a barrel and the system would adjust and people would continue living normal lives.

We proved that normal life continues, without regard for crude oil prices, in March 2008 when crude was at $112 a barrel. Nothing crumbled, nothing fell apart, no riots in the streets.

What is absolutely real is that we need to breathe in and breathe out to continue to live. And, further, it costs nothing to inhale and exhale.

In my case, paying attention to the here and now reality of breathing in and breathing out brings me much bliss. YMMV.

Asoka,

Regarding your posts this morning ... as long as you're going to reference $$ per barrel for oil why not use the figure hit around June/July 2008 of $147? One could argue either way whether "nothing crumbled, nothing fell apart" as a result. With 1.75 years of hindsight I will concede that we certainly haven't seen the end of the world even though at the time it was starting to look like it. Even the oil/gasoline shortages of 1973/1978 (which were quite spectacular compared to anything we've seen in the past two years) with 30+ years of hindsight cannot be said to have been "the end of the world." It's all in perception and how you define things.

As to your comment about the current essay's title "Then All At Once" and it's "doomster psycology" I am one third of the way through The Black Swan (by Taleb) and I've gained some new insight about very large and sudden changes and their impact (whether positive or negative). It is quite possible that JHK could go on for years appearing to be wrong, wrong, wrong, and then "all at once" he is totally vindicated. In the remaining two thirds of the book I am hoping to find good advice on how to spot those rare but high-impact black swans.

I was thinking about the survivalist approach mentioned yesterday, should TSHTF, and I'm convinced that some of you think you're living in the Wild Wild West or will be able to act this way if and when the collapse happens.

These are not the days of single load rifles and six shooters. If you have a highly visible "compound", then all it would take is a couple guys with automatic weapons and some explosives to absolutely ruin your day (life?). And assuming a government collapse, there would be a lot of ex-military types configured this way roaming around looking for trouble. (Think modern Africa like the Congo.) And there is likely to be an amble supply of weapons and ammo. Strike that. There WILL be lots of weapons and ammo in the hands of the military types.

Your best bet, if you even want to stick around the collapsed region at all rather than just bugging out to somewhere safer, is not to be visible in the first place so that the rampaging hordes simply pass you by. Think carefully concealed tunnel systems and supply caches or hidey holes in buildings that look abandoned.

The last thing you'd want to try and maintain when the Apocalypse hits is a 10 acre spread of beets and squash with a fancy windmill and solar-powered green home out in the middle of nowhere. You'd just be asking to get sniped by some ex-military guy who wants to steal your rhubarb. Thinking you're smarter/tougher/meaner/better/craftier than you actually are could be really quite a terrible thing in those kinds of circumstances. Overconfidence could actually kill you in this scenario!

Qshtik,

Your comment: "I've gained some new insight about very large and sudden changes and their impact (whether positive or negative)..." reminds me that many New Agers are expecting an exactly THEN ALL AT ONCE change in 2012 that ushers in a new consciousness and an era of peace and love.

They have the same amount of evidence for their imagining a positive outcome as JHK has for imagining a negative outcome.

What is real and always with us is the in breath and the out breath.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/0737016116/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=283155&s=books

DALAI LAMA SUPPORTS JHK ON "ALL AT ONCE"

"The threat of nuclear weapons and man's ability to destroy the environment are really alarming. And yet there are other almost imperceptible changes -- I am thinking of the exhaustion of our natural resources, and especially of soil erosion -- and these are perhaps more dangerous still, because once we begin to feel their repercussions it will be too late." (p. 144 of The Dalai Lama's Little Book of Inner Peace: 2002, Element Books, London)

What catches my attention about this CF is the longing. I sense that JHK not only expects that this world will go away, but wants it to. He wants a different world that is not so fast and trivial and inhuman. Personally, I feel a very delicate relationship exists between my desire for a different world, my desire for a different (personal) life, and my perception/intuition regarding the future (ie - it is tempting to forecast what one dearly wishes). (and it is hard to wait patiently.) Personally, I try, to whatever extent possible, to make my little world more like the dream of sumac-through-the-pavement. It can be challenging to dream against the current, and sometimes it seems impossible, but I hope that any tiny progress I acheive is making the world a better place (for sumac) right now.

Looks like we're good til the next asteroid hit for energy:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/03/09/news/economy/nat_gas_crystals/index.htm

This is Geoff Lawton giving a tour of a Vietnamese food forest that has sustained its family for 28 generations.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5ZgzwoQ-ao

How much of this system would you recognize as "food"? Our black pepper comes in a little glass bottle; theirs is a vine growing on a tree...

JK:
'The 36,000-odd newly-unemployed were spun magically into a feel-good story for public consumption'
So 'we' would feel good about Obama and his czars.

I hear a lot of what the backpack survivalists are saying, however I'd like to suggest:

1. Throughout history, agriculture has been conducted outside of the city walls;
2. Bandits and raiders have historically been searching for money and treasure, which is more easily removed;
3. Invading armies have descended on the land for food, and have followed scorched earth tactics, so in that instance, either run or stay hidden;
4. If you are forced to bug out and move to a new region, you will have to offer skills, otherwise you are just another mouth to feed - turn up with seeds and agricultural knowhow (and guns and money!) if you want to stay;
5. I'd guess most food raiding would be of the house invasion / kitchen theft variety, or sundry stealing of recognizable and sellable items like a chicken or two.

I know history is no guarantee of the future, but people grew food and traded across the world for many, many centuries before the use of oil. (They did live marginal lives, and faced the prospect of starvation each and every year. Thier lives were "nasty, brutish and short," but they still got by.)

"You do not become a ‘dissident' just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career," Vaclav Havel said when he battled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia. "You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society. ... The dissident does not operate in the realm of genuine power at all. He is not seeking power. He has no desire for office and does not gather votes. He does not attempt to charm the public. He offers nothing and promises nothing. He can offer, if anything, only his own skin-and he offers it solely because he has no other way of affirming the truth he stands for. His actions simply articulate his dignity as a citizen, regardless of the cost."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/calling_all_rebels_20100308/

"they could steal every calorie of food they see"

You should be more worried about them stealing your LIFE, not your food.

Furthermore, who says that a modern day collapse would look like that of Rome? The weaponry and the transportation was absolutely primitive then, and it has the potential to be far worse now.

We have automatic weapons and hand grenades, not to mention pickup trucks.

How many survivalists do you see in the Congo or Somalia holding out against the barbarians on their fortified compounds? Zero.

Tripp, in an actual TSHTF scenario (Congo, Somalia, etc.), it is about protecting yourself and your family. All else is secondary. Hell, material possessions become practically worthless and all you want is some TP!

I can understand this being very scary for people with no real, useful skills...

But there is still time, and any information you want is on the next tab on the right of your browser. Personally, I think this is a very exciting time, full of never-before-imagined opportunities. Do you love beer, and worry about the imminent absence of Bud Light on the shelves? Start making your own! By the time you get it down, you'll have an extremely valuable product to offer your community. Or would-be assailants even.

Do something truly valuable and you will be protected, not molested.

The way I see it is that people are confusing two separate groups: starving neighbours and roving bandits.

The former are the ones that would possibly camp out in your backyard, eating the fruit off the trees; the latter would be the well-armed, well-fed group that come for your guns and gold.

I guess it depends on your immediate neighbourhood - or what your nightmares are, right now.

I personally believe that Rome fell more gently than some archaologists make out. I have to believe that there's hope for people like me.

"if you are going to tell people the truth, you better make them laugh or they will kill you". Hope to see ya in good olde Rochester again."
================================
At first I thought you said Rochester SAID that. it does sound like something he would say, but then, you're all way too young for Rochester.

Perhaps, but it would be a more enjoyable way to go!

"Where would you go exactly?"

I would go someplace that wasn't a war zone, even if I had a great mulch established in said war zone. Organic nuts and berries are useless if you're dead.

"Where is the logic in killing the people who are proficient at producing top-shelf calories without fossil energy?"

There is no logic. Its simple barbaric thievery or just idle maliciousness. Think Vikings. You think they were thinking, "Oh, best not chop this guy's head off. He runs a farm plow like nobody's business, and we might need him."

"Think Vikings. You think they were thinking, "Oh, best not chop this guy's head off. He runs a farm plow like nobody's business, and we might need him."

No, but they already knew how to produce food. I guess I give humans more credit than you do.

"Thank God Hitler didn't own one."

Er, um, what are you talking? Hitler did have his bunker, and when he was surrounded on all sides by the Russians, he offed himself. There's a really good movie about it, actually.

"I guess I give humans more credit than you do."

Credit for what?

Why would I want to make my own Bud Light? Urgh!

tripp,

Crack a history book. People can get kind of nasty when civilizations collapse.

Awful lot of free-floating fear of the "other" here.

Things get really, really, really, really bad and guess what... you are still going to be taking one breath at a time, in breath, out breath, until one fine day you stop breathing and that is not such a tragedy. If you have trained yourself to be conscious of the gap between the in breath and the out breath it will be familiar territory to you.

If you are not prepared, if you have not rehearsed death (through meditation), then you will live in fear and do whatever you can to "stay alive" for as long as you can, as if it's some kind of contest.

Guess what? We are all going to die. What we have control over is making sure all are actions before death are motivated by lovingkindness... towards ourselves and towards others.

Correction:
What we have control over is making sure all our actions before death are motivated by lovingkindness ... towards ourselves and towards others.

trippy,

We're kinda talking past each other here. I have read Collapse, too, but I'm not really concerned with the Roman Empire or the Aztecs. That's ancient history at this point. During those times, there was no motorized transportation or mechanized warfare, no automatic weapons, no nukes, no roadside bombs or plastic explosives, and no hand grenades. The weaponry was primitive, as were the transportation systems, and hence war was similarly limited. Not so today.

Various places in modern day Africa would be a more likely reference point, if you want to know what a collapse could resemble. And that's current events, not ancient history. Hell, take a look at what goes on in Iraq or Afghanistan.

I understand the desire to be positive, but humans are just animals, and not particularly nice ones. A lot of our group behavior reminds me of insects. Under the right circumstances, anything is possible, and people are capable of just about anything when fighting for their survival.

From what I gather, some people would even go to war because it was entertaining. In other words, there wasn't a whole lot to do out on the Scottish moors. Time to raid the British! :)

And then you got the Mongols, the Huns, etc. War and invasion have been, if anything, constants of human history rather than anomalies. I have this really interesting medieval history atlas that goes in about 50 year increments from the fall of Rome to 1492. And the map changes drastically during most of those intervals. That didn't happen from a bunch of farmers keeping their heads down.

Anyways, good talking with you. I enjoy the exchange of ideas here, and its always good to hear some fresh perspectives. :)

Note to Shambles: I have somewhat recently been diagnosed with a "stage 3' cancer of the tongue. I had been "sitting" on pretty blatant symptoms for over a year, when the the doc and the path lab confirmed my own suspicions. The MD says I can anticipate 6 months to 2 years before my cancer becomes intolerable (by the rest of my body, or by my own ability to tolerate distress). I haven't been perfectly blissful for the nearly-two months since diagnosis, but I have felt, pretty generally, peaceful about it. I'm following some relatively low-level naturopathic nutritional and homeopathic protocols, now, in a frank attempt to make the best of the next few months, with the hope that my wife and I might have time to make a few forays to high mountain ridges and lakes before I cash in. I would also like to see a few scattered friends, relatives and local wild flowers this spring.

Yes, we're all terminal. I've been pretty focussed on that point for some time. I see my own pending expiration as a release from the angst that has pervaded my own, and so many other lives around me. Denial and fear of our own end seems to make much of the world go 'round.

I think, at not-quite 61 years, and having a fairly straight- forward diagnosis and prognosis, that my situation is so much kinder and gentler than the plight of families who have someone suddenly snatched out of their midst, as was the case with my wife's father who was suddenly "raptured" away one day 40 years ago, at age 45. Her mom struggled with near-paralyzing grief for the better part of a decade.

Reading from JHK's LONG EMERGENCY several years ago (I think maybe the top of Chapter 6), I fell upon this quote attributed to American philosopher/psychologist, William James:

"The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future to the present, and all the power of science is prostituted to this purpose."

Granted, a little nuancing might be in order, but, Dr. James' statement is true enough to have given me a solid, and continuing, shock of recognition. We, "the privileged one billion", alive today, are living (the way way most of "us" live) at the expense of the viability of succeeding generations of our own offspring, as well as the viability of many others (billions) living today - our own species and many other species with whom we share this one. crowded and rapidly degraded planet.
My own demise - none too soon, by these markers - gives some of the rest of life, just that much (slightly) more room to live.

I'm no Buddhist, and I may fairly be called a kook, or worse, but this seems like a fair way to go, and a fair time to be leaving. My heart is resting a bit easier, now that I have significantly given up/over to Mother Nature's call to come back, to be one with the dirt. That's how I'm dealing with it.

Nice to note that this week's Clusterfuck yielded such a low level of verbal "food fights". Gracias!

DBT

Yer darn tootin! I didn't sell my Cherries and Maples when lumber prices were high and boy am I glad. Now if we can just keep these Marcellus Shale leeches out of the neighborhood. It is going to be tough, as many of the grubbers can't resist the lure of easy money. You should see the damage being done in Bradford county. The roads are a mess, the trees are being cut for access, and who knows where they are dumping the tainted water.

DBT, thanks for sharing your experience. It is truly a gift to be able to know when to let go, and to do it gracefully.

Here is a new book which may, or may not, be of interest:

The law of attention : nada yoga and the way of inner vigilance by Salim Michaël (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions, 2010).

Summary:
"How to achieve a direct inner experience of your higher nature and the after-death state from which you originate and will return"

Dan, sorry to hear about the cancer. Now go out and try to enjoy the rest of your life that you have left.
A close friend of ours a few years ago was diag'd with late stage melanoma. She decided to work till the end of the year, planning on spending the last few months of her life having fun, going to Dizney World, etc. Sadly, it was too late, she died just a few months after quitting, and before she could do any of the things she wanted to do. It happened pretty fast.
So go forth now, enjoy what you have left. But also try to remember what you qouted above, and try to leave something that future generations might also be able to enjoy.

We are using up the future, pretty soon, there will only be the past. Hope we don't regret it.

DJ

Dirt: the movie

http://www.dirtthemovie.org/

Coming to over 60 cities across the U.S. in March 2010.

Trippticket - I like you a lot. I hope I can make time to learn in time. That little bar up top has been providing a lot of answers to the questions I ask.

Turkle- I feel you on things getting nasty. History is history but we are in a strange world with lots of stuff that has never existed before.

Asoka- I am focusing on my breathing and it helps. Whoever suggested JHK walk in nature is right too. It can really settle the soul down a bit and reconnect you to the larger system.

Dan Treecraft- My sympathy is with you. Enjoy yourself with the time you have left. "Mother Nature's call to come back" really put me at ease. I will be dealing with death in the family in the coming week(s) and that somehow lifted some sorrow.

Mook- The Marcellus Shale picture you paint...well done.

JHK- You are doing good. Keep it up, and maybe even keep your chin up. Take all comments with a grain of salt.

The Rest of yinz- DO GOOD, BE NICE, and stay positive...

The movie that came to mind from the scenarios suggested here is "NO ESCAPE" with Ray Liotta from the early 90's. The "outsiders" camp. The "Insiders" village. Start watching at 38 seconds in...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7IZDKk89M0&feature=related

As far as things collapsing, something you guys are forgetting is that the govt. will still be a player. It controls the military, and the first reflex in bad times is for the govt to clamp down on everything in an effort to keep order. If it got that bad, you could expect army checkpoints on the roads, martial law to be applied, confiscation of weapons, suspension of constitutional rights, special police powers, and on and on, depending on the severity of the crisis. One thing you can be sure of, the govt. will keep the military well fed and supplied. Depending on the sort of leaders we have in place at that time, it could be easy to slip into a dictatorship or something just as bad. The govt won't give up control of things without a fight, and they'll do whatever they deem necessary to establish law and order.

Dear Mr. Kunstler,

As a long time reader of your works, I understand your pessimism. However, is living in depression and fear--giving up your dreams--growing to loathe all society for lack of a better purpose the answer? Do not misread my words, for I do not disagree with you for a moment's chance. I, of all people, understand the grimness of nature and spend time--too much time gazing in the shadows of lifes reflection.

I would love to put on the helmet again and be oblivious to the horrors bestowed upom the world, but like yourelf, I cannot. My hat goes down to you sir, I hope you read this question and give it some thought.

Alan Bannacheck
Chanhassen, Minnesota

An article from WTOP sheds some light on the plight of the Kansas City schools. Seems to me that the origin of this is incompetence.

"This year alone officials expect to overspend the $316 million budget by $15 million and if nothing changes, the district will be in the red by 2011.

It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Kansas City appeared headed for a recovery when a federal judge in 1985 declared the district was unconstitutionally segregated. To boost test scores, integrate the schools and repair decrepit classrooms, the state was ordered to spend about $2 billion to address the problems.

The district went on a buying spree that included a six-lane indoor track and a mock court complete with a judge's chamber and jury deliberation room. But student achievement remained low, and the anticipated flood of students from the suburbs turned out to be more like a trickle. Court supervision of the desegregation case ended in 2003.

And to this day, the district continues to lose students. In the late 1960s enrollment peaked at 75,000, dropped to 35,000 a decade ago and now sits at just under 18,000.

Only about half of Kansas City's elementary school students and about 40 percent of middle and high school students now attend the city's public schools. Many of the other students have left for publicly funded charter schools, private and parochial schools and the suburbs.

Fewer students means the district gets less money from the state.

At the height of spending in 1991-92, Kansas City invested more than $11,700 per student _ more than double that year's national average of $5,001, according to U.S. Census figures. Today, the district spends an average of $15,158 on each student, compared to a national average of $9,666 in 2006-07, the latest figures available."

"There is a revolution brewing in this country. Some are already attempting to define it... perhaps as a means of shaping it. Perhaps as a means of preventing a no-sided melee which no one can win. -- Mark my words and mark them well. A left-right labelling of this revolution will mark the failing of our species and condemn millions of Americans to death and suffering. Labels kill us, especially orthodoxies and labels from the old paradigm. This must be a revolution by all the people who get it as opposed to people who don't. -- If it isn't, then the bad guys will win again as they always have when it's been framed as a left-right issue and they controlled both sides. The left has failed us as badly as the right. Just the use of the words "left" and "right" closes off a myriad of possible life-saving options. Conservatives and liberals starve and die in exactly the same way. They go homeless the same way. They bleed the same way. The Powers That Be would much rather have us fighting each other rather than them."

THINK ABOUT IT BOYS AND GIRLS...

http://mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

May all beings who read this be free from enmity and danger.

May all beings who read this be free from mental suffering.

May all beings who read this be free from physical suffering.

May all beings who read this take care of themselves happily.

Superb, prophetic and deeply unsettling writing as ever, Mr Kunstler. Feel free to have a look at my own humble blog for a British / European take on our long emergency...

http://philosophicalzombie.wordpress.com

Superb, prophetic and deeply unsettling writing as ever, Mr Kunstler. Feel free to have a look at my own humble blog for a British / European take on our long emergency...

http://philosophicalzombie.wordpress.com

"They don't belong in a modern culture"

God, you are such an insufferable asshole. Why don't you get your own blog so we don't have to read about all your backward views on phrenology and white power?

Buddhism also suffers from it, in so far as its adherents attach too much significance to Gautama while failing to see that what he pointed to, the meaning of his life, is also theirs for the taking.
=====================================
Buddhism has allowed for many levels of understanding, and that is how the Buddha taught. Hence, the creation of a semi-divine Buddha, while flawed, is also a natural outgrowth of people adopting views via their culture rather than their own inquiry, as is the case in Tibet. Buddhist thought regarding concepts such as “emptiness” is certainly not easy for most people to grasp, even intellectually.

I would suggest that you make a similar mistake however, when referring to "the meaning of his (buddha's) life". From my understanding of Buddhism the "Buddha's life" is not significant. What is significant is the teachings of the Buddha. Giving "meaning to his life" would be too close to the Christian notion of deriving meaning from the death and resurrection of Jesus, and then developing a spirituality dependent on faith in that event alone (at least as outlined in the gospel of John).

The Buddha's point was that he re-discovered something we can all realize, and choose to teach it, no deeper meaning to his life is necessary, he was just a man, after all. But perhaps your words on this point were just a poor choice, since you otherwise seem to have a good understanding IMO,

Drop dead, Dale. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

Simon Johnson former chief economist at the IMF talking common sense on economics for eight minutes, good stuff.

http://vimeo.com/9953346

There may be troubles ahead, but you make it sound in the first few paragraphs as if the crisis would last forever and you could never have a lot of cars again after oil runs out.

The Sun wastes two billion times more energy into space than it shines down here. The numbers are in our favor. There's orders of magnitude more power out there than fossil fuels will have ever provided us with while they lasted. So in the short run cars may become scarce as we lack the infrastructure to tap into other forms of energy, but in the long run it would be the crisis itself that is the blip on the radar.

We might live in a world made by hand for a while but not forever, unless we descended into another Dark Age of forgetting about and demonizing all science and technology, and that would leave us even more vulnerable to forces beyond our control, such as climate change, than we are today. You wouldn't want that, no matter how idyllic you imagine it would be...

Enough already of this leftist loon crap about Rush stating he would be moving to Costa Rica, as it never happened. However, he did say that the loons in the MSM would report it that way. Since too many of your fruitcakes hate Limbaugh and anyone who is not a progressive/communist, why would you even comment on this MSM leftist plant, when you obviously never listened to the program, which I did. Oh, I forgot, your libtards never tell the truth, and probably would not recognize it if it slapped you upside the head. Rush actually said that he would go to Costa Rica for medical services if Obummercare passed, as many physicians are setting up there. Beautiful country, with fewer progressives attempting to run everything. Now, you who are not leftist loons have the truth and can ignore the trolls and Obambots online.

dale,

RE: meditation

Checkout the website for this class I've been taking recently.

http://kellymcgonigal.com/scm2010.html

Really cool stuff. I know you'll dig it.

Yeah...must....ignore....the idiots.

r reardon,

So in summary...

Blah blah blah.....Rat Limpblob.....blah blah blah...Obummercare.....blah blah blah....leftist loons.....blah blah blah....libtards....blah blah blah....progressives....*whine* *cry* *whaaaaaaa*.

Thank you SO MUCH for that AMAZING contribution to this web page. I also LOVE those terms of derision for all the fruity cake fancy pants progressive-tards. Did you make those all up yourself? What fine prose. You must have a degree in English from some libtard university.

So if we're not following the "progressives" and the "looney liberals" (in fact they SUCK....every last one of them and every single last one of their stupid silly ideas), we're going to go with the conservatives, right? Let's put them back in charge.

Which one, Jack Madoff, Tom Delay....oh, wait those guys are in prison.

What about Sean Hannity? He should be dictator for life, prolly.

Ted Haggart? He's bouncing back, I heard.

Or let's bring back Shrub, Dick, and Rummy. I'm certain they could turn this whole mess around.

Oh, sorry, Tom Delay isn't in prison. He's on Dancing with the Stars....or was until he flunked out. He's about as good of a dancer as he was a politician, i.e. incredibly great...graceful, too.

Hey, u.r. realdumb,

The size of the government, the amount of deficit, and the number of federal employees increased the most under two presidential bastions of the modern conservative movement: a) Ronald "Star Wars" Raygun and b) George "Defend the Homeland and Invade Random Countries" Bush.

Last president to maintain any modicum of fiscal prudence: Bill "Fruitcake Liberal Progressive Dingbat" Clinton. You know, the guy all you morons decided was the anti-Christ because of a stained dress.

Put that in your conservative pipe and smoke it, ya freaking Fox-News-watching, Rush-Limbaugh-worshipping imbecile.

Maybe this isn't the best time to slide in a link to my new blog, seeing as there is some palpable hostility in the room, but eh, what the hey...

http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/

This is my first post about packing and changing the guard; more of the permaculture, eco-architecture, and invisible crops stuff will follow later. Haven't decided on the timing yet, maybe monthly, maybe bi-weekly, perhaps weekly, but I don't want to be a slave to it!

Anyway, you guys go on over and check it out, and sign up on the follower list if you would, give me a shout out. I'm looking forward to moving some of the chat about the hands-on business of energy descent over to Small Batch.

JHK, you'd be well-received too!

Cheers!
Tripp

trippy,

Nice garden, mang. Can I has some rhubarb? :)

"please tell me what the DOW will do tomorrow"

I could tell you but then I'd have to kill you.

I guess I shouldn't bother replying to these idiotic rants about libtards and what-not, as they are the internet equivalent of crop dusting (you know...fart and run).

These trolls never reply to anyone's responses, because then they'd have to engage in a debate using actual facts and logic rather than just spewing an unanswered chain of non-sensical insults about communist nazi liberals taking over America.

Dan, you mentioned that you had thought you had the cancer well before it was diagnosed, so two questions:
A- What exactly made you think that you might have cancer in the first place?
And B- Why did you wait for so long to get a diagnosis?

The reason I ask is because my sis n' law reminded me that she had it several years ago, got it diag'd promptly, did lose part of her tongue, but is in remission and doing quite well.

Anyway, best of luck to ya.

As followup, here are some facts for Turkel and his leftist comrades. Comrade Hussein is now planning to set aside an additional 13 million acres in 11 Western States by executive order under the Antiquities Act, or the Monument Act, or both, without input from the concerned States. He is likewise moving to limit fishing nationwide,both oceans and inland waters by executive order. As a third subject for discussion, how about his loan of $2 billion to the Brazilian oil company to explore in the Atlantic, while exploration is barred in the U.S., and its off shore waters. Of some interest is the fact that his progressive advisor, George Soros, owns 20% of the Brazilian oil company. I am sure there is no corruption there, as progressives like Soros and Hussein only care about the sheeple. If it walks and talks like a marxist duck, then it probably is. Or, if it walks and talks, and acts, like a muslim duck, it probably is and Israel should be very leery of being thrown under the bus of genocide at the hands of Hussein's muslim comrades. Now, talk amongst yourselves leftist loons.

"Goebbels, Stalin, Mao"

I rest my case.

Some people's #1 political "go to" guy is an obnoxious, deaf, anti-American, Oxycotin snorting, boy fucking blimp.

Mine is Harvard-educated, won the Nobel Peace Prize, and is currently president of the most powerful nation on the planet.

You really know how to pick em.

Yeah, let's compare Costa Rica, which is the size of Rhode Island, to a country that spans an entire large continent and has 300 million people. Real fucking bright.

Hey, dumbass, your conservative poster boy Shrubbie ballooned the government to its largest size in history, invaded two countries without provocation (like the Nazis...which your thick skull somehow equates with Obama), which will end up costing our country trillions of dollars in the long run, crashed the economy into the ground, destroyed the housing market, shit on the Bill of Rights, and ruined gigantic sections of the government by appointing no-nothing conservative Bob Jones University graduates.

And you have the temerity to call liberals corrupt because of some fucking Brazilian oil contract?

You have a political blind spot so large that a Mac truck could drive through it.

The Nazis gassed millions of Jews and invaded nearly every country in Europe.

The Communists sent entire populations to the gulag and purged tens of millions of people from their own population.

The Fascists murdered their political opponents and seized power in violent coups.

And the Democrats....wait for it.....wait for it....waaaaaait....want to reform health care.

I guess you never watched the segment on Sesame Street called "Which one does not belong with the others?" Must have been too advanced for you.

"If Mr/ms Turkle had the intellectual heft to actually debate me, I would relish the opportunity."

So debate me, motherfucker. I'll even tie half my brain behind my back to make it fair. What do ya got besides a bunch of tired old shit about Obama being a Nazi?

I'm not sure its worth my time, though. People like you are too stupid to tell when they're losing an argument.

"Or, if it walks and talks, and acts, like a muslim duck, it probably is and Israel should be very leery of being thrown under the bus of genocide at the hands of Hussein's muslim comrades."

Are you kidding me?

I'm done with your stupid ass. Have fun with the talk radio, shit stain.

When an engineer from Ohio decides to burn the "whole world down," well that will be a milestone...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thelongemergency/

Martin,
Consider it a virtual fist bump. I get what your talking about, there was something about Nudge that brought out the worst in me. Mainly, my argument with the doomers is/was that future outcomes are very difficult to determine. In many ways I dislike where our country is at both politically and environmentally and probably agree with some of your conclusions in that regard.

Merely the empty squawking of another right-wing attack parrot.

Asoka, although I agree with many of your comments here on CFN; I must split off on this one issue. I agree with Mr Kunstler when he reiterates the "it doesn't scale" argument again and again.

In fact, I think humanity should move in the exact opposite direction away from the "high tech" idea as a solution to our ills. It's all the high tech bullshit that has gotten us into this mess in the first place. High tech merely translates into high profit for all the green slime people who aren't concerned about the carbon emissions required to produce the disposable, prone-to-breakdown, delicate, "high IQ" mechanisms that saturate our lives.

I emphatically agree with Tripp; the solution,for the human primate people, is returning to a low-tech, reliable, hand-operated, permaculture world I don't think it is "doomer" to want to decommission the hyper-complex world we live in for a more sustainable, if simplistic, future.