JHK’s Three-Act Play
“We also have Secretary Steven Chu, my Energy Secretary. Where is Steven? There he is over there.”
– President Obama at Georgetown U last week
Blame Steven Chu, then, because when it comes to America’s energy predicament, the president has been woefully misinformed. Mr. Obama pawned off a roster of notions and proposals already product-tested in the public meme-o-sphere. Almost everyone of these ideas is inconsistent with reality, based on faulty premises, or represents some kind of magical thinking. What they have in common is that they’re ideas the public wants to hear, whether they are truthful or not, because we don’t want to change the way we live.
The central idea in Mr. Obama’s speech is that we will reduce our oil imports by one-third in a decade. This is a gross distortion of reality. The truth is that our oil imports will be reduced automatically, whether we like it or not. The process is already underway. The nations that export oil to us are using much more of their own oil even while their supplies have passed peak production and entered depletion. Countries like Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and Mexico have some of the highest population growth-rates in the world. They sell gasoline to their own people for less than a dollar a gallon. At the same time China and India are driving more cars and importing a lot more of the world’s declining supply. (China has perhaps the equivalent of a four-year supply of its own oil in the ground, and India has next-to-zero oil of its own).
One meme circulating around the Web these days is that the USA has the equivalent of “three Saudi Arabias” in the shale oil fields of North Dakota, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. That is not true. A lot of this magical thinking focuses on the Bakken fields of Dakota. We’re currently producing less than 400,000 barrels a day out of Bakken and the projected maximum ten years from now is around 800,000. We use 20 million barrels a day in the US running suburbia, Wal Mart, and the US military. By the way, Bakken shale oil requires extensive rock fracturing operations – “fracking” – which means a lot of horizontal drilling, which means a lot of steel pipe. It is not just a matter of sticking a steel straw in the ground like we did in Texas in 1932.
Note: much of the shale “oil” in other western states is not actually oil. It is kerogen, an organic precursor to oil, in effect organic polymers that have not been subjected to enough heat and pressure to turn into oil. If you want to turn it into oil, you have to cook it – which takes energy! That’s after the mining operation to scoop it out of the ground. That takes energy too. Or, you can send machinery into the ground and cook it in place. That takes energy, too. We are not going to get oil out of there anytime soon – and perhaps never.
The “drill drill drill” gang is under the impression that North America has vast unexplored regions where oil is just begging to be discovered. This is not true. The New York Times reported after Obama’s speech – in a disgracefully dumb story by Clifford Krauss – that the eastern Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Coast contain 3.8 billion barrels of oil. Really? Hello! The US uses over 7 billion barrels of oil every year. Does the Arctic National Wildlife refuge contain between 4 and 11 billion barrels (US gov estimate)? Great, that averages out to about a year or so of US supply. And I’m not even against drilling there, only against the idea that it represents a meaningful “solution” to our problem.
Meanwhile, the old standby Alaskan oil fields at Prudhoe Bay are depleting so remorselessly that there may not be enough flow in a year or so to move the oil through the famous pipeline.
How about Canada’s tar sands? Well, first of all, they belong to Canada, not us, unless we want to change that – and that could be politically messy. The tar sands will never produce more than 3 million barrels a day. The operations are already too huge, costly, and damaging to the northern watershed. Canada is our number one source of imported oil, but China would also like to buy Canadian oil. Are we planning to invoke the Monroe Doctrine to prevent Canada from selling its oil to parties outside the Western Hemisphere? That could be messy, too.
Mr. Obama returned to the popular theme of bio-fuels. Our initial venture into this area was the ethanol fiasco which, predictably, took more energy to make than it produced, and had disastrous effects (still does) on corn commodity prices – in effect stealing from the food supply in order to drive to the Wal Mart. The next venture will apparently be in algae. We’ll discover (once again) that what works as a science project doesn’t scale to run millions of cars.
Mr. Obama told the nation that we have a 100 year supply of natural gas. (The moronic Larry Kudlow of CNBC told his audience it was 300 years). Neither of them knows what he is talking about (and evidently Energy Secretary Chu doesn’t either). So far, proven reserves of shale gas amount to about a 4 to 6 year US supply at current rates, and total natural gas reserves – including conventional gas, the kind that doesn’t require fracking – amounts to about a 12 year supply. The idea that we are going to ramp up an entire natural gas fueling system for America’s tractor-trailer trucks is an absurdity.
Ditto the notion that we are going to electrify the US auto fleet.
Here’s something to chew on: we run about 250 million cars in the USA. Let’s say we ramped up an electric vehicle fleet of 10 million cars – which, by the way, is a purely hypothetical and wildly optimistic number. Do you think it might be a political problem if 10 million lucky Americans get to drive electric cars while everybody else either pays through the nose for gasoline, or can’t even afford to own a car anymore?
There are a few things you can state categorically about the US energy predicament and the national conversation we’re having about it – including the leaders of that conversation in government, business, and the media. One is that we are blowing a lot of green smoke up our collective ass. None of these schemes is going to work as advertised. The disappointment over them will be massive and probably lead to awful political consequences.
Another is that we are ignoring the most obvious intelligent responses to this predicament, namely, shifting our focus to walkable communities and public transit, especially rebuilding the American passenger railroad system – without which, I assure you, we will be most regrettably screwed ten years from now. Mr. Obama had one throwaway line in his speech about public transit and nothing whatever about walkable neighborhoods.
The reason for this obvious idiocy is that it’s all about the cars. That’s all we care about in the USA, the cars. We can’t get over the cars. We can’t talk about anything except how we’ll find magical new ways to run all the cars. This is a very tragic sort of stupidity and if we don’t change our thinking about it, from the highest level on down, history is going to treat us very cruelly.
A special shout-out here to The New York Times, whose abysmal reporting on these issues, once again, is due to their reliance on a single source: the IHS-CERA group, Cambridge Energy Research Associates, the paid public relations auxiliary of the oil industry, led by that mendacious sack of shit Daniel Yergin, whore-in-chief.
This blog is sponsored this week by Vaulted, an online mobile web app for investing in allocated and deliverable physical gold. To learn more visit:Kunstler.com/vaulted
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To all the idiots that wait with fingers poised to type
FIRST!
everytime that JHK posts a new blog:
Get a life . . .
and after you have gotten it, post some of your real-world experiences that will be of some value to the rest of humanity.
James – Your relevancy is incredible. Energy is only the tip of the iceberg… When this comes down… watchout!! See what we are talking about at the link:http://wp.me/P1lJ1g-4V
James, once again, a homerun. There is an entire segment of the world that is standing at the door and pushing this thing to the brink
http://wp.me/P1lJ1g-4V
THIRD!
fourth!
Thanks JHK, for this perspective on energy. Josh and Rebecca Tickell, producers of the documentaries “Fuel” and “Freedom” recently flew into Maine from Cali to talk to our local high school students, and show their movie, “Freedom.” I assumed that the theme would be freedom from oil dependency and the happy motoring lifestyle, but the real gist was that ethanol is the answer to our fuel needs. I asked Rebecca, “So, we will be able to power our current driving lifestyle SOLELY on ethanol?” and she said yes. I asked if she had heard about you or your blog, and she had not. I suggested she check it out, and that I was going to check out her statement with you. I think todays blog entry addresses her statement quite well.
Awesome read Mr. Kunstler. You are back on your game…
Jim,
You are far too kind to Barack Obama.
First really means Last!
Back to that scary end of oil story, nothing makes adrenaline run higher. Every other doom scenarion is a distant second place.
James, badass piece! Keep it up!
JHK, great column this week.
Record corn prices as 40% of the crop goes to make fuel. We tried growing some corn in the garden, but it didn’t do much of anything. On the bright side, you almost can’t not grow potatoes and tomatoes.
James, Thank you for a hard hitting return to the “peak Oil” conundrum.
SNAFU
The mother of invention is 10/gas…..then we will worry about a energy policy…not until then
Think of what would happen if Obama actually told the truth about what the US needs to do. (Hint: think Jimmy Carter) He would not only be a 1 term president; he would be lucky if he didn’t get impeached or worse in the next 2 years. For all their talk of wanting an honest politician, Americans don’t want to hear the truth.
Jim: Daniel Yergin was a guest on CNN’s State of the Union yesterday morning, and said that the U.S. was “already two-thirds of the way” toward Pres. Obama’s goal of a one-third reduction in petroleum imports by the end of the decade. If that is true, then that fact also renders Obama’s goal even more modest than it already is. And by the way, Mr. O announced that he is running for re-election in 2012.
Yep, its all about the stupid freaking cars. Sheesh, if somehow the good folks of the USA could just dump the Monster Trucks & SUV’s and start driving cars that got even 30+ mpgs there might be some small hope.
But no, that isn’t going to happen…
So, the USA keeps swirling ’round that ol’ bowl. Sure is taking a long time going down….
Somehow, the USA has become just a giant Fantasy Island. No hope for it, which is why I left.
Dee J
Hey Jim….it doesn’t sound like old Dan Yergin is going to be invited out to the house for Sunday brunch any time soon.
There’s one gigantically huge monster gorilla that no-one, and I mean no-one, has considered. THE NUCLEAR INDUSTRY.
No matter what happens when it all falls apart, whether it’s a quaint slowdown where everyone decides to be nice and walk to work, or ride on overcrowded trains and light rail like good little third-rate citizens, or, the whole thing turns into a Mad Max nightmare and the smart ones bug out to their boltholes in the wide open spaces to wait out the die-off, when the 442 nuclear power plants the world over are abandoned they will all in turn meltdown and kill everything that eats, breathes, walks or swims on the whole fucking planet.
And that’s not even counting the unused nuclear warheads that’ll be scattered around the world waiting to either fall apart and release their highly radioactive payloads into the environment, or be used as a get-even measure before armies, navies and airforces lose all their personel to mass-desertion.
It might take several years or only months but every corner of the planet will eventually become so irradiated that nothing will survive. Bacteria will die off too, and when that happens the flora will follow the fauna into irreversible and permanent extinction. Thankyou Oppenheimer and company, you won’t even be remembered for your contribution to the death of all life because there’ll be no-one left to remember Jack shit.
Not to nitpick, and not that this may be relevant to America, but those tar sands belong to Alberta (and Saskatchewan), not Canada. Attempting to change their ownership on a domestic scale would be itself politically messy long before the Americans could get involved.
Since 2005 I’ve found that few people want to really even hear about the subject of “oil” let alone talk about it. And many people really kind of don’t like you when you do…
My brother, a bankster, says he talks to world leaders, & they tell him that the world is awash in oil, & nat. gas… His bank has him investing in wind farms in China. He says China is far ahead of the usa in alt. energy…
But I’ll tell ya, fiddling is fun…
Jim,
God you hit the nail right on the head, and the wost part is that Americans actually are buying in to this pipe dream of oil independence.
I shutter when I read the comments in the “FluffingtonPost” and see just how clueless the average American is when it comes to their favorite drug…. oil!
I personally am going to join them…. I think that America is running out of land to build suburbs on… we need to find a new continent to send out pioneers upon and “settle”… so “Map baby, map!”
Maybe we can send Richard Branson to sail West from Los Angeles to India and hope that he does the same thing Columbus did and runs into a “new” continent.
To me it’s as plausible as “Drill baby, drill”
because “map baby, map” gives as much credit to map makers as the former does to geologists.
“Drill baby, Drill” is a phrase that says that the energy crisis of the seventies did not happen…. and that oil companies never fully explored for oil here in the homeland.
Well, they pretty much have looked for oil everywhere on the planet, and the fact of the matter is that the low hanging fruit is gone… and just like poor Richard sailing west from LA to look for land, we will only find places we knew about already… places that are very small and already settled.
I had a dinner conversation with someone last week who touted the USA has plenty of oil line. I sighed, and left the table. There is no arguing with these morons.
$4 a gallon gasoline will be the death knell for this so called recovery. Watch for $4.50 by Memorial Day.
Meanwhile over in Japan the clean energy savior Nuclear is spewing enough radioactive water into the pacific to wake Godzilla from his 50 year slumber.
Why is overpopulation never mentioned? There are just to damn many people to support with our limited resource pools.
Aimlow Joe was here.
http://www.aimlow.com
“Do you think it might be a political problem if 10 million lucky Americans get to drive electric cars while everybody else either pays through the nose for gasoline, or can’t even afford to own a car anymore?” – JHK
Be one of the lucky 10 million. Can’t afford a new one neither can I, CONVERT a car. Can’t afford that either? Get an electric bike then. Still too poor? Walk.
Has everyone started their gardens yet?
We’re installing a solar array for a volt owner next week.
Put your money where your mouth is while it is still worth something, get a solar array large enough to power your house. What you can’t afford it? Well then decrease your demand until you can.
Get out in the public and make conversation, get things going. The internet is awesome but you have to get out there and do things that people can see and touch in reality…
Started my NEWSBLOG and gaining attention
I heard Twitter can start revolutions
Change your way of thinking and change someone else too.
Do Good. Push On. Keep Smiling.
PS- We made the local news again last night. Fire, Fire, Car Crash, Car Crash, Robbery, Shooting, and SOLAR!!!
I think conservation of energy (using less) is likely the way forward for most people. Like it or not, driving a fuel efficient, small used vehicle is cheaper and will save thousands of dollars in annual operating costs, whatever the price of oil.
Use a bicycle or walk, whenever possible. Its good for the health.
Insulate the home thoroughly, wear a sweater and turn down the thermostat a couple degrees in heating season. Lower the air conditioning usage as much as is tolerable in summer.
Purchase food from local growers and suppliers, and start a food garden for hobby/exercise/education/moneysaving reasons.
USA! USA! 21 million barrels a day!
The world’s cop,the world’s bully, the world’s glutton. I’m seeing “they’ll think of something” replacing jesus as the official mythology of the American Empire. With just about as much credibility.
Thanks Jim for telling it like it is. Really great!
You’re absolutely right on all accounts. Especially, the car thing. Most people I know seem to think we’ll be driving electric cars, and all will be fine. They seem to not understand the following:
No oil = No cars, electric or otherwise.
No oil = No food on the table, unless you grow your own.
No oil = No plastics or car tires.
No oil = No planes.
No oil = No drugs for those who have health issues.
No oil = No solar panels or wind turbines.
Coal, NG and nukes will not save us.
Time to wake up people.
The present reality you are living in is a direct result of the actions, behaviors and thought processes you have engaged in throughout your life. You have created the reality you exist in already. If you don’t like who you are or what you are doing, it may be time to take a long look at the choices you have made and determine the role they have had in creating the reality you are living in. Everything we are is a direct result of our actions and behaviors. Manifesting reality is not something you start doing now to get something in the future. It is what you have been doing your whole life and the reality you exist in now is a result of what you have already manifested.
http://wanderingsagewidsom.blogspot.com
Great post, and without the usual hyperbolic snarkiness of yours, which can be very fun but also distracting. We face incredibly serious problems indeed, and so few people seem to grasp them. Cheap and abundant oil is not a birthright, despite what Americans think.
It is election time and the winning candidate must address what people want.
When you prepare a marketing campaign you first ask: what do customers want?
Then, no matter what the product really is or does, you promise what they want.
In the moment they will realize you told them a lie, the purchase will be already done.
Americans are addicted to energy, so, first comes first.
Americans also like to believe in miracles.
You can tell ALL the lies you want, they will believe them, it’s enough they are credible.
What they won’t believe is the truth, especially if it is unpleasant.
Technology is the miracle that will make everything possible, especially for the ones who understand nothing of technology.
Tell them cars will be driven by wind, by the sun, by the geothermic or whatever.
The only thing you should never say is that may be cars will not exist anymore in the near future.
That is why they do not build railways…it could show you have no faith in technology…
Yeah, that’s one way of putting it. Every time I visit this web-space turned crapfest I try to steer discussion toward topics that seem relevent, or dare I say it – insightful to me.
At some point, someone other than me may figure out that petroleum products should be treated as a national, fundamental social security resource.
In other words, the nation as a whole needs to have a talk about who, how and what decides who, how and how much their people get to waste oil through needless discretionary consumption.
Currently, our rich leaders on Wall Street have decided to have the nation just consume itself of an energy cliff with no strategy other than greed being offered as a possible alternative.
And why not? As long as this nation is left without any leadership to guide discussions about how to demarcate the allocation of energy resources along the lines on the national interest as opposed to personal consumption, there is little hope for a rational transition to national infrastructure that can operate in the face of limited petroleum consumption.
Sooner or later someone will notice it might have been a better idea to save the fuels used for baseball, football and NASCAR events for running farming equipment and fire trucks. But hey, we’re not even talking about it at Clusterfuck, how the heck you going to get the “regular folks” interested?
Yes Jim, when it gets to the point that Joe Sixpack can’t afford to drive to the football, baseball, NASCAR event, you can rest assured that the politics of America will begin to change.
But change to what?
Just give me some truth
Thanks for the realistic information, JHK-It can’t be that hard to research this and give a realistic assessment of what any geologist should know, but there’s no scientific discussion going on that people can depend on. That doesn’t stop TIME mag. (cover story) from telling us how abundant shale is. Oh, the double edge sword of it. It’s in everyone’s yard, but so dangerous to remove, is it really an option?
But why should this set of illusions be any different from all the rest? At what point do we all collectively say “Just give me some truth”?
On FB some of my high sc. friends are waking up to the scary realities and disinformation going on here and want to see the media cover the important issues we face and be a part of a solution. They still believe in the system, but see it slipping away from them.
—-
BP has just requested to resume drilling in the Gulf promising to be more careful this time around! You know words are cheap–they don’t cost a penny, so let’s just say, magic words are an asset.
Today:
[Transocean Ltd., the owner of the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded off the Gulf of Mexico last year, has given its top executives bonuses for achieving the “best year in safety performance in our company’s history”,?despite the blast that killed 11 people and spilled 200 million gallons of oil into the ocean.
Safety accounts for a quarter of the executives’ total cash bonuses. The total bonus for CEO Steve Newman last year was $374,062.
The company said in a regulatory filing that its most senior managers were given two thirds of their total possible safety bonus.
The company said its bonuses were appropriate as a way to recognise its executives’ efforts in “significantly improving the company’s safety record” and implementing a new internal planning system.
Those efforts have “enabled the company to maintain its financial flexibility during a challenging period, while, at the same time, positioning the company for sustained growth in the future.”]
One has to wonder what happened the years before, that 2010 looks so good!
Speaking of moral hazard across the board. There is simply no way the oligarchs can lose! No matter how they risk they keep winning the biggest pot of dough. Last night on 60Min. they illustrated just how the banks and their subcontractors committed out-and-out fraud on the mortgage documentation. It’s something out of a mafia enterprise–That’s your big banks, people!
They’ve set out to destroy the value of home-ownership in the US. The graft is absolutely mind-boggling and you know they will be like teflon. Nothing’s gonna happen to these crooks.
The Republicans are going to fight hard for the dismantling of the social safety net taking taxation of the rich completely off the board. Now they’re beginning the fight for lowering corporate taxes from 35% to 20%. These guys are jungle fighters so grab a handrail while this budget thing plays out this week!
–my god what do you even call this system?
Even IF we could switch the US car and truck fleet to high mileage, nat. gas or electric-powered vehicles, we still have the roads themselves falling apart.
Pavement is made largely with oil. Hot mix asphalt is already very expensive compared to years ago and it’s probably going to go up in price several times more. Then there’s all the diesel used to haul, spread, and tamp down the stuff. Concrete roads, while they last longer, also take lots of hauling and spreading, not to mention the coal or natural gas required to fire the cement kilns.
No, most of America’s roads have already gotten the last coating of pavement they’ll ever get. Side roads are already going back to gravel by conscious choice in some smaller communities, while other townships and counties will be forced into the same decisions sooner or later. Major highways will lose lanes. Redundant, parallel roads (such as US Rt 1 and I-95 in the east) will start losing sections in places. The only roads that will make economic or practical sense to keep paved are downtown roads.
Meanwhile, two steel rails last a long time with just a bit of maint. work to the ballast and cross ties, the latter of which are renewable as well. Of course it won’t be “high-speed”, but it still will be better than the intercity alternative coming in the next 20 years as road maint. basically comes to a halt.
Jim you forget it is campaign season for the top slot. Obama made the right move by joining in, so now he can begin the flattery of the swing vote.
The swing vote in this country comprised of white women and the she-males attached to them. So Team Obama will flatter the young childless types with “Light Rail”, and the older ones who want “good schools” with “green cars.”
If your angry now, you have not seen anything, and at best we will get the usual CAFE and solar panel spiel to placate your doom crowd.
I need a baseball bat.
A barrel of oil is $108 today, which corresponds to where it was in early March 2008. We had $125 by early May, $135 by the third week of May 2008, $140 by late June, before we reached $147 on July 11th. Despite our collective love of amnesia, I think we all remembered what happened next.
I love the irony of the smug left flying into another state to spread untruthful propaganda about a subject concerning agricultural knowledge about which they know very little. My biggest concern is that we live in “fly over country”, without enough votes available to prompt Obama to even try to locate us on a map of the US.
We live in (are trapped in) a small, rapidly declining village with three highways out and no foreseeable form of public transportation chugging over the hill. This village used to be small but viable, with a grocery store (much pricier than Wal-Mart) bank and filling station within reasonable driving distance. I could walk to the bank and post office, but with three teen age boys, it always required a vehicle to get to the grocery store. We are so small that the Senior Center Shuttle doesn’t even come here, and neither does Meals on Wheels.
Is there any logical chance that Obama will want to install public transportation for us? Our area has large grain production and we do have rail service, about twelve miles away into the grain elevator, but there hasn’t been a real passenger train in here for close to fifty years. A trip to the nearest bank is 38 miles round-trip, with a stop at the gas station on the way home. We shop for staples (We have our own meat) at Wal-Mart, conveniently located on our side of the nearest larger city, which is roughly a 36 mile round trip. Gasoline is running $3.65 per gallon as of yesterday. We love our cars and we love to go places, just like anyone else. It’s just that we don’t have travel options and we, as a group, are as foreign to the average urbanite as a Laplander Caribou herder. America is a BIG country and the scantily populated areas trend Republican, for better or worse. We feel that either Obama must assume we all want to live in Detroit or Chicago, WRONG, and this is just one more way in which he totally doesn’t get us and doesn’t care. We aren’t leaving the farm which is a good thing if the rest of you want to eat, but exactly how are we supposed to live? If the rest of you continue to want fresh Ohio produce, fish, grains, milk and beef, we have to find a way to obtain our necessities as well.
Many of us homeschool, not because we’re nut cases, but because we don’t want to put our kids on the school bus at 6:00 AM for a two hour ride to the nearest school. (We continue to pay for our supplies, plus being forced to pay the over-the-top property and school income taxes which Ohio deems necessary to run their half-empty schools. Ohio has done a truly spectacular job of ruining its small towns with consolidation, that awful trend beginning in the 1950s where they close random schools, destroy the community and stamp out all community ties. Maybe it saves money, but probably not when you factor in the cost of school buses, extra fuel, additional drivers and mileage for teachers lured from larger areas. Another liberal idea which killed off our part of America. The post office is on the “kill” list as well, which leaves us with two pizza shops, one with a tanning parlor, two bars and one barber shop. Any ideas////
Just think, if we collectively conserve like CRAZY, and use 30% less oil and gas, there will be a few million barrels a day less needed to import to the USA, right there.
This will ALL immediately be bought up by the energy hungry Chinese and Indians, every last barrel of it, so THEY can burn it, whilst we bicycle.
It’s all good people, We just dumped 10,000 tons of radiioactive water into the pacific ocean and are plugging the leaks with wet newspaper. Move along now, nothing more to see here!
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fgw-japan-nuclear-20110405,0,2720438.story
Not bad.
It will be extremely good for health, air and finances…
The big cement pumper truck that is being sent from the US to Japan is coming from the construction site of the new MOX fuel factory in Georgia. A 14 billion dollar factory to mix plutonium from 7000 decommissioned nuclear weapons with uranium to be used as fuel in American nuclear plants. The government will not give up on nuclear. As it runs out of uranium it will burn a mix of uranium, plutonium, thorium. It can do this for 100 years. Yes there will be Fukushimas but the EPA just raise the safe levels of radiation by up to a factor of 100,000 in some cases. [I am not a fan of nuclear, I like solar and wind and oil from cyanobateria]
“To all the idiots that wait with fingers poised to type
FIRST!
everytime that JHK posts a new blog:
Get a life . . .
and after you have gotten it, post some of your real-world experiences that will be of some value to the rest of humanity.”
Hey FUCKTARD. All you have managed to do is find another way to shout FIRST. Additionally, you offered no “real-world experiences” to save us, one and all. So, blow me. And thank you for that.
Juletta,
Rural Ohio thrived so much well into the 1950s precisely because of amenities like passenger trains, locally owned shops, and, most importantly, cheap and abundant oil. Take those factors away, and I’m afraid it is perpetual decline.
I certainly don’t consider myself a lefty but let me give you one perspective on the energy part.
More mass tranportation where it makes sense means lower gas prices in areas where mass transportation does not make sense. A perfect example is … you guessed it, I-395 in Northern Virginia to DC. Instead we have the dreaded HOV lane. If only Bill Gates could use some of his donated billions to help the USA.
Jim,
On the various goat-fucks we call the ‘news’ they are all babbling about the upcoming ‘driving season’ – nowhere does any of them have the wit to wonder whether we should even have a Driving Season – it is just assumed as another of our long lists of birthrights. We are fucked.
According to rumors, Obama is going to announce he’ll run for a second term (yawn). Great timing…just after he authorized bombing Libya.
I’ll bet you a homemade chicken dinner that Hilary quits as Secretary of State and runs against Obama.
Anyone else out there think Hilary will run?
SJmom
Based upon my projections, Bakken Shale oil production could peak around 2015 if the growth rate of the last 2 years continues.
I have what I think is a very important commentary that is supposed to be in the ASPO-USA newsletter next week. The basic premise is that U.S. government agencies that make projections or assessments of future oil production or oil reserves provide grossly exaggerated estimates. I base that on a paper I wrote in 1999 where I compared what I projected for future U.K. and Norwegian oil production to that of the US DOE/EIA. For the sum of the two, I was off by 0.0% for 2010 while the U.S. DOE/EIA was high by 116.0%.
I relate that to future oil production in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico in which many exaggerated claims have been made concerning future oil production.
Roger Blanchard
Sault Ste. Marie, MI
Juletta
Thank you for a very thoughtful post. One thing I would like to point out is that you seem bitter about Obama and the “Liberals.” You live in “fly-over country for the Rethuglicans as well as the Dems. What did Bush do for you while he was in office?
I voted for Obama because I thought he was a Democrat with Progressive (read Socialistic) tendencies, probably the same reasons you voted against him. The irony is that we have both been disappointed.
Even though I will continue to vote Democrat (a very good example of “magical thinking”) I realize that the fix is in and the corporations aren’t going to let anyone change anything by voting.
Yeah. The price dropped to $38. Obama was elected on a platform of ostensible hope, but what turned out to be a bunch of lies. We started another war. Charlie Sheen went nuts and Jim Kunstler continued to rant about a doomsday that is always right around the corner, but never comes.
Or did you have something else in mind? Did you even have a point?
Previously, I was having such a carefree time. Now I lay here in the fetal position, crying and trembling. How could I have forgotten to consider Godzilla?
Mr. Kunstler sez:
“The reason for this obvious idiocy is that it’s all about the cars. That’s all we care about in the USA, the cars. We can’t get over the cars. We can’t talk about anything except how we’ll find magical new ways to run all the cars. This is a very tragic sort of stupidity and if we don’t change our thinking about it, from the highest level on down, history is going to treat us very cruelly.”
Well, I guess that not only history, but Mom Nature is going to treat us cruelly if this meme gets pushed to the endpoint (which it most certainly will)! Obama always manages to get “nuclear and clean coal” in there when speaking of ALTERNATIVE energy sources; so, go figure what he’s trying to stuff into the mushroom-peoples’* heads?!?
That’s what’s truly terrifying: except for yourself and others on “the obscure woild of inter-tube-age”, nobody’s calling him [and his “advisors”] OUT on this absolute shit!
Dan Yergin fer chrissakes; this is the source of the current propaganda (green smoke) that comes from Obama’s mouth (via the tube up his ass)?
We’re more than fucked. Much, MUCH more, because this clusterfuck will be propped up until it can’t be na’more. Therefore, it will not be a “controlled contraction”, it’ll be a cosmic bitch-slap of dangerous societal and environmental proportions.
*mushroom-people: Those who are kept in the dark and fed horseshit.
I’ve written to my local city council to try and get a cross walk across the busy street where I work in the formally beautiful state of Washington. My God, how much can a cross walk cost, so I can walk safely to work? It takes me as long to cross that street as it does to get there.
Excellent read, Sir. I don’t think about what car my next one will be, but if there will be a next one. Often, when out driving, I look at all the waste land around every cloverleaf, highway exit, etc., and wonder, if or when we’ll be planting it to grow food, because of the severity of the crisis that we are in. Doing so would give the land more value than the highways themselves will have, as far as fossil fueled transportation is concerned.
Jim,
Thank you for calling CERA and Daniel Yergin what they are: industry whores. If there is a hell, Yergin will spend eternity head down in a barrel of crude.
You also wrote about the consequences of fewer Americans having cars as the nation tries to move beyond internal combustion.
At first I was tempted to say “the sheep in this country won’t object, no more than they do to 50 million or so Americans not having any health insurance.”
Then I re-thought it: when you see someone you don’t automatically know if they are uninsured. If you have a car that runs, you probably don’t want to kill the man who passes you in his new BMW M5.
But if you are desperate in a dying suburban landscape, with your SUV rusting on flat tires for lack of fuel, and you see the rich man glide by in an electric car, it would be different.
Folks will start stooping for rocks. I take no comfort from this. One day the dispossessed will kill the rest of us, if our current system continues.
They won’t stop their beating and pillaging to ask “what did YOU do to help us?”
I don’t think she’ll run.
But wouldn’t it be a gas? Wouldn’t it be a gas if Hillary actually won? The Clinton Family soap opera live from the White House. Again. Great entertainment. I wonder if Bill would actually move into the White House with Hillary. Bill is an unreformable horndog and I just don’t think he could keep a lid on it. I’ll bet the fake marriage goes off the cliff. I’ll bet that once Hillary gets done with this gig she gives Bill the walking papers.
Yes, Mr. K, it’s all about the cars.
People are nuts for their cars. Men, in particular, can have an entire conversation on the gas mileage of various vehicles, most usually pick-up trucks. (I know this for a fact because I recently had to break one up so we could get the original conversation back on track.)Geeezzz….
When people are no longer able to drive their cars as they always have, look out.
Uprising straight ahead.
What you should really fear about nuclear power plants happens when they are shut down. Are you going to live without that electricity? Maybe you can use your refrigerator 2/3 of the time. Or just watch 2/3 of Dancing with the Stars. Or fill up your electric car to the 2/3 mark. Or maybe just burn another 23 trillion billion tons of coal to make up the difference. Oh well, that will only increase the temperature of the world by 23 degrees. I wounder how much sun screen will you need then? Or will it matter?
I think you got it about right
reality sucks don’t it?
Not to nitpick, Rupert, but the last I heard Alberta was a province of Canada, not its own country, although Albertans like to think it is, as they strut around thumping their chests and bragging about all the oil they have, like Texans when they had oil, as they slowly destroy their province in pursuit of the almighty dollar.
San Jose Mom,
Discussing Bill Clinton’s cock? Talk about utter irrelevancy. You seem stuck in 1998.
Thank you, JHK for finally returning to what attracted me to this site, in the first place. While I find most of your essays entertaining, these are the writings I, more often, forward to friends and acquaintances.
No on e solution will help the US reduce dependence and that is why the PE continues to shovel the piles of manure at us. They don’t believe we want, need or will understand the message. The entire discussion revolves around THEM fixing the problem, so we continue to depend on THEM. Besides, the new season of DWTS is well underway.
Some of the best solutions can be done on a micro-scale (wind, geothermal and solar) so, many of us can implement these without THEM. No, these don’t address cars, but you would miss your lights, heat and refrigeration long before you miss your car. Further, these can reduce the need for more nukes, coal or natural gas. It will take many of these kinds of solutions to soften the blow, but the blow will still be painful.
OBTW, don’t think you’ll escape the scourge of gas taxes through the purchase of that Chevy Volt. They have that accounted for too. http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2011/03/congress-some-states-consider-creating-tax-on-miles-driven.html Those of us still driving the gasoline versions will be twice penalized, assuming we can afford it, at all. See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet!
Too bad we don’t have Chavez running the Canadian government. Then we’d be paying less than a dollar a gallon for gas instead of over $5. Instead we have a government that is tucked comfortably in bed with the oil companies.
My town of 24,000 people and a University of nearly that many, has an old downtown, with narrow, walkable streets, some still in brick.
As you move out, you can watch the history of suburbia, with bigger 50’s houses surrounding the old core, and then the McMansions.
There is a street and a bridge going out of town towards the next town (pop. 7,000) that are 7 (!) lanes wide. Two people have died on one intersection in the last few years.
There is a City Hall race going on now, and my daughter is running for City Council on a walkable, sustainable ticket.
A lot of people “get it”, but some are bafflyingly stupid.
I wrote a letter to the Editor, and right underneath it was a letter from a guy complaining about candidates who talked about “urban sprawl”. He pointed out that without urban sprawl, Reed Station Road (an appalling example) would still be a forest! He seemed to think that others would be as disgusted with that idea as he is.
I went to City Hall when they were widening the road to the golf course, and taking part of my front lawn to do it.
While I was there, I complained about the lack of crosswalks across the busy highway that runs through the middle of town.
The City Hall lackey told me that they couldn’t put in crosswalks, because that would slow traffic! And they would have to make it so people in wheelchairs could cross and that would just cost too much money.
Although they spent $4,000,000 widening 2 miles of road.
And then they put 3 new traffic lights out where there used to be nothing but forest, and now there is a WalMart and doctor’s offices. No foot traffic, however.
Yesterday, I headed over to the ghetto to canvas for my daughter. There was a couple of middle-aged black women getting out of two cars in front of a ramshackle house. They had a little kid with them.
So I started my spiel, and one of them asked me what my daughter would do for the “east side”. (Code for ghetto), and I said that she would put in crosswalks so that the child could be safe when he was old enough to get around.
She wasn’t impressed. I actually used the same words as JHK, saying that the city cared only about the cars, not the people.
She thought they only cared about the students. Well, that’s ridiculous. Most of them don’t have cars either, and are just as at risk as everyone else. One was killed by a speeding car a few years ago.
Interesting point. We have very few murders in this town. We have a lot more car crashes.
But, during the debates, when they talk about “public safety”, it is code for murders and assaults. Really?
Because, as I always tell people, if a stranger kills you or your child, it’s most likely going to be with a car, not a gun!
So why is public safety considered to be more cops patrolling the east side, instead of narrowing the streets and building inside city limits, instead of using city tax money to provide infrastructure for land developers out of town?
And they never say, let’s hire more cops and have them hand out speeding tickets, for public safety, you know.
Anyway, there are two candidates saying things that are never said in our town. My daughter, and one of the mayoral candidates.
Probably neither will be elected, but at least the ideas are out there.
Americans are so urbanized they cannot fathom doing without a car or paying 8 or more dollars a gallon. Where I live, if you walk, people assume you got a DWI and can’t drive, that is how embedded the idea of ‘car’ is in American thinking and life.
Part of me can hardly wait until the true cost of this car society of ours comes crashing through our front doors like that Kool-Aid pitcher-man. And part of me doesn’t want to be around when this happens. It’s frightening to see how much the car has bound up our society and economy into a nice little controllable, but expensive, ball.
Good luck.
Ration Baby Ration !
To the idiot who sits poised ready to type the word “fucktard” every time someone comments…
The person who posts “first” brings exactly the same thing to the table that you do….. NOTHING.
And they make this contribution much more streamlined (and therefore better) than you… Frankly “First” week after week and “Fucktard” week after week are just sort of lame comments
from lame people.
Your gift of language that the marine platoon that had your mother bestowed upon you is woefully limited, uncreative, and boring.
And speaking of uncreative and boring… when goBdoichland the Klansman shows up… before you go off on your ‘white power’ bullshit… I want you remind you that the only reason that there are as many black people for you to hate living here in the first place is because YOUR GREAT GREAT GREAT WHITE GRANDPARENTS WERE LAZY… that’s right…. they were too LAZY to do any actual work themselves.. so they stole an entire people to build a nation for them…
Do you think it was WHITE PEOPLE who laid all that railroad track out west? It was the Chinese. (who are now funding your little suburban adventure by the way)
Do you think that WHITE PEOPLE built the South? Sitting on a porch sipping a mint julep calling someone who is actually working “lazy” is not actually ‘building’ anything.
White People (WASPS) are LAZY.. and they STILL rely on BLACK POWER (oil) also brought from overseas in the belly of a ship to do their work for them….
I’d like to see you and your tribe of WHITE PEOPLE get along without any oil AND without anyone brown or black to do your work for you….
You would end up with a bunch of people snapping their fingers and ringing little bells endlessly waiting for a servant to come and attend to them… By the way, if you want to live someplace where you don’t have to deal with black people EVER… try PROVO UTAH on for size (or do Mormons freak you out too?)
Juletta,
We live in a similar situation as you but we live in a rural location outside the small declining village.
Perhaps in the future we will be carpooling once a month or so to the grocery store and for other errands.
Okay, a barrel of oil has reached $108 this morning which means we are probably in for an ugly replay of 2008 (spiraling out of control oil prices followed by another stock market plunge). I can live without oil, I can live without a car, I can live without a lot of money. I can garden, I can learn to stock up home preserved food for the winter, I can even cut firewood if necessary. If necessary I can walk/bike to where I want to go or take a bus/train/ferry into NYC (although that’s super expensive now, and maybe crazy expensive shortly).
What I can’t live with is Nuclear Meltdowns, radiation, etc. I would rather see ten thousands wind turbines line the New Jersey coast than even one more nuclear plant. We can survive without oil. All of humanity did in the past and lots of them survived. So we adapt to the new reality of scarce, expensive gas or we perish because we can’t. My family and I will survive because we are learning how to make do. Baking bread, planting vegetables, reading up on old skills. It won’t be as easy as touch a button living but we can do it. And soon, we might not have any choice.
After Bush was elected in ’04 I moved to Mexico to a small city that doesn’t have a stop-light or any stop-signs. What it does have is lots of “topes” or speed breakers as they are called in English. These work like a charm for slowing down traffic. They don’t require hiring cops, buying police cars, setting up courts, and hiring judges. If you speed and hit one justice is swift and automatic. Of course this would never be allowed in the US.
Go get ’em, Roger.
Somebody’s got to call out these craven fools and cry, “Bullshit!”, on their fixed and fantasized stats.
The Pennsylvania is moving to restrict fracking because of the tremendous environment damage that results from the process.
See here:
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2011/03/08/interior-considers-fracking-regulations-pa-says-radioactivity-levels-normal/
BTW, thanks for deleting the idiotic “First!” BS.
Good blog, Jim. It seems like your writing is at its best when you talk about the oil & nat. gas situation specifically.
From last week:
Vlad, the intelligence test you refer to was called ASVAB. It was a general intelligence test that measured mental ability and problem solving. Top score was 76 and you needed to generally score above 60 to qualify for any of the good (i.e. technical) jobs. It was my observation that Californians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders did the best and got the best jobs. I’m not sure why.
Ripthunder, Henry’s are mfg. in Bayonne, NJ, formerly of Brooklyn, NY, owned and operated by the Imperato family. They’re the real deal, beautifully made, with native materials and labor. And they’re a good value, too. Of course there is the historical significance as well, the company being named after B. Tyler Henry (1820-1898) Winchesters first employee and inventor of the (first) Henry lever rifle of Civil War fame. You can’t go wrong buying a Henry.
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Stephen_B,
Yep. I traveled some of our county roads a few days ago. They have absolutely gone to shit. We had record-setting weather in February; incredible snowfall and temps in the -20’s. In Oklahoma. Mother Nature sure knows how to pile on.
It has destroyed many of the roads. I don’t remember them ever being in such bad shape. Factor in falling revenues and fuel costs and I expect many of them will never be repaired.
More evidence of our declining standard of living.
I see you are your usual nasty self today Tootsie.
The meek have inherited the website, guess the world is next?
Sorry goBd… my anti white power rant was actaully meant for Vlad…. got in the shower and realized it…. sorry again!
Jim;
One more thing,
Daniel Yergin is not going to be happy when he finds out what you called him today. (And he will find out)
Don’t be surprised when he challenges you to a duel.
Flintlock pistols at 25 yards.
May the best shot win!
-Marlin
CFNation Post 1
New England Chapter
Jen,
She won’t run, believe me. I’ll bring a bottle of wine to go with dinner.
Neckflames
The export of democracy in Libia is going full speed thanks to England, USA and France.
It will proceed in Siria, Bahrain and Yemen.
They feed on democracy. Iraq was among the firsts, Iran is booked.
Democracy´s export increases the country´s turn over and helps the national debt.
The more you bomb, the better is the economy.
To build 250 new hospitals one would spend like 8 hours war.
They should, once in a while, take a holiday.
Here in Vermont the winter pounds the roads too. When the state makes repairs they just pave over the problems and the repairs barely last a few years. Very short sighted. The interstate here is 7 feet deep in well drained stone and handles deep frost penetration well, but DOT never prepares road beds in this manner.
I enjoy Kunstler the most when he is discussing issues as he has done so masterfully here, rather than predicting future events, which have a habit of not listening and doing their own thing in their own time never mind his predictions.
I wonder what will happen when Saudi Arabia forgets to pay off it’s protestors, or when Iran feels trapped enough to take the House of Saud on directly. Will it be a black swan or an entirely predictable catastrophe when Saudi Arabia’s ten million barrels a day go offline as suddenly and as spectacularly as Libya’s one point five million?
I will miss my motorcyle as my daily means of transportation. I suppose we all have to sacrifice something, and China and India will get my Bonneville.I hope they use it wisely.
They aren’t “left” Juletta, and it wasn’t “liberals” who consolidated your schools.
But hang on to your hate, it’ll come in handy someday.
When there isn’t enough oil for every individual to drive 36 miles to WalMart, someone will open a small store with the necessities, and there will be one truck a week that stocks the store.
When the store is out, you will do without until the next week.
That is how it was. I can remember it clearly, in my grandmother’s town of 100.
I grew up in a suburb of LA. The men took the cars to work. That left the women at home, because no one had 2 cars.
We had a Helm’s bread truck that brought baked goods up and down the streets. We had milkmen who brought milk to our houses and then picked up the empty bottles to be refilled.
When my mother decided that I should take tap-dancing lessons, to be the next Shirley Temple, a van picked up me and the girl across the street, among many others, to go to the studio.
There were no soccer moms. We walked to the park to play.
The US used half of the oil we use today, and life was not Mad Max.
Planet Earth is heading for an Easter Island experience on a global scale.
“In just a few centuries, the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?” – Jared DIamond.
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/24/042.html
Hey fucktard,
Not only to you qualify as a FUCKTARD you also fall into the swamp of RACIST FUCKTARD. Congrats!
This is good Kunstler but my only complaint would be leaving off over reliance on the use of planes. Which are often even less energy efficiant then my old 73 Camaro.
Last week I was so busy that I never got a chance to read all the comments.
But, as I recall, the topic was Was Is To Be Done?
There were disillusioned Democrats, and hateful Republicans, and people coming up with different solutions.
Tripp has a quote from Buckminster Fuller on the side of his blog, saying something about how you can’t take on the powerful, you must build something different within the bowels of the old system. (Marx also pointed this out, but that is forbidden speech).
I know that you like to listen to podcasts, and I ran across this one. Have you read “Web of Debt” by Ellen Brown?
This is a speech by her that I think you would like. It’s about bypassing the private system of creating money and setting up a public system.
Her book goes into how it would work in more detail. It has been used before, but the bankers are so powerful that you don’t hear about it now.
The Green Party candidates for governor in California, Illinois and New York (last year) all ran on state bank platforms.
Of course, they are not corporate funded, so don’t have a chance, so the disillusioned keep voting for the bank-backed candidates, hoping that they will change.
Good luck with that.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/61702
Hi Jim and all the gang,
Good article today, however I think Obama is shooting himself in the foot when he advocates nuclear energy. Especially when news is slipping out of Japan that the population in Tokyo is protesting nukes and saying things to interviewers like, “I want to escape Japan.”
Oh and also reported over the weekend was a radiation spike 80 km south of Fukushima, coincidentally near the site of another nuclear plant. I have also seen reports by Harvey Wasserman about a nuclear plant near Onagawa having a fire and other problems. If these reports are true I think the entire island of Japan may have to be permanently evacuated. The Russians think so too and have offered work visas to Japanese workers to work in Siberia and the Far East. The Russians as we all know recently observed the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster.
Ah spring showers bring… nuked flowers.
take care all and mind the fallout,
loveday
“I think conservation of energy (using less) is likely the way forward for most people.”
That’s all most people can do. Many are just hanging on and the ones that do still have money are concerned about food prices, medical care and retirement for starters. I don’t think solar is even on their list, assuming they have any money left over.
I could be wrong though. It’s just hard to engage people in any kind of serious discussion these days.
Helen you’re entitled to your opinion. But I was there at ground zero in Alberta in the early 1980s when Trudeau, Lalonde and company inflicted the NEP and that is, IMO, where Alberta separatism comes from. I saw it all unfold up close so I’m qualified to talk about it.
Now according to Marc Lalonde (you should know who he is) the NEP was in part a measure taken to keep capital and power from moving west. And it had disastrous consequences. As Chantal Hebert said (and you should also know who she is) if the NEP had been imposed on Quebec it would have been an independent country a long time ago.
For my part, my own life (and the lives of many thousands of Albertans) was derailed in large part by the NEP and my personal finances suffered because of this Liberal/liberal malice and idiocy. You know what, it would by now have been forgotten and forgiven. But eastern liberals just couldn’t leave it alone and just had to follow it up with years and years of insults. Remember? racist, extremist, and as I think you yourself said not long ago, “tea partiers”. And like your little rant above.
Your anti Alberta-ism is exactly what I was ranting about a few weeks ago, no doubt to the boredom of our American and international friends (sorry). Helen, do you want to do something valuable for your country? Want to aid in the cause of national reconciliation? You know what I’m going to tell you. Because the word “liberal” is electoral poison out west and (again according to Chantal) if you think alienation is bad in Quebec you should go to Alberta. I’m telling you Helen, wise up, because if the stream of insults from you and others like you doesn’t abate the future of this country will be short and the breakup, like almost all national breakups, will be nasty.
I’ve walked to the local coffee shop and back home (1.2 miles round trip) over 3,000 times in the last 8 years (2-3 times a day), in the best/worst weather. Lately been biking like mad, and growing hundreds of gladiolus, peacock orchids etc, really super cheap and great smelling. Haven’t had a car in years, best move i ever made.
point being, just tune in, turn on & drop out, and turn off ur damn tv, you’ll end up loving it. ever baked your own bread 90% cheaper?
get out of the matrix. let everyone else worry about the damn oil.
Oh, to people who listen to the podcast.
When she talks about “international bankers” it is NOT a code word for Jews. She’s talking about the people who run the world-wide banking system.
When she talks about the “new world order”, she is NOT talking about the military hegemony of the US after the fall of the USSR.
She’s talking about the attempts by other countries to bypass the US dollar as the de facto world currency, which forces other countries into financial difficulties.
The US is fighting back, as witness the attack on Iraq, when Saddam started making plans to sell oil in Euros.
Anyway, I recommend the podcast, with those caveats.
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/61702
“The US used half of the oil we use today, and life was not Mad Max.”
No kidding? For fuck’s sake there was well less than half the population we now have. Naturally, we used less oil.
Yes, when I was at City Hall, I brought an article about some place (I don’t remember where), where endangered animals were being wiped out by speeding cars.
They tried law enforcement and signs, but nothing helped.
Until they put in speed bumps. Then the slaughter stopped.
The City Hall lackey refused to entertain the idea.
I had an intuition that you’d comment on Obama’s energy speech. It was as if he was trying to respond to you with a cornucopian laundry list. Of course he failed your standards.
Speaking of cornucopian solutions, I have a personal comment on one of your observations.
Time for my standard rant about oil shale.
In addition to being energy expensive, oil shale production is very dirty. I can attest to that first hand.
My first job after graduating with a B.S. in Geology in 1981 was to work for one of two contractors for Getty Oil (later acquired by Texaco and now subsumed in Chevron) who were trying to demonstrate the efficacy of using technology developed for oil shale to extract asphaltum from diatomaceous earth. The contractor I worked for built a pilot plant that dissolved the asphalt using hot gasoline as a solvent. That approach failed for a variety of reasons, not the least of which was that the plant was built at 1/4 scale, including the pipes, which caused the gasoline-diatomite slurry to clog wherever the pipes changed direction.
The other competitor built a full-sized (production-scale) retort that baked the diatomite to extract the asphalt, then centrifuged it to separate the liquid. The remaining diatomite was then blown out of the retort tower. The result was a cloud of dust that reduced visibility to 100 feet and blocked out the Sun for 5-10 miles downwind. That technology won and is among those that Chevron has on the shelf right now. If that’s what the oil shale future looks like, then the Green River Basin is going to be an ugly place. 😛
The fossil destruction alone would be valued in the billions of dollars. The same strata that contain oil shale also contain the best commercial fish fossils in the country, to say nothing of scientifically valuable plant, bird, reptile, invertebrate, and mammal fossils.
And then there’s the water use…
The above isn’t at Crazy Eddie’s Motie News yet, but thanks to your prompting, it will be.
http://crazyeddiethemotie.blogspot.com/
Amen sister.
For Juletta: I recall rural Ohio (Adams County) from my visits there as a child. My grandfather was forced onto a farm because his job dried up during the Depression. Although my father managed to leave the staggering poverty of the region, my grandfather never did, although it was easier in later years because my father was able to support his parents and pay for modern improvements like a flush toilet.
The people were poor, but they grew plenty of their own food and there was a general store a couple of miles down the road. Although there were vehicles in the valley, everyone kept a horse as well.
I recall my father telling me something that even as a child struck me as odd about this part of Ohio, though. He told me how the public projects had built dams, reservoirs, and other public facilities during the 1930s. One of these is a nice reservoir with a public beach and park — and what was the reaction of the locals? It got nicknamed “Roosevelt’s mudhole”, although plenty of them were happy enough to take advantage of it. Maybe some of that was the quirky humor of the old locals in the region; but some of it was also ignorant (note I use “ignorant” and not “stupid”) talk of a propagandized people.
And southern Ohio voted for the Republicans over the years while formerly successful river towns like Portsmouth degenerated into meth havens. I don’t have much confidence that democratic leadership would have helped the cities of the Ohio Valley much given the direction that development took in the nation after the world war, but I have to wonder why, given the visible failures, the Republicans continue to be elected to office.
Maybe that’s why the old guys in the hills there drank so much moonshine.
Cheers
Wage, Marx was a lousy communist but he was a great student of capitalism. So by all means quote him.
Adolph Hitler said “The people will believe the big lie more readily than the small one.”
Jesus of Nazareth made the very same point two thousand years earlier: “The people will swallow a camel but choke on a gnat.”
As it reads in Ecclesiastes,”There is nothing new under the sun.”
Every week I see comments saying Kunstler is a doomsayer that has got it all wrong. I’m sorry, but anyone who isn’t aware that we ARE in crash, and have been since the 80’s, is living in a land of delusion.
djc
speed bumps work wonders down here in brazil. simple & work great
Ninety-ninth!!!
(more or less)
I usually ignore you as an idiot, but you required me to use the Google.
In 1959, the US had 150 million people and used 6 millions barrels of oil a day.
Today we have twice as many people and use 20 million barrels of oil a day.
Therefore, at 1959 usage, we would be using 8 million barrels of oil less a day.
And in 1959, they had already destroyed the trolley system, which made it possible to move large numbers of people with less energy.
Fucktard.
We don’t need no stinkin’ speed bumps. You have to install speed bumps. Just wait for the inevitable pot holes to develop. Much cheaper in the long run.
“In 1959, the US had 150 million people and used 6 millions barrels of oil a day.
Today we have twice as many people and use 20 million barrels of oil a day.”
Uh huh. But your equation fails to take into account that “today” we have more ways in which to use oil (plastics, drugs, etc). Hence it is not an apples to apples comparison. Hence, you are still full of shit. (No surprise there.)
Actually, it was the left that started the harmful school consolidations…..research the term of the Ohio governor who was the father of Kathleen Sebelius….. Also, why is it “hate” when I say something but another thing entirely different, like maybe “mind correction” when you say it? I hope the little trucks come by again. I still have an old zinc ice box and it would be nice to have an ice man bring pure ice. We have a small pond from which we could cut and store ice, but I’d like to be sure it wasn’t radioactive. We live several miles outside of our village and I used to walk to school except in the worst of winter. No buses and no exhorbitant taxes to pay for buses, gasoline and drivers. We also had no lunch or breakfast programs. My mother packed everything for me. It costs a lot to run schools today and the biggest insult I ever got over homeschooling came from the principal who accused me of defrauding the school because they didn’t get the state money which would flow in for my three sons. (By the way, my oldest son just took his ACTs mid-term, and scored a 31, the highest score in the last year. That was a rewarding day for me! I also hope the delivery trucks are four wheel drive as Ohio has huge deposits of Bolan clay, almost impossible to traverse in times of wet weather. The state would save billions by letting them revert to gravel, but nobody would be going anywhere, and that’s just a little too much “Little House on the Prairie” to spring on people without some warning. Thanks for all the comments. I enjoyed them and was grateful because I usually feel invisible on here. And no, I didn’t ever vote for George Bush and he also never did a single thing for me. I don’t like NASCAR, but I don’t care if someone else does. I would prefer not to have a nuclear plant close to me (Davis Besse is bad enough and it’s way up north.) Do have the courtesy to comprehend that because I think Obama is a charlatan, a liar and an incompetent government hack, doesn’t mean I’m a cornpone/NASCAR-loving, Bush following, Nazi hick. Also, what the HELL is that about White people being lazy?? My 2x Great Grandparents homesteaded out here and they had no slaves, just lots of swamp and mosquitoes. Please keep in mind that Ohio was the “Underground Railroad” State and many white people risked substantial punishment for trying to relocate slaves to a better locale. We also fought a huge war to free you. Look at your culture and tell me if it was worth it.
Yep,
Hit one of those sets of “topes” at a higher than recommended speed and dented a rim on the rental car. I looked for the signs much more carefully after replacing that! (Works great for all the pedestrian and bicycle traffic getting across the roadways as well.) Who needs traffic cops when damage to the vehicle due to a little bump in the road provides PLENTY of dis-incentive to hotrod?
Suburban get real.
Juletta, you’re correct. Which is why it confuses the Hell out of me to see people in southern Ohio flying Confederate flags now — what is that all about? When I was a child, the area was staunchly pro-Union every time the topic of the Civil War came up.
Cheers
Jesus of Nazareth made the very same point two thousand years earlier: “The people will swallow a camel but choke on a gnat.” – P
Obviously had a sense of humour.
Good and timely information. Some moron just wrote a LTTE at our local rag, spouting the nonsense that we had hundreds of years worth of oil and natural gas in the US and that we did not need to import any to drive our Hummers. I surmised he got his figures from Faux Nooz…disturbing that anyone is promulgating this type of idiocy.
I finally looked around the local grocery store, which now carries many “natural, organic” processed manufactured foods and my own house, which is obscene by global standards, and realized that we just are not going to change our lifestyles until change is imposed from outside. All these little steps that we environmentalists take – while being castigated for our extremism – are like putting a bandaid on a scratch on Snowden’s pinky finger. The system is so widespread and ingrained we can barely even see it, much less change it. Most of what we do is virtually meaningless in the context of the destruction that’s happening every day.
It’s depressing that your estimates are for a good 10 years more of this clusterfuck. My only hope for the planet, frankly, was that oil prices would rise so high in the near term that we would see significant contraction soon.
“The island of Japan.” Are you kidding me? Japan is a series of islands (2 main ones) not one island. You embarrass yourself.
Moncrief,
I didn’t say anything about Bill Clinton you stupid man.
SJmom
Maybe my associates degree in Solar Engineering was such a bad idea after all.
That is Exactly how it feels to me. Fantasy Island. Lala land. Disneyland.
I want to get out also.
Speed-bumps are not a viable option in the Northeast because of all the snow. Fist snow fall, and all the speed-bumps/snow plows would be destroyed.
Jim, one last comment. You wrote: “The next venture will apparently be in algae. We’ll discover (once again) that what works as a science project doesn’t scale to run millions of cars.”
I agree. And right now some of the big oil companies are about to spend billions on developing oil or NRG from algae. Like you said, scale should be next to impossible.
That said, what about all the things we currently make with oil, and use it for, like farming. Maybe we’ll just be eating the algae.
@ helen highwater-
If you are going to continue to make snide comments that add nothing to the discussion, could you please refrain from posting at all in the future, so that the rest of us can attempt to enjoy our days.
from http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/04/epsilon-email-hack
Gee, another corporation proves to have unreliable security against hackers and exposes millions of customers to fraud. What a surprise.
Cheers
Jim offers stock comment on passenger rail network, gotta put in some details…
Oldies like me witnessed end of the comprehensive rail matrix through the 50’s and their demolition in the ensuing decades of the freeway age. Electric cars then too, on steel rails; streetcar lines, electric interurban lines in metropolitan areas of CA moved passengers by day, victuals and freight to downtown terminals at night.
Railway on domestic energy in mid 20th century was part of the lending not borrowing nation formula. To achieve the magic mix: rubber tire transport in moderation and lion’s share of distribution and mobility on railway mode again, we have to grow renewable generation with the railway expansion. Using rail corridor for renewable generation can help.
Swan’s book “ELECTRIC WATER” (New Society Press 2007) is a primer on off-the-shelf tech to achieve mobility and sustainable (permaculture) local economic enclaves. Railway track is a better place to put wealth than bullion. The so-called Christian commentators who advise gold refuge are not well read in the scriptural admonitions regarding hoarding gold & silver… Glenn Beck, see James (in the New Testament) Chapter 5; read for comprehension, report findings on the program, please!
Federal Executive Emergency Orders for motor fuel rationing probably will be in time frame with orders calling in Gold & Silver bullion to preserve bond ratings. This call-up of precious metals is inevitable as the Tea Party’s inept approach to wartime budgeting brings on yet another unintended consequence!
Back to the railway line… expansion and extension of rail mains, rebuild of dormant branch rail corridor. Reform the rail logistics units in the State National Guard organizations, help for prioritizing the rail branch line rebuild program (agricultural and critical manufacturing traffic). Any junior high school class can get a copy of the US Rail Map Atlas (spv.co.uk) for their respective locale, and determine the rail footprint past and present.
This exercise in preserving the Union of States has come to the place demanding private capital involvement: all due haste railway expansion. The Short Line operators (ASLRRA) are best able to help local groups, DOT’s and individuals with determination of projects suitable, locale by locale. Action will be more visible as the rationing orders are clarified. Two rail scopings helpful for the general public are the 1991 Wilbur Smith Study on the Nevada County Narrow Gauge (helps in context of a branch line rebuild0, and the 1995 Cal Trans I80/US50 Reno Tahoe Rail Corridor Study.
The ’95 CalTrans Study is good, shows expansion of the existing 1869 rail line along the 80 Corridor, and a brand new TranSierra crossng via the US50 Corridor. The 50 Corridor has plentiful American River Hydropower enroute for electric railway… The study also shows branch line rebuild details, the Truckee to Tahoe City rail line (abandoned 1945) and waterborne feature on Lake Tahoe. As car travel becomes problematic at the Lake, large catamaran ferry service, like the Nichols Boat Company Alameda ferry “PERALTA” will be appropriate.
Snap out of the reverie. This is going to be a big job: The way to get a job done is to start doing it!
Nathan, I don’t think anybody who knows me would ever describe me as “meek”. I just think a little courtesy makes for a more useful and interesting conversation than simply telling people you don’t agree with that they are stupid, morons, fucktards, douchebags, etc. If we are going to survive what’s coming down in the not too distant future, it will be helpful if we have treated each other with kindness and respect. You never know, the guy you’ve called a fucktard just might be the neighbour who has a generator that could keep your freezer going when the power goes out. Although I suspect that people who talk to others that way on the Internet might be a little more careful when they talk to people in person, so as to avoid getting a fist in the face.
I feel very torn
should I run my car on oil
or fill it with corn
Montcrief,
So sorry meant to refer to the main island of Japan.
And in any case that hardly matters when the subject of discussion is the possible evacuation of the larger portion of the Japanese nation.
Obama must be staying a little too deeply in his beltway bubble not to realize the political ramifications of this disaster. Especially in light of the fact that even wind power has many NIMBYs who fight against them bitterly.
In our neck of the woods most of those who resist wind power are high income people, some aren’t even permanent residents, only summer people who don’t want wind towers ruining their view of the lake. Priorities, priorities….
loveday
James: I agree; we’re just blowing “green smoke” up our ass-holes BUT I question the initial premise. Civilized mankind needing more and more energy. Less than 200 years ago we survived with so little energy. We’re going to have to go back to that very same place whether we like it or not, and most of us don’t like that idea, specially here in the west. Go to the well and start pumping with your muscles till you get a bucket full of water, then carry it back to your shack and make it do until the next day. that way you’ll make the gym redundant Faucets, switches, buttons to roll down windows and electric carts to go round the supermarket, will be seen for the idiocy it is in less than 100 years. Alas, that requires real thinking beings, and THAT we are not.
Side note: Stephen Hawking, the great thinker of our time from his electric wheel chair promotes the notion of ‘time’ having 11 dimensions. Otherwise time space makes no sense, which is what it was in the first place; ‘non-sense’ Most of us have trouble thinking of the initial 4 (up-down, right-left, backwards-forward and then time to carry that box along). We’re crazy … but we don’t like that idea either. Jack
“Too bad we don’t have Chavez running the Canadian government. Then we’d be paying less than a dollar a gallon for gas instead of over $5. Instead we have a government that is tucked comfortably in bed with the oil companies.”
Yeah Helen, too bad about Chavez. But it does occur to me that loudmouths with a penchant for “progressivness” would be among the first to be drug out of their homes and executed. Why is it that progressives idolize thuggery? Hey, do you own that cool Che T-Shirt?
A few years back, well several actually I didn’t own a car. Took the bus to work, walked everywhere else.
I was so much calmer. Driving is so DisStressful, is that a word ?
I love todays topic and JHK’s post is Excellent today. IMO.
No one is talking about “evacuating” Honshu, home to more than 100 million people. How do you evacuate 100 milion people? The world is mesed up enough without ill-informed people like you making shit up.
Walk
Don’t run
It’s much more fun.
(almost haiku).
Walk instead
It’s better for your head
You’ll sleep better when you go to bed.
I tried.
just FWIW, folks talking about the ‘good old days’ of oil consumption, before Mad Max;
In 1951, the US oil consumption was something like 15 barrels per person/per year. That peaked out in the early 70s (as our domestic production peaked) at about 2x that, a little under 30 barrels per person per year and has been sorta declining since to today at about 20 barrels per person/per year.
A temporary fix to buy time: all – and I mean ALL – of the auto companies in the world need to immediately start mass-producing 2-seater cars (sometimes called ‘smart cars’) because they are MUCH more fuel efficient than other types of autos.
People can still own and use full sized autos, but they can use the 2-seater cars when going back and forth to work, for running simple errands, and in all other situations where only one or two people are in the car. Think about it: looking around every day at rush hour and nearly every car only contains one person; that is a huge waste of fuel to transport one person back and forth to work daily, hauling all of that extra auto weight around for no reason. But if nearly everyone used a 2-seater smart car for trips where only one or two people were in the car it would save huge amounts of gasoline daily. The 2-seaters are just a step above motorcycles or mopeds in terms of fuel usage, and if large numbers of people used them it would make the roads safer.
We need to mandate this in the USA and elsewhere, despite its implications as being ‘fascistic’ since it would save massive amount of fuel daily. People could still own regular sized autos for when they are needed to transport multiple people, but for all those trips where only one person is in the car (i.e., the daily drive back and forth from work) the 2-seater should be used.
Hello JHK and fellow doomsters. Excellent missive today….good to see us back on task with Peak Oil.
I’m looking for assistance in factually poking holes into these fact-based statistics, brought to us by the Drill Baby Drill crowd:
Brazil has gone from importing 77% of its oil from foreign sources in 1980 to importing no oil by 2009. A great success story in conservation and alternative energy? Not really. Total Brazilian oil consumption still more than doubled. The biggest factor is that Brazil increased its domestic oil production over the last two decades by 876% (not a typo). Most of that production has come from offshore exploration.
Given the right price point for exploration, and even knowing that peak oil will EVENTUALLY come to full fruition everywhere in the worst of ways…why wouldn’t the US want to be a leader and not a lagger in offshore production during the interim?
“The men took the cars to work. That left the women at home, because no one had 2 cars.”
omg. I’m afraid many women, stranded at home these days, would be suicidal.
Hey, toots. Welcome back. I guess news of your demise was greatly exaggerated.
Aren’t you jimjim, too?
You confuse with all these different user names. I guess it is hard to keep track of which ones have been banned, eh?
New capital/transportation budget out for state of ohio (process runs parallel with general fund budget) in the last several days. As usual its all highways all the time!
In Columbus they’ve invested $150 million or more alone in the interchanges near the airport which at this time is simply a decent sized regional airport – enough highway capacity and parking lots, etc. have recently built out there to accomodate 2 to 3 times the flights out of this airport. Hope they’re planning on stealing business from Atlanta or Cincinnati because I don’t think organic growth in the airline business is going to happen w/$100 plus a barrel oil as the feedstock for those big jet engines….
Solar is pretty good. I know a guy in sunny California who has the electrical meter running backwards, so the power company pays him. He figures that he’d be able to charge up an electrical car for free.
I heard from a former USGS person that the US has loads of nat gas. I’m not sure where Jimmy gets the 12 years figure. That’s way low. I’d like to see some citation on it.
Are the shale oil and tar sands returning net energy or are they net energy losers? Someone clue me in on that.
Nah, they hung out together while the kids played. It was a community.
The houses were small (900 square feet) and close to each other.
The isolation of people today, not just women, is a structural problem. If there were any women at home with their kids in the McMansions, they would go crazy, because everyone likes to hang with their peers.
2 year olds may like to jump off a step 300 times in a row, but 30 year olds don’t, and 2 year olds don’t like to drink coffee and discuss politics. They really have nothing in common.
That’s why it’s best for young mothers to live in neighborhoods with other young mothers and kids.
Um… of course I’m a “racist”… Im a WASP!
We’re all racists aren’t we?
I’m not sure what Jimmy wants Obama and Chu to say or do. They get it, and they are trying to make changes.
Do most American people get it? Nope. You can lead a horse to water…
Americans are stubborn and childish. They’re not going to change unless they are forced to do it, and by then, as we’ve seen, it is going to be far too late.
Obama is investing loads of money in rail lines. But, if you hadn’t noticed, government of all kinds is broke. How to build up this massive railway infrastructure when we’re fucking broke? Can’t do it.
And walkable communities are a good idea, but the president can’t force people to build them or live in them.
I also don’t get that first quote. Is Jim implying that Chu is an invisible figure or not important in Obama’s administration? This is certainly not the case when compared to the asshat Bush had in there.
Get Real?? About what exactly?
White Slave traders DIDN’T kidnap an entire people to do their work??
People like Prescott Bush actually do physical labor???
We haven’t replaced the slaves with oil?
Oil doesn’t come over in the belly of a ship?
Slaves didn’t come over in the belly of a ship?
Sitting on a porch saying “fiddle dee dee” and drinking mint juleps is hard productive work?
The railroads WEREN’T built by the Chinese?
What exactly did I get wrong for you there hoss?
There’s a lot of good ideas out there along the lines of “If everyone did X”, but the government can’t force people to buy certain products or behave a certain way (aside from not breaking laws) in a free society. The SUV drivers will go on their merry way until gas really is too expensive to continue and…then what? Many are in debt up to their eyeballs. They gonna buy new 2 seater cars? I dunno, but I doubt it. Capitalism will eat itself pretty much.
Turkle, they certainly are nice to live in. I’m lucky enough to be in one. Food store is a five minute walk. Other stores less than ten minutes on foot. Community is connected by commuter rail and buses. Public still walks a lot and enough people still respect the idea of self-restraint that it is mostly safe at all hours.
I think if enough people could experience a decent walkable community, they might be tempted to give up some of their motoring. Although I still have to drive some places, living in a walkable community has made me come to see driving as a chore.
Cheers
My local PBS station is re-running the Ken Burns’ “Civil War” epic. Last night was about the run-up to the war and the seemingly inevitable secession.
Sure, a lot of shouting about slavery, and John Brown doing his little jig on the face of history at Harpers Ferry, but what it really came down to was the people of the southern states seeing their entire way of life under attack. They simply couldn’t conceive, or flat-out refused to consider any suggestion that they should give up the massive amounts of slave labor needed to run their plantation economy. Doing so would destroy them. Plain and simple.
I shudder to think what paroxysms of blood will butcher our happy motoring hologram when people are forced to confront life without the billions of “energy slaves” currently embodied in the hundreds of millions of cars on the road.
Maybe we’ll get lucky and millions of people will just sputter to the nearest abandoned mall on their last drops of petrol and camp out on the acres of weedy asphalt, there to wither away in quiet desperation.
So let me see if I understand you. Germans and Irish who lived lives no better then slaves and are part of the back bone that built the US are not white? And the Cheifs and leaders of the tribes in Africa who sold the thier people to the slave traders where not black but white? Cause thats what I get from what you are saying. And since Im only have white and half Hawaiian does that make me half as lazy or twice a lazy?
“The last couple of weeks should remind us that we have one job left to do that will not necessarily take care of itself. When nuclear power plants crumble like the rest, radioactivity will severely threaten our chance to make things right.”
Selection from the last paragraph of my 3-22-11 blogpost entitled “The K-T Boundary Revisited.” Read it if you like, and if you’re not offended by evolutionary thought…
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/2011/03/k-t-boundary-revisited.html
Cheers,
Tripp
Resource Nationalism is the ethic of preserving and extending, not balls out exploitation and systematic pissing away of domestic energy resource endowment. This oilpatch unrest in progress will take the Saudis off the “Swing Producers” list PDQ, Mr. Yergin et al. We, the American people, should not be in any hurry- with on or off shore oil pumping… Or gas, Boone ol’ boy. Better to rationalize transport policy, if only for STRATEGIC considerations!
Resource Nationalism kicks in with OPEC as time passes, and populations (Mexico) permit less export. All the indicators point to backing away from rubber tire mania and going for robust Parallel Bar Therapy (sorry JHK). Army moniker for railway is “Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform”. A generic definition of railway way over 100 years back was “Guarantor of Societal & Commercial Cohesion”, unknown source.
Another note, to Canadians: Sell water (NAWAPA), not destructive oil to the Yanks…
@artbone 12:02
Yes, we do have speed bumps in the US, at least here in Berkeley. Of course, the way the grass is growing between the pavement cracks, we’ll be driving on lawn in three years and won’t have to worry about speed bumps.
Montcrief
Let me make this very simple for you, it has been estimated that 11 nuclear power plants in the area north of Tokyo were affected by the earthquake and tsunami. Fukushima has the worst situation at this time. However there have been reports like the one by Harvey Wasserman that seem to imply that other nukes in the area have been adversely affected. The gov there doesn’t want to panic the population, so accurate info on the real state of affairs in Japan is very difficult to obtain.
No evacuation of the island? The US government has made evacuation flights available to any and all millitary dependents in the area who want to leave. Many Japanese have fled South, even out of Tokyo particularly after the tap water in Tokyo was found to be radioactive. Anyone that can get a flight off the island is doing so. So no of course not, no evacuation is occurring, move along nothing to see here….
Whoops. These Canadian pilots refused to bomb a hospital in Libya, when they were told to.
Perhaps they don’t realize that the US targets hospitals, because when people are bombed, they take their wounded to hospitals, and then the doctors hold press conferences and it looks really bad for the “international community” that is busy bombing civilians in order to save them.
Solution? Bomb the hospitals, arrest the doctors, kill the staff. That’s the US way.
What’s with Canadians? Too moral to bomb hospitals? That needs to change.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYl1aq5UdvE
You really need to read Howard Zinn’s book A peoples history of the US. You can not blame the sins of people long dead they are not here anymore you can only learn from their mistakes and from their wisdom and move on from there.
I am so sorry Helen I always enjoy reading your posts. I was agreeing with you about all the pointless aggression. Enemies are so easy to come by why go out of your way to make more. We live on a dirt road in Vermont. Always slow down and wave at everyone you pass because one day you will be in the ditch (everyone does it) and you will need your neighbor to pull you out.
Saturday I got to see a preview of a PBS movie which will show on TV on May 16th. It’s called Freedom Riders, and it’s about events that took place 100 years after the Civil War.
It turns out that one of our local Green Party members was on the very first bus, the one that the lovely white Christian Southerners burned. They tried to trap the Freedom Riders on it, but scattered when the fuel tank blew up, and the riders were able to escape.
So we got to go and see the movie, and she was there with another Freedom Rider to answer questions.
What an eye-opener! We grew up in this country, we knew about the lynchings and the burnings, but it is more impressive to see part of it on film.
My husband pointed out that the version of the Civil Rights Movement that we get is kind of sanitized.
Bus boycott, bridge crossing, “I Have a Dream”, and the signing of the Act. Presto. Now we have a Black president and everything is just hunky-dory.
And I have known this Green for years, and never knew that she did this in 1961.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/freedomriders/
This is my last coment to you. You sem to have no sense of geography or population density or scale. Yes, obviously many foreigners and Japanese have either moved south temporarily or left the country altogether. That is very different from “evacuating” an island almost as long as California with a population of 103 million people. If someone were to tell you that plans were in place to “evacuate” (permanently depopulate) the state of California, would you believe it? Now imagine that crowded California actually has three times the population it actually does.
At the very least, have the decency to provide a link to the article you keep referring to, so we can see for ourselves who the source is and how you’ve exaggerated and misinterpreted what it says.
I’m new to this whole concept. What is the source of energy we will (if all goes swimmingly) be utilizing to power our lovely railroad train ? And who doesn’t enjoy the lulling effect of distant whistles in the night ?
And most obviously this: Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not permanently evauated after atomic bombs fell on them, yet the entire island of Honshu will be because of current events? OK then….
It would sure be nice if Mr Kunstler could be bothered to tell us where he is getting his facts. Obama says 100 years of natural gas and Kunstler says 3-6 years. He may be right on the money but how do we know? He can criticize the govt for pulling numbers out of their butts but yet he does it in every one of these posts. How about a simple bibliography or a couple of links to sources?
Absolutely spot on Mr K. We have no choice
Obama is a comedian. We are facing autoggedon.
To put more in the tanks is going to tank the economy.
Hey… I know… but if Vlad can dismiss all the work done by those brought here by force….and people in here go right along with it weak after weak (pun intended).
Not saying that the Irish and Germans didn’t do anything… but really couldn’t have done it alone.
Weak after weak Vlad goes into this tribal BS that holds less water than my leaky boat and I see people going “yeah, uh huh” so that by the end of the week CFN looks like KKKFN…..
Black people didn’t destroy Atlantic City… and they didn’t build it either… they worked there, they did the jobs that were left when every other abled bodied white person was hired… and the white residents treated them like they wanted them to disappear into nothing as soon as their shift was over… and they weren’t to re-appear until it was time to work again.
Corruption, the car, and mass air travel destroyed Atlantic City… which is only fair because corruption and the railroad built Atlantic City… once the car and mass air travel came into play corruption didn’t stand a chance when paired with a railroad… enter gambling.
Now Atlantic City has 11 Casino Hotels.. but not one supermarket. It is run down… has high unemployment and crime.. and is occupied my mostly black year round residents.
They didn’t do anything wrong to Atlantic City… the reverse cannot be said. But at the end of the day Atlantic City wouldn’t have stood a chance against Cape May in the early days without the large Black workforce…. and to sit around now and blame them for the problems that the city has is the ultimate in scapegoating… the city would have never BEEN with out them.
Of course all white people aren’t lazy… but enough of them were, because they brought a hell of a lot of people over here to do their work for them… slaves are held by people who are not only “LAZY”… But “CHEAP” and “CRUEL” as well.
“What’s with Canadians? Too moral to bomb hospitals? ”
But not too moral to not possess bombs. What up wif dat?
This was yet another White House talking point with a 48-hour shelf life. That’s because the national attention doesn’t last much longer on big issues. Especially with public transport. In February Obama laid out a $53 billion passenger rail initiative. It was announced on a Wednesday, attacked by Republicans on Thursday, and forgotten by Friday. When it became apparent that there was no support for it – Joe Biden announced it in Philadelphia to a crowd of tens, with virtually no media coverage – the White House simply forgot about it. Being a passenger rail advocate in America is like being an erotic artist in Ireland; you’re simply not going to make many friends. 🙁
The Lord has already blessed the US_of_A with the solution to all its problems.
The tar in the Bakken shale needs to be cooked
while thousands of spent fuel rods need to be cooled and can’t find a home.
This is a fortunate confluence of circumstances.
The fuel rods go in the Bakken shale and cook the tar into oil while simultaneously finding a home out of sight.
You say that the oil and subsequent diesel and gas
will be a little radioactive and that upon combustion radioactive particles will float from air to lung.
I say that this is great. Lifespans will be shortened and social security saved — it will be in surplus.
The certain knowledge of an early expiry date will urge on people to lead fuller lives sooner.
Much of the frivolity of contemporary life will be gone and people will all the more appreciate what they have got left.
The Vlad approach to reality is a much easier path than trying to understand a complicated situation and then make decisions and actions that improve it.
Atlantic City does have wind turbines (a positive). I surf there sometimes when I have to stay at one of the Casinos with clients that want to gamble. The actual city is depressing but so is the whole gambling culture if you ask me. The people who still live in AC are poor, I can’t see that they are the cause of the poverty there when so much $$$ pases through the casinos everyday.
The CEO of General Electric Corporation (which pays no US taxes!), Jeff Immelt, who is also an advisor to the Obamanator, says nuclear power is safe. ROTFLMAO. Fukushima seems to be more or less out of control and no one has any idea how to stop it from spewing radiation into the air, soil and water.
Wage, is it firmly stated somewhere that they canceled their bomb run because of a hospital? I ask because of this quote:
From http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Canadian+jets+over+Libya+hold+back/4488770/story.html#ixzz1IaFxg8Ro
Sounds like it might have been the case that a hospital was near the target but the statement by Lawson doesn’t make clear that was the situation.
Cheers
“Although I suspect that people who talk to others that way on the Internet might be a little more careful when they talk to people in person, so as to avoid getting a fist in the face.”
+1 obvious
Do you think lil tootsie calls every person who disagrees with her in real life a fucktard?
Do you think Vlad lets the black supermarket checkout girl know about his plan to send the African Americans back to Africa?
Trolling is a time-honored way of letting off steam on the internet. But as far as acting like this in real life or expressing these ideas, of course they don’t do it. Because if they did, they’d get their asses kicked. And they are wimps.
These are the passive-aggressive types, frustrated that the world doesn’t work exactly how they’re decided it should. They are supremely frustrated and impotent (literally and figuratively) in the meat world, hence the drastic overcompensation here on the matrix with the blustering, chest-beating, and name-calling.
Well, back to worshiping my Milton Friedman shrine and burning effigies of Obamao.
TTYL, CFNers.
Yes, let’s blame all of societies troubles on…
*drumroll*
The darkies!
How 1952 of you.
It’ll never happen, but Obama’s best move would to stop all obvious energy subsidies, dwindling over a 10 year period to allow the necessary adjustments. That would change everything, because the cost of energy would be a hell of a lot closer to its true cost, rather than being hidden in government debt and taxes. (We’d only be concerned about the regulating the pollution.)
We live the way we live because our energy is ridiculously cheap. (I love the deer in the headlights reaction I get from people when I tell ‘em that.)
Our agricultural subsidies cause another HUGE set of problems, not just for us, but the whole world.
The future for cars and buses is the electric with the swappable battery, but as Jim & others have pointed out, they will be driven on poorly maintained roads. Here’s the explanation of the swappable battery idea: http://fora.tv/2009/07/22/The_Electric_Horizon_Shai_Agassi
“The CEO of General Electric Corporation (which pays no US taxes!), Jeff Immelt, who is also an advisor to the Obamanator, says nuclear power is safe. ROTFLMAO.”
Get up off the floor as you look silly rolling around there. Now here is something to ponder: Add up all of the ruined lives and the dead and maimed from extracting and burning coal. (Just count the number of dead Chinese in the last ten years.) Now add up all those who have suffered similar fates via the nuclear energy industry.
Don’t you feel a bit silly flopping around on the floor?
Insightful stuff Turk. I can’t imagine that anonymous name calling could be very fulfilling?
I like to insult people face to face (although pretty rarely) much more satisfying.
“Do you think lil tootsie calls every person who disagrees with her in real life a fucktard?”
Do you think tootsie would call you a fucktard in “real life”?
Like any conservatives for 2012? I don’t see anyone who can beat Obama. Maybe Ron or Rand will jump in. If it boils down to Bachmann and Palin Obama won’t even need to raise any money to win.
Slight reality check:
Gasoline in Mexico is currently around $3.00 a gallon – a little less for regular & a little more for premium. -and the price always goes up a few centavos every month by government edict, it never goes down. Since I moved down here a few years ago, for my usual 200 pesos fuel stop I now receive 1/3 less gasoline than I did at first.
When you compare the price Mexicans pay for fuel to the average income here, gasoline is relatively far more expensive here that it is in the US.
No one (except their mommies) had heard of Jimmie Carter, Bill Clinton or Barack Obammy this far in advance of the elections that they ended up winning. For some reason (stupidity?) all the pols tend to forget this fact.
Re: The New York Times
Tthese geniuses are going bankrupt trying to keep alive the old model of chopping down a forest each week to print their “news” on. Several years ago when they first started their website, they had most of the content behind a paywall. It didn’t work, nobody wanted to pay and they lost even more money. So what is their latest scheme to turn things around before they slip completely down the drain? Putting most of their online content behind a paywall. Priceless! In light of this is it really surprising that they think that 3 or 4 billion barrels is going to make a dime’s worth of difference to the US’s energy future?
Am I supposed to care?
Great post this week and the Yergin crack was well deserved. Was just opining about Yergin myself just this past week. I think Yergin and CERA exists because they tell us what we want to hear, that the past 150 years of oil fueled persistent economic growth is sustainable.
Too much is riding on the past 150 years of persistent economic growth being extrapolated indefinitely into the future. Just think how much debt(which is what our money really is) is extrapolated and structured into the future every day based on the expectation of the past 150 years of persistent economic growth being linearly projected into the future.
I believe with a great amount of conviction that the past 150 years of persistent economic growth correlates with the past 150 years growth in the production of high EROEI, energy dense forms of energy such as coal, NG and crude oil.
I do not believe for one second the explaination given for the past 150 years of persistent economic growth by Nobel prize winning economists which of course is, “our greater understanding of economics”.
Naturally TPTB(governments and major corporations)want to be told what they want to hear which is our economic model predicated on infinite growth is sustainable. Daniel Yergin and other “experts” are merely yes men and would lose all credibility if they even momentarily told the truth about the sustainabilty of the “model”.
I enjoy reading this column and especially the comments afterward. Can anybody recommend any other similar such blogs relating to peak oil, where we’re heading, how to survive and what the future may look like… you know, all the stuff you never hear about in mainstream media. Thanks.
Zamb,
Dmitri Orlov’s blog
dieoff.org
theoildrum.net
archived fromthewilderness articles (Mike Ruppert’s old site)
…are what come to mind.
Plus there’s a ton of books out there I recommend.
Overshoot, Catton
Geodestinies, Youngquist
The Oil Age is Over
etc.
Yes, gas is about $3 a gallon in Mexico but I fill up once a month instead of twice a week. Makes a big difference.
Also, what is a fucktard?
“Am I supposed to care?”
Is anyone on this planet supposed to care whether you care about any fucking thing? Let me answer for your urine-soaked self. No.
“Also, what is a fucktard?”
Anyone who has to ask what a fucktard is, is a fucktard.
Montcrief
Honestly, all this info is available on the net very easily. Check out Russia Times, check out Harvey Wasserman on you tube where he discusses the situation at Onagawa. Check out what Helen Caldicott has to say about Fukushima then get back to me.
As far as comparing Hiroshima and Nagasaki to the current situation is well, just plain ingenuous. The levels of radiation spewing out now exceed those of Chernobyl easily. And that info is also easily available on the net. Of course the dead zone around Chernobyl is still uninhabitable despite some folks going back in there, they are slowly dying from the cumulative doses of radiation they are receiving.
And no, there has been no formal notice of evacuation, do you really expect the Japanese gov to admit to such a clusterfuck?
Love you, too, cupcake. Gotta run. You have fun getting banned again.
“Can anybody recommend any other similar such blogs relating to peak oil, where we’re heading, how to survive and what the future may look like… you know, all the stuff you never hear about in mainstream media.”
The book of Revelations.
Americans are walking away from their houses, their credit card, their boats and furniture,bBut they will never walk away from their cars. They are going to drive this baby into the ground until the very end.
“Gotta run.”
I’m guessing you run like a little girl. Just a guess.
I have been reading this blog for some time and find it interesting but felt I had next to nothing to contribute. I found your post today most interesting because it spoke from the truth of your situation. I would like to hear more from “country dwellers” because I rarely get to hear from them. This whole left – right, obama – bush thing seems to be a distraction from what is really going on. The real issues that must be addressed are not even discussed. I gave up on the democratic party last week after being convinced it is just a vehicle for our corrupted system to co-opt our many good intentions.
I am sure things will change in the city soon, but here so far, I live in a bubble- life looks the same as always, restaurants are full, Starbucks is packed, traffic is brutal even in off peak hours. They are pushing high speed rail here in California, but I think this is just to get the dollars pumping into the local economies. Do we really need a high speed train for commuters from San Francisco to L.A? It seems to me a better and much cheaper way would be to fix the rail lines we have in place, subsidizing rates to promote full use as an alternative to the car.
Turkle, much obliged for the list of resources and links you provided.
Its clear now that Obama is not doing the job he was elected to do. He did not end the two overseas wars, in fact the US is now involved in both Libya and the Ivory coast. He could have given a statement about conservation, peak oil, the dangers of overconsumption but no we hear BAU jargon with nothing new on the horizon.
I often wonder if they poison the food in the white house to dope up who ever is in the big chair? Clearly Obama is on something, drugged food in the white house would not be unplausible.
“How about Canada’s tar sands? Well, first of all, they belong to Canada, not us, unless we want to change that – and that could be politically messy.”
Darn tootin’ it’d be messy! Seeing how our militaries are the most intergrated forces on the planet, the element of surprise might be difficult to achieve (at NORAD on 9/11 it was a Canadian operations officer on duty when TSHTF.
Still, Alberta’s been moaning about seperation for the last 40 years: your welcome to them as long as you promise to take Quebec too!
More seriously though, I think that with climate change and peak oil, there’ll be a lot of hungry climate refugees migrating north from Dixie, and looking for space to farm. I think we’re all going to be getting a lot closer together in the years ahead.
Does anyone here read TIME?
This weeks issue ASSURES us [the sheeple]
that though jobs have gone to Asia they are coming back to us in the USA
[mike shulman article]
BECAUSE THE ASIAN MIDDLE CLASS IS GROWING!
THEY ARE BUYING CARS.
Me to TIME: THE POPULATION OF INDIA HAS INCREASED
BY ALMOST 200,000,000 in 10 YEARS!!
What kind of Pretzel Logic is this that 2 billion poor [and 300? million middle class]
will give the US jobs.
Great post!!! I will have to post it on my Marcellus Shale blogspot.
What upsets me is how easy it would be to allow bicycles on our existing railroad system, without having to disassemble the people pedaler.
Currently, Amtrak says they have not yet established the “bike cars” for bike travelers. So when will it happen Amtrak? When riding the Rail To Trail in Cumberland, MD last summer, I was told it would happen this summer.
Every gallon gas saved, is a great idea. But, what is simple is ignored.
http://eye-on-washington.blogspot.com
http://moontownshippa.blogspot.com
I would!
and Toots, are you now posting under 2, 3 or 4 different ‘handles’?
How much walking do you do, Jim?
Boys and Girls,
Ladies and Gents,
The current Clusterfuck is hardly an indecipherable mess that talking heads, pundits and soothe-sayers would have you believe.
A single simple solution to our maniacal self-destructive oil importing can be arranged if our Federal Government had the testes (cojones?) available to levy a gasoline tax commensurate with the costs of our middle-eastern military campaigns.
When the “real price” of petroleum is presented to the American people, a new clarity will emerge with respect to just who can “afford” oil in a free market system.
Yeah, “drill baby drill” – I’m all bent over with a broken Coke bottle in my anus.
But I digress, pardon my interruption.
USA said: “No one (except their mommies) had heard of Jimmie Carter, Bill Clinton or Barack Obammy this far in advance of the elections that they ended up winning. For some reason (stupidity?) all the pols tend to forget this fact.”
=======
Fact?
The fact is that today the Tea Partiers and Republicans are skeered of Barack Obama and will not declare themselves candidates.
This time in the previous campaign (April 2007) Barack Obama was a declared candidate making his positions public and scaring the bejeeesus out of candidate Hilary Clinton.
“How about Canada’s tar sands? Well, first of all, they belong to Canada, not us, unless we want to change that – and that could be politically messy..”
What’s ours is yours! – It was ever thus…!!
I don’t call for the repatriation of Blacks to Africa – even though Abraham Lincoln did. It’s too late now and nobody is going to do it. I merely state that when America falls apart, that Whites have the right to a chunk or two just like the Blacks, Mexicans and possibly Asians.
The Irish built the railroad starting from the East and the Chinese starting from the West. The Irish built much more of it – possibly because the Chinese had to build thru the mountains.
There would have been no America without Whites – but there could have been one without Blacks. It would have been different that’s all. The South would have had a different system – and a better one. The Indians were not the first Americans – a Nation is not a geographical location but rather a culture of genetically related people.
Supermarkets are often unwilling to set up in Ghettoes because of the high levels of theft. Thus Blacks hurt themselves as ever – always with the White Man to scapegoat.
I know that you like to listen to podcasts, and I ran across this one. Have you read “Web of Debt” by Ellen Brown?
Thanks, Wage
I like Guns and Butter and heard that interview last year. I’ve been following Ellen Brown too.
Ten four big buddy the gooberment is playin’ the people like april fools. Now pass the ketchup my superfries need a touch up.
Being called a “fucktard” by someone with USA’s rapier-like wit is almost a compliment.
I don’t call for the repatriation of Blacks to Africa – even though Abraham Lincoln did. It’s too late now and nobody is going to do it. – Vlad
Right you are and besides blacks have been there for centuries, are every bit as American as you, have done their share in building the USA and so by any standard of justice have a right to be there. And besides forcibly moving tens of millions of people would be a humanitarian calamity. Another thing: you contend blacks are inferior (by whatever measure) but you’d have to admit that even if this were so blacks are as human as you or me.
Stop encouraging them.
The Grand Failure of Conventional Economics
http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Brilliant post today by Charles Hugh Smith (who’s post I visit almost every day) discussing the inability of any of these economic models to deal with the end of growth scenario due to the ever growing population, the growth of the middle class around the world and the limit of oil.
[Not one of these ideological strands of conventional economics recognizes the limits on conventional “growth” as measured by GDP, increased production, etc. When the planet’s population stood at 500 million, there were sufficient resources to enable a doubling to 1 billion. Then 1 billion tripled to 3 billion, which doubled to 6 billion. Now, the 600 million high-energy-consumption “middle class” of post-industrial economies is expanding four-fold to 2.4 billion.
There simply isn’t enough oil on the plane… ]
Sorry, Old.
I’ve been attempting to understand the mental inner-workings of the great majority of Americans. I believe that 90% of Americans see the world (and “live the world”) only through how they interact with other human beings. I know that most humans think abstractly, but I can’t believe that they often think about their physical environment and how it affects them. Most Americans’ sense of architecture and design is based on what color was used. I’m not sure that they can “see” at all. I think most people are completely enthralled in their “social lives,” in their facebook page or twitter feed, or texts (or their thoughts of whether or not someone is talking shit about them). I’ve been asking a lot of people if they can see the way things are set up in their towns. The relationship between streets and buildings, stores and restaurants, etc. They can’t. They don’t know what is exactly wrong, but they think they know. The wrong color. The wrong people are there (minorities are wrecking their town). It all comes down to surface things. Am I nuts? Why can I “see” these things?
I’ve been attempting to understand the mental inner-workings of the great majority of Americans. I believe that 90% of Americans see the world (and “live the world”) only through how they interact with other human beings. I know that most humans think abstractly, but I can’t believe that they often think about their physical environment and how it affects them. Most Americans’ sense of architecture and design is based on what color was used. I’m not sure that they can “see” at all. I think most people are completely enthralled in their “social lives,” in their facebook page or twitter feed, or texts (or their thoughts of whether or not someone is talking shit about them). I’ve been asking a lot of people if they can see the way things are set up in their towns. The relationship between streets and buildings, stores and restaurants, etc. They can’t. They don’t know what is exactly wrong, but they think they know. The wrong color. The wrong people are there (minorities are wrecking their town). It all comes down to surface things. Am I nuts? Why can I “see” these things?
Zambo,
You should have a look at Eating Fossil Fuels:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html
Oil is key to modern farming. Less oil will mean more expensive food and possibly less food. The article says:
“To achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the United States must reduce its population by at least one-third. … Quite possibly, a U.S. population reduction of one-third will not be effective for sustainability; the necessary reduction might be in excess of one-half. And, for sustainability, global population will have to be reduced from the current 6+ billion people to 2 billion – a reduction of … over two-thirds.”
We don’t need alternative energy, we need alternative lifestyles. Good luck telling THAT to the American public.
Amptedstatus.com may be of interest to you.
Dave have you been on Scienceblogs
http://scienceblogs.com/tomorrowstable/?utm_source=bloglist&utm_medium=dropdown
The woman running the blog thinks she is saving the world with gen mod foods. She and her supporters can not see the oil food connection. Mostly since high price oil is the gen mod food industry death nell. Science is the only thing that will save us! Nuke power is always safe. >>
Is this possible? Can I be Jah go again? I’m enjoying the tellus site btw. He seems to gloss over the sins of Bhagwan though.
The drug in the white house is re-election and the $$$$$ it takes to get there. They all leave the white house as multi-millionaires, regardless of what their social standing was, prior. Think that’s from the $400k salary?
We will NEVER get straight talk from ANY president. There’s too much $$ telling them not to. Obama hasn’t made a decision of his own in the past 18 months. Power corrupts and Washington is the most efficient corruptor.
Thanks for your thoughtful posts. I live in and travel a lot in Ohio, and what you describe sounds like a real-life version in what used to be small farm towns. My grandparents worked the land in town like that, from the Depression until the 60’s; raised two boys, had very little help (and probably not much expectation of help) from the government.
Take heart; I think you just might be better-off than a lot of us! It may not seem like it now, however and we’ll probably all go through some hurt before things settle out. Your farm+town has a better chance at being self-sufficient than most of us that are stuck in suburbia. You’ll be able to grow your own food. Life on a farm was hard back in the 1920’s but it doesn’t have to be that hard again. It’ll be the 1920’s with a Corolla for errands, and the internet. The old infrastructure (railroads, silos) might be disused, but it’s repairable and can work again.
I live in what used to be rural Ohio (when I was a kid) and is now sprawled from Cincinnati to Dayton. Some of the best farmland in the nation now covered with parking lots and golf courses, just makes me despair for the species. I’m stuck here in suburbia for now. I wouldn’t count on Obama being able to bring things that matter (like transit) but you and your neighbors will create something that works…probably when necessity demands it.
Thanks for pointing out the Underground Railroad past of Ohio.
Sure they helped – but it could have been done without them. And look how much they’ve destroyed – and how much they will destroy in the future when the welfare checks run out. Men come together for mutual benefit and call it Society. We don’t benefit from them and we should separate.
They used to advertise trips to Novia Scotia on a high speed ferry. In the ad they showed a Black. Crazy. What American wants to see Blacks when they go to Novia Scotia?
People accept what is put in front of them. It seems like human nature. Credulity is built into the psyche, because it is an advantageous survival trait. I like the example of the caveman who tells the children, “Stay away from the river, because crocs will eat you.” The curious/disbelieving children who decide to see for themselves get eaten. It doesn’t apply across the board, but in general most people don’t question the physical environment they inhabit or the presumptions of the society in which they are embedded. They have no other context or frame of reference (Donny). Most Americans have not been outside the country, so they don’t know of any different models in a practical sense, much less the intellectual aspect.
Great point; its worse than it seems too. WTI is no longer the benchmark for the lightest, sweetest stuff out there. North Sea Brent and Nigerian Bonny Light are the change in your pocket away from a buck-twenty a barrel.
$10 a gallon then? I don’t think it would fly.
I guess you could say we pay with income taxes that pay for the defense budget though, no?
Roger,
This does sound important. Please shoot me a link at aschiano@malthusuniversity.com when it does go live. I’d love to link to it at http://www.MalthusUniversity.com.
At this point, every person we can wake up is one fewer we have to fend off or save when the whole fershlugginer collapse thing that we’re in the middle of goes full bloom in the face of the unseeing masses.
Keep prepping for your coming localized reality.
Anthony Schiano
aka President Malthus
Yes, I’ve heard the 100 years figure, though who knows if all of it will be recoverable. These numbers also use fudge factors like putting a figure on the amount of “Undiscovered” gas. Now how in hell you gonna put an accurate number on the amount you haven’t discovered yet?
Also, the figures generally assume current usage extrapolated forward as flat, which is not going to be the case.
Though Jim’s numbers are complete BS, I think. 12 or 6 years or whatever is way too low.
I’m not of the mind that an epic collapse is going to occur all at once. That seems overly dramatic and apocalyptic. The way I see it is more and more people becoming poorer over time, or individual countries or regions will become wobbly.
From severely overpopulated countries like Bangladesh, one can sort of glean that humans are tough little buggers and actually don’t need that much to survive when push comes to shove. We can muddle along for quite some time even with severely limited resources. Most of those people live on less than a dollar a day and eke out an existence as subsistence farmers.
Though total ecological collapse and die-off could be in the cards if the current trajectory is followed. It seems fairly far off (like > 50 years). Or maybe I’m just getting into the wishful thinking and don’t want to take part in TS hitting TF myself.
As far as humans driving gas-powered SUVs in 2075 and jetting around the world for relatively cheap as we do now, though, I wouldn’t put my money on it.
Nice weeks work, JHK. You have the most amazing talent – the ability to make things that any basic, garden-variety 5 year old SHOULD KNOW –
When you say them, JHK, these things sound like insightful pieces of wisdom for the ages.
Witness:
“The “drill drill drill” gang is under the impression that North America has vast unexplored regions where oil is just begging to be discovered. This is not true.”
-jhk-
Yah, no shit, James Kunstler Sherlock Holmes!
======================
We have already run out of cheap and easy energy.
We have allowed the US population to run far, far beyond a sustainable level. We have got to stop growth due to immigration.
—————-
I’m getting tired of being called racist, or worse, by asoka, ixnei, mila51, surburbanempire, and turkle for saying that the US is ALREADY overpopulated and that immigration has to stop.
—————-
I’m getting tired of being called a traitor to the White Race by Vlad, for saying that White People are never going to get their own special region, of the former US, designated as a White Nation forevermore. That is not happening.
===================
===================
I’m getting tired of having the issue of out of control immigration into the US IGNORED by the bulk of posters on this blog.
This blog trends left/liberal. Our very own host, JHK, has declared that the US needs drastically reduced immigration rates – both legal and illegal.
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/07/my-tea-party.html
So take this concept back to your regular blog and political hangouts. The Sierra Club and the Greens and the Liberal EnviroDemocrats need to get back to their Charter Mission – they need to be advocates for Planet Earth.
Our RW Republican big business types are not going to stop this Chamber of Commerce induced US population explosion, until FORCED to do so.
Budizwizer and several others – you keep saying how useless this sort of discussion is. You are wrong. We in the US could have walkable communities and mass transit until Hell freezes over and the Ice Cracks – – It won’t matter one single iota – If we add another 50,000,000 people in the coming decade – like we did in the last decade.
Spread the word! It might not be too late, yet!
I liked that Jim’s post today was not of the “sky is falling” variety that he tends to indulge himself in these days. It is all well and good to talk about TSHF, collapse, TLE, etc. But acting like it is going to occur the Tuesday after your Monday morning post, week after week, gets a little unbelievable (boy who cried wolf?).
Though we know the wolf will be showing up for grandma at some point.
The President can’t force us to build walkable communities or live in them? The government manages to force us to do a lot of things we really don’t want to do, so why couldn’t they force us to live like people who actually want to have a future? All it would take is changes to the zoning laws.
Good post.
In a recent NRDC article, http://bit.ly/dFggtJ, the writer extols energy efficiency. This is the “Do More with Less” approach.
His article states “Since 1973…, our economy has tripled in size while our energy use has increased by only a third.”
Increased by a third. I counter: What needs to happen is that we must “Do Less with Less.”
If the industrial capitalist (or industrial socialist) economy continues to grow, as economic theory says it must, along with its fundamental aspects of accumulation and wealth disparity, then no matter how much one is able to increase the energy efficiency, or how clean it can be made, the energy demand will ~always~ increase.
In other words, even though the amount of energy needed to produce a single unit of anything may decrease, the demand for energy will increase in order to ‘grow the economy’.
Under the ‘do more with less’ model, all that can be said is that energy consumption will not grow as much as it would have without the efforts of efficiency. That’s good, but we should ask ourselves if that approach will actually solve the planetary problems of the 21st century.
Under the ‘do less with less’ model, we begin to examine the fundamental questions of human social and economic behavior that have brought us to this point.
Hi Nathan – well they do say the meek are going to inherit the earth (what’s left of it).
Zamboni Dave,
That’s exactly what I’m trying to do with http://www.MalthusUniversity.com — it took me three years to shift through online resources once my eyes were opened to how little time was left before peak oil impacts began to be heavily felt, so I’ve tried to provide a roadmap through all the most useful resources (including of course Mr. Kunstler’s fine blog — great post this week, JHK! — and his seminal book, “The Long Emergency.”)
I’m also trying to aggregate links to useful resources such as ways to locate and join your local community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm. To the rest of CFN, please chime in over there if there’s useful resources I’m missing that I should be linking to. It’s not all bullets, beans, band-aids and bullion, though they’ll all come in handy; there’s enough prep sites focused on those issues; I simply point out the best of them.
good luck to all,
Anthony Schiano
“All it would take is changes to the zoning laws.”
But that won’t do it, helen. The American landscape is covered in subdivisions, shopping malls, and fast food joints. It is pretty much built-out. A few changes to the zoning laws are not going to depopulate whole sections of the country and cause people to embrace New Urbanism and move to the nearest railway transportation hub.
Maybe in 1950 it would have mattered, before the country was heavily populated and before the interstates were built. But now? Nope.
Are you suggesting the government declares that people cannot live where they are currently located by rezoning some areas? What exactly does the government make Americans do that they don’t want to that is the equivalent of forced, mass relocation of millions of people? That ain’t gonna fly. This is not Stalinist Russia.
As far as I can see, most Americans do what they damn well please, especially in terms of living where they want to (well if they can find a job there), driving whatever car/vehicle they like, behaving how they want to, doing the drugs they enjoy, etc.
If you’re suggesting that some changes in zoning laws will completely transform this attitude to one of being green and eco-friendly and doing what Uncle Sam says for the good of the global environment, I think you’re completely deluded.
Even if changes to zoning laws would work, you’re talking about decades, at a minimum. It certainly isn’t any kind of immediate solution to any of the big problems, even in the best case scenario.
Hi Nathan – I look forward to Monday morning at Clusterfuck because it’s like sitting around with a bunch of friends at the local coffee shop shooting the shit and talking about interesting stuff like the future of industrial civilization and the survival of the planet. It just bugs me when some of the people at the table treat some of the other people at the table like shit, just for voicing their opinion.
I dont understand all of what yr saying.
Sarlo is a Rajneeshi. [as in…..jah?]
Jodi Reznik [?] has a site where he says Sarlos ‘getting $’ for placements at sarlos site.
i.e. Saying good things about rich hucksters like Byron Katie.
Turkle,
I’m generally in agreement with you; I just think that at some point when the decline becomes obvious to those who are last to see what’s happening, it looks an awful lot TO THEM like sudden collapse.
Your point about the toughness of citizens of poorer nations is spot on; I just don’t think there’s much of that left in Wal-Mart and Starbucks America, no matter whether we’re talking about folks who prefer the green smoke blown up their ass from the left or from the right, to stick with Jim’s theme. Check out Dmitri Orlov’s great comparison of all the reasons why citizens of the Soviet Union were better prepared for societal collapse than U.S. citizens are today: http://www.energybulletin.net/node/23259
50 years ’til die-off might well be wishful thinking, though I do not expect a Hollywood-style Super Bowl kickoff to get it started next week, either. I’m hoping for 20, prepping for 2, and expecting to have maybe 5. Potential loss of reserve currency status of the dollar may well speed us on our here in the U.S. of A., keep in mind (sadly).
SUVs in 2075? Fugeddaboudit…
best,
Anthony Schiano
Hey,
see TIME Mag, latest issue, page 56.
TIME is sure this is a good thing, that the population is growing but in Asia the middle class is as well.
‘More Chinese tourists than Canadians’
[duh, Canada has 30M peeps, China 1500 M so of course whos gonna send out more tourists?]
‘What exactly did I get wrong for you there’?
Wrong and 1/2 Truths are 2 different categories.
See other response to yr post.
Smart Guy,
Yr smart enuff to Ignore them.
Certainly I do.
‘I’m getting tired of being called racist, or worse, by asoka, ixnei, mila51, surburbanempire, and turkle’
I dont give a fuck that dale called me a rrrr ..ruuh…racist.
who gives a fuck?
‘ If only Bill Gates could use some of his donated billions to help the USA’
Americans do charity in Africa [according to Jim Rogers this charity often hurts, not helps].
Chinese Invest in Africa.
See my post last week about film…’China Meets Africa’.
It’s probably better if the water in an ecosystem stays in that ecosystem. Although nowadays some people seem to think that money is more important than an intact and functioning ecosystem.
“‘I’m getting tired of being called racist…”
=========
If the shoe fits…
I think there will also be a lot of decentralization. I can easily see Canada splitting up into BC, the Prairie provinces, Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. Trying to run this whole big country from Ottawa with politicians that we never see in person is really absurd. Just like trying to run the US from Washington. We send Ottawa our taxes then they send some of it back. Why can’t we just keep the money and do the stuff for ourselves? Oh right, centralized government is needed for running wars, etc. Did you ever read the novel by Ernest Callenback “Ecotopia”? Ecotopia was the imaginary secession of Northern California, Oregon and Washington from the rest of the United States. It was very futuristic and idealistic but really quite interesting.
Try http://www.collapsenet.com
Once again bang on Jim but with one small caveat regarding the Tar Sands and the relationship between Canada and the U.S. In reality Canada is to the U.S. as Poland was to the old Soviet Union. In other words we (Canada) are a semi-independant,client state. Research the Proportionality Clause of N.A.F.T.A. and you will see what I mean. Another good example of how Canadian policy is influenced by the U.S. is when our stodgy old senate recommended decriminalizing possession of marijuana. It was a total non starter in Canada because of how this would affect our relationship with the U.S. As long as what we do dosen’t adversely affect the U.S. or U.S. policy we are free to do it! In that context if push came to shove Tar Sand oil will be developed even if it takes nuclear power to provide the energy. ( once this “small problem in Japan blows over”) As for environmental degredation, well it isn’t in U.S.A.’s backyard and it is a remote enough area of Canada that a little bit of royalty money from the project should placate the fellow citizens of the Empire.
It’s interesting to deepen my understanding of how a racist thinks. Thanks for that.
Well what if suburbs were rezoned so that there could be stores, businesses, small farms, etc. in them? Then a subdivision could become a community instead of just a place where people sleep while they do all their other activities elsewhere? What if more houses were allowed on a piece of property? Why can’t shop owners live in the back of their stores? (They did in the “old days”.) What if lots could be subdivided allowing for great density of population? What if every house was allowed to have a suite or cabin to rent out? In some places a group of unrelated people isn’t even allowed to live together. What if farmland wasn’t allowed to be rezoned for subdivisions as farmland is needed for “national security”? What if subdivisions had to have sidewalks, and grocery stores? What if you could raise chickens in your backyard? I can think of a zillion ways that zoning prevents the development of sustainable, walkable communities.
Potatoes sprouting
On a tray in a window
Makes a bumper crop.
DYFP
Cascadia
The main issue I have with this website – and I’m including myself here – is everyone has their opinions and beliefs as to what is happening to our world and offer a wide range of possible solutions, but I see very little or no plans on how to implement them.
I see us as all talk and no action.
I’m glad Jim addressed a number of the pipe dream solutions this week. I’ve been on other forums recently and I can’t believe the number of yahoos that think we can just drill all the massive 100 + year shale oil reserves or switch to natural gas cars. There’s actually a large number of morons out there that think we could live happily ever after if the liberals and would just get out of the way. There actually seems to be more goof balls concerned with getting ripped of at the gas pump than they are about surviving peak oil. How can we hope to get through this crisis when the public is still not aware we’re facing a crisis?
Solar Power area needed to power the world.
http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/AreaRequired1000.jpg
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5060
“Note that in the chart above, there is a likely uranium shortfall even with the light blue “inferred resources” included. The United States has been purchasing recycled Russian bomb material since 1994, and our contract to purchase it continues until 2013. We also have plans to continue buying recycled Russian bomb material after 2013, and to recycle American bombs. These are the kinds of programs which are contemplated in the Energy Watch Group analysis. Even with these in place, their analysis indicates a possible shortfall.”
http://www.nirs.org/
http://www.nukebusters.org/,
Sigh… the absurdity and stupidity rampant in U.S. culture has got me so down. In my relatively short lifetime (35 years), I’ve seen the agricultural town of 2,000 people transformed from a high-functioning citadel of respectable, intelligent middle-class Americans to a bastion for the worst white-trash the mind can conjure. I’ve seen the suburbs of Seattle, and the resulting congestion and pollution, spread mercilessly outward, engulfing pasture, small-towns, forests, and the unique and local. I’ve seen neighbors who used to dress and speak well develop love-affairs with firearms, develop Southern accents, and dry Coyote pelts in the sun where backyard Volleyball nets used to stretch across the lawn.
Politics are cartoonishly divided, automobiles and homes cartoonishly big, American television/music/literature sadly void of thought, creative expertise, and purpose. My extended family is now cartoonishly Christian, attending a very cartoonish mega-church. Everything has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, a culture designed to make the retarded feel normal, and the intelligent seek the warm embrace of anti-depressants.
We’ve sunk so low, and at times, I feel like I’m suffocating in a fog of stupidity and ignorance, a sludge of inaction and ineffectual schemes, and an orgy of writhing obese bodies… shoveling everything they can grasp into their greedy mouths. It’s sickening, and I wish I were born in a more forward-thinking, optimistic time where beauty, intelligence, meaning and collective health and achievement are shared values of our culture. All we have to do is build beautiful, walkable towns, trade our cars in for trains and trolleys, grow food and conduct business locally, throw our televisions and cell-phones in the trash, and reconnect with notions of hard-work, self-respect, craftsmanship, and meaningful social interaction. People should WANT to do that!
Your blog is aptly named, my depressing sage…
Does anyone recall seeing a link from this erstwhile site containing a graphic that showed the consequences of human activity as represented by a square showing the amount of material and effect on nature in 1900-
this being subsumed within a much larger square showing the same activity in 1950?- and this in turn being subsumed in a huge square representing today.?
Moral: when you see a great website, bookmark it.
Thanks
Concrete/Asphalt jungle! It’s you *new* forest – get used it it…
But doesn’t it feel good to be in the know?
We are the ones who are not like the “sheeple” …
The sheeple have no idea “we are fucked”
The main message here is that action is useless precisely because we are fucked. The constant message is that it is too late for action… a message that paralyzes. Even buying guns and gold is a desperate and ultimately useless action.
“Do you think it was WHITE PEOPLE who laid all that railroad track out west? It was the Chinese. (who are now funding your little suburban adventure by the way)”
Yes I do think and I know that the railroads were built by whites.
The Chinese did built the railroad over the Sierras, they were small and light enough to fit in baskets to be bravely hoisted cliff faces to drill holes, insert explosives and create the railbed. However, the rest of the nations railroads were almost all built by the Irish.
The term “Gandy dancing” is Irish English. America’s railroads, with the exception of the Sierra Nevada roadbed, were built by mostly White men and some Blacks.
Just like the comicbook conservaties, guys like you on the kneejerk left spew factoids without any historical knowledge. Pathetic. Don’t forget to send Obama a check.
Don’t forget Zerohedge.com,
naked capitalism.com
and the biggest one of all that people forget, Google.
i.e. Google
“Grow Food”, you’ll get more information than you can ever get around to using.
Not really. Having more awareness of what is really going on allows one to plan a bit more effectively. But it does not “feel good”; if anything, it only makes one more aware just how badly the situation has been rigged and how ineffective our “leaders” are.
Cheers
Very nice posting, Susan. I’m a Puget Sound lifer (56) and I feel your pain. Thank you
You are so right, Helen.
Change the zoning laws. Duh. When you build it, they will live within it.
Raise the tax on oil. Duh. People will drive less.
Government doesn’t have to send troops to force people into walkable communities.
It just needs to quit subsidizing sprawl and traffic.
Great post, JHK. It really stays on topic
especially with the “walkable cities” idea
which the “how can we stay with cars” crowd
tunes out like a cheesy night club act.
I also like the hard TIMELINES you give which
most are not brave enough to give. Indeed,
by many intelligent estimates, we are a decade
away from utter cultural chaos.
A few posters, apparently, have smelled the car
fumes and split already. Many may criticize
Europe but they already have walkable cities
while nearly all US cities have been destroyed
by ghetto-ization or other forms of lunacy
(like San Francisco).
Newer American cities like Phoenix, Denver,
Houston, and Albuquerque are unnegotiable
without an automobile. Personally, I don’t
see how we survive. No hope. So … enjoy
the moments that are left. And, no, I’m
*not* kidding.
E.
Power Struggles, Power Relationships, How people behave and interact with each other…
One thing that is confusing, that deceives people is to think that what you do is done for some kind of “common good”, for the “good of the economy”, for “progress”: nothing further from the truth, what is done is done exclusively according to a power structure, according to a hierarchy whether explicit or invisible, according to who can force who to do what. There is no common good, or common gain in most economic endeavors there are only profits for a few, labor for most (when it is there and real) and some side effects where most people gain, mostly due to the application of technology and creation of new technology that just happens to benefit everyone (better cars, computers, internet, TV, etc.). But that is a side effect, is not the real goal, it just happens.
Most economic sectors evolve and evaporate so to say, are attracted to a point where they find the maximum expression of power relationships, of power struggles; so for example, housing prices started to inflate, there was some kind of gain to be made on this on behalf of the sellers and banks and home builders etc., it expressed a very clear power struggle, basically a fight between rich and poor, a fight between who was setting the price and who was forced to follow the prices going up, who was being crushed (the weaker), so this became an ever more important part of the economy, you had a constant increase of real estate agents, of house flipping, of banks lending loans and especially subprime loans. Kind of like saying that 2 entities that are perfectly in equilibrium and satisfied and unaware of each other will search each other out, no matter what, just to fight, even if they are separated by millions of miles.
No common good was generated by this, maybe the only real common good that was generated, as a side effect, was the construction of more homes than were needed, in the US there are 15 million empty homes, in Europe from, Lisbon to Moscow there are maybe 20 million empty homes. In a rational economic system, these extra homes would mean that those societies are richer, have more resources, there is more general wealth because a basic resource such as homes is more abundant: and the expression of this common wealth would be through low to very low house prices or low to very low rents. What happens instead is economic crisis in the US and 20 % unemployment in Spain.
So why does this happen ? Because the economic system is not geared towards distributing the common wealth that is generated anyways, even as a side effect, but is geared towards searching out as many power struggles as possible, so people can “express themselves”, can “make a statement”. This economic system and society is deeply right wing, completely biased towards creating as many status challenges – conflict/confrontation points – judgment points – and winner/loser assignments as possible, it is geared towards the maximum expression and total saturation of all productive endeavors into power relationships and power struggles.
This must be overthrown, changed, and to change this it is necessary to introduce free salaries, cheap rents and huge public – private projects hiring millions for Rockets to Mars, Skyscrapers, etc. These projects give meaning and status to millions of unemployed young people worldwide, it gives them goals, something to believe in, to be proud of, to look forward too, that is being constructed as a collective effort.
An another note, I was wondering how thousands of trillions of molecules in a man can add up to create a thinking mind, a unit that is monolithic and self contained in consciousness and thought: how do the single molecules, each unaware and without thought combine as entities to create a monolithic single entity ? At what point is there distinction of self and other, at one point is there one entity as opposed to many independent. How does a delimitation emerge naturally, that combines a number of independent parts into a single part ?
So when the world population reaches a thousand trillion, it will undergo a phase transition and become a single entity, a single mind, each individual mind unaware (or maybe aware ?) of the global mind…
Yours is wishful thinking.
Since the dawn of humanity there was the strong and the weak.
Once the strength was physical, now it is psychological, but in reality the outcome is always the same.
The house bubble was created like all the bubbles.
The rent shouldn’t be cheap, should be the right price, like everything else.
The bread should cost what it costs to produce it.
Thousands of trillions of molecules in a man can add up to create a thinking mind, an individual.
That doesn’t mean that individuals in a society will all have the same importance.
Also in the human body the cells that make the heart have much more strength and importance than the cells that make the hair or the nails, or the teeth.
If the heart stops, also the hair dies, even though it would go on living…
So you see, even in the body the society is not equalitarian, there are the strong cells and the weak ones, the weak been the ones one can go on living without…
“The rent shouldn’t be cheap, should be the right price, like everything else.”
No, it should be cheap because, homes are abundant, there millions empty, building them is just a political choice, the desire to create a false scarcity by not building them where needed, etc.
The right price of rent should be compared to MINIMUM WAGE, and that should be both in the US and the EU (not as mexicans would think Estados Unitos, but European Union) everywhere at about 200 dollars a month for 1,200 sq ft (90 sq m) home.
Now, go on, protect the status quo, protect beating up the weak and poor, go on, and never mention that all those million of young people in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America need JOBS and HOUSES otherwise, what else can they do ? break up everything, war, revolution, kill.
Also:
From last week,
Right Left dichotomy: it is mostly an “artistic” choice, an “existential” preference, an answer to boredom, the choice is essentially a choice of what religion you want to embrace, as both are essentially symbols, abstractions and man is an abstraction driven machine simply navigating pain/pleasure circuits and associating these pain pleasures very loosely with some abstractions, mostly man made pain/pleasure and assignments of abstractions that will generate said pain/pleasure (ex. laid off because you worked less than 12 hours a day which is the norm in our office, etc.):
1) Right wing wants “Risk Taking” as an emotional roller coaster, as a way to get high, as a way to play an imaginary slot machine all day long, are you winning, are you losing, what is your status, who did you defeat today, etc. An answer to boredom, doesn’t want stability, wants constant change, constant challenges, we do need people like this to start the “startups” that will hire a few hundred here and there, they have their use. They want “incentives”, they don’t find the incentives in what they do, but in what they win, in how much they gain compared to another, the other person is always present as a comparison point, as in constant competition, competition is the constantly measuring and interacting of items between themselves so as to constantly define them, modify their behavior, the measurement is the definition of the item.
2) Left wing wants stability, the incentive is in the simplicity in a sense, they are more geared towards collective efforts, towards large scale efforts, this is what most people really desire, we need these kinds.
Both religions think that everybody should be either one way or another, nothing further from the truth, we need both, but most people are simply naturally left wing, don’t want constant instability, risk taking, emotional narrative and roller coaster all day long, don’t get bored that easily that they need that constant high.
Now, given that a healthy economic system can use both, but the ratio is mostly 10 to 1 (or something like that), 10 stability seeking people, 1 person looking for risk taking and opening his own business. So given millions of people, it is absurd to think they can all be playing an imaginary slot machine of risk taking and incentives based on how much they gain compared to another game: it simply can’t work, there are simply not enough possibilities or opportunities for this in the real world.
A healthy economic system uses a mix of both, it can use the risk taking start up to generate new sectors, but if this doesn’t cut it, the government should start new public projects, it is that simple. There is no “one size fits all”, but the dominating economic model which is completely and totally biased towards the right wing thinks that one size fits all, either you are a risk taking, startup, your own boss and small business or you deserve to drop dead because you are not contributing to productivity or competition. This is totally false.
But the present economic model wants to pretend that everyone must be right ring, risk taking, incentive based living. This is false, also because competition in most sectors has been achieved, is saturated, you can’t really get much more competition out of most sectors, it is a diminishing return proposition, so maybe at this point the dominating mostly right wing economic model wants to propose simply slugging it out, fighting each other, war.
We have millions of now educated and connected unemployed young people in the Middle East and North Africa and also in Latin America, what are we going to do with them ? make them all go crazy and slug it out, make them start revolutions and wars ? No, we need huge large scale projects to employ millions of these, the governments worldwide must start as many as possible. Is it better to spend money on the tomahawks blowing things up in Libya or getting all those young men building apartment houses ? Is that so hard to understand ? Why do people not see this ? Is it so hard to understand that they need HOUSES and JOBs ? I never once heard anyone ever mention this in all the wars that are fought in Irak, Afghanistan and now Libya.
Another thing I was thinking is the serialized and accumulating labor processes, where the labor of many adds up into something greater than the parts. If you look at natural evolution it did just that completely by blind chance, it started out with some carbon molecules and ended up creating a thinking man, which is itself a huge accumulated and serialized effort product. A man is made up of a thousand trillion molecules all executing chemical reactions and interactions in perfect equilibrium to produce thinking minds, Mind over Matter. It is strange how an ensemble of millions of people cannot produce something greater than the parts, or has great difficulty in doing so, maybe we are still at the very beginning of the turbulent initial phase, just like natural evolution started out randomly with some carbon molecules bumping into each other.
Maybe when humanity reaches a population of thousands of trillions, just like the number of molecules in a man, and an advance enough technology it will undergo a phase transition and know how to serialize and accumulate all labor processes to create a higher level mind, a single MIND composed of thousands of trillions of other minds.
Right Wing Thug says:
“The rent shouldn’t be cheap, should be the right price, like everything else.”
I answer:
No, it should be cheap because, homes are abundant, there millions empty, building them is just a political choice, the desire to create a false scarcity by not building them where needed, etc.
The right price of rent should be compared to MINIMUM WAGE, and that should be both in the US and the EU (not as mexicans would think Estados Unitos, but European Union) everywhere at about 200 dollars a month for 1,200 sq ft (90 sq m) home.
Now, go on, protect the status quo, protect beating up the weak and poor, go on, and never mention that all those million of young people in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America need JOBS and HOUSES otherwise, what else can they do ? break up everything, war, revolution, kill.
The USA is 5% of the world population and uses 25% of the worlds oil – most of it by their military. How the hell can they possibly expect to perpetuate this gargantuan nonsense. What about the rest of us (ie. the world). A wake up slap on the side of the head is long overdue!
“Will it be a black swan or an entirely predictable catastrophe when Saudi Arabia’s ten million barrels a day go offline as suddenly and as spectacularly as Libya’s one point five million?”
Nothing will happen. Gas prices will go up. Big Deal. The EU and JAPAN have dealt with 10 dollars a gallon gas and even more for decades and got by perfectly, not only living their own “happy motoring” but actually exporting much of their “happy motors” to the US.
Oh, I forgot, in the US oil and gas is A SINGLE POINT OF FAILURE BECAUSE THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS BASED ON LONG DISTANCE CAR CENTERED SUBURBIA.
They need to create small centers with at least apartment house buildings of 7 to 10 floors (a lot of nice designs can be found in Switzerland, Germany, France and JAPAN, Skyscrapers would be better, but they are not very popular on this blog), and hook up all these centers with Mass Transit in the form of BUSES.
In a skyscraper what you save in gasoline you spend in electricity for the elevator.
And depending on how it costs to build a house (including the land) if you want prices like 200 dollars for rent I am sure people won´t be able to find a house in New York or Milano.
Simply because nobody would build it.
Nobody works for losing money…
In Europe in certain places the land is very expensive, because there is no land anymore and you have a surplus of houses where nobody lives, because there are no available jobs…
BTownBill says … “I see CFN as all talk and no action” (I paraphrase)
Not completely true, BTownBill. What about Trippticket in Georgia with his 300 acre farm, a good example of a “World made by Hand”? Many, many more of us (including me) have smaller, sustainable operations we work at to the best of our ability. I’m thinking of Asoka, Nathan, PoC, Ripthunder … I’m sure there are many others. True, we aren’t out on the streets like its Seattle 1999. Buts that’s all counterproductive anyway. Self reliance and cooperation with ones neighbors … that’s how real communities are built and that’s how we will have a future.
Not to be the contrarian, but, Nikolaz says, “… the US is 5% of the world’s population and uses 25% of the world’s oil – most of it by the military”.
That’s not really accurate, Nikolaz, on two counts. The US is using roughly 19.5 million bpd right now, out of a total daily world demand of about 87 million bpd. That’s not 25%. Also, in the midst of 3 major military campaigns, our armed forces oil demand amounts to about 400,000 barrels per day, less than 5% of total.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
Words are important. They are the mechanism that is used to brainwash, maybe a better term would be “to program”, just like a computer, to program the neural networks of millions of people worldwide into a very simple one track mind – mentality. for example, everyone keeps on saying that the revolutions in North Africa and Middle East are for “democracy” and freedom”. These words are used so much by everyone, it isn’t even funny. And yet exactly what would be democracy ? The possibility to choose a government “that should do your ECONOMIC interests”, because when you really get down past all the fluff, it is only the economic – materialistic well being that those millions of young people are looking for.
And exactly what are these materialistic – economic interests ? HOUSES and JOBS / or IF NO JOBS FREE SALARIES. But no one even thinks that they need these 2 things, they themselves, those young people just chant, like a broken record, we need democracy and freedom. They have been totally brainwashed with this Right Wing Thug system, where they will give you all the freedom and democracy you want, BUT WILL NEVER GIVE YOU JOBS OR AT LEAST, IN ALTERNATIVE A FREE SALARY, AND THEN A DECENT HOME WITH CHEAP RENT.
That is what is needed by millions worldwide, only that, the basics. But as soon as you start talking about homes and house prices and rents, especially cheap rents as appropriate to minimum wages, everyone’s program “crashes”. It is like a short circuit, like when patrizia says “rents should be the right price”, it is totally impossible to conceive or imagine. They weren’t programmed to think in those terms, they can’t even conceive of it. What ? Cheap Rents, Are You Crazy ? Of course, who asks for cheap rents is Crazy! Because it is exactly through the mechanism of house values and high rents that so many small property owners can express their Power Status, their power relationship to either the unemployed of the minimum wage workers. House ownership and house prices are the huge wall of exclusion that property owners work all their life for to build, as a statement of status, as a statement of power, as a statement of power relationships to the weaker classes.
But this is constructed by design, this is completely artificial, is a system that the capitalists have constructed to exclude the lower classes and wage a total class warfare against millions of weaker people worldwide. It is not natural, it is not correct, it is simply a statement, that goes like this :
“since our economy is so rich it could easily provide for cheap rents for everyone, it is totally available (in fact there are 15 million empty homes in the US and 20 million in Europe from Lisbon to Moscow), but since millions of others have been programmed to hate on the weaker, to express themselves through the power relationship and power status home prices and rents represent, these cheap rents or home prices will not be furnished, indeed, it is desired that they keep on going up as high as possible”.
So then, it would be more honest to say to all those millions of young kids around the globe needing JOBS and HOUSES, you won’t get it, WE SIMPLY WILL NOT GIVE IT TO YOU, JUST BECAUSE, because we said so, with no other deeper metaphysical or economic reason available, because there are none. It is only me (richer) against you (poorer) and you (poorer) will lose always because you are the weaker class. Of course they are more sophisticated than this: they will say skill sets, competition, productivity, you have to deserve it, small businesses, be your own boss, etc. a never ending list of excuses to hide their egotism, that is hidden even to themselves, they don’t even notice how they are themselves programmed.
Now, go on, all those young kids fighting revolutions and wars in Libya or wherever, keep on saying you need democracy and freedom, AND NOT THAT WHAT YOU REALLY NEED IS JOBS AND HOUSES.
For Christ Sake, Old6699, give it up. Its the same goddamn thing everyday. Think up something else beside free houses and free salaries for all. WTF is wrong with you?
I’ve been freezing my ass off here in CT for the past 7 months, since October, but I’m on board now a little with all the global warming bullshit. Does anybody know, though, when it is going to start warming up for real, and not just in theory? Because I could use some warm weather pretty soon. And its already April.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
Even because if they were to say they needed JOBS and HOUSES, that would directly restrict to a very narrow choice the political choices that could be made: You are then force to give them jobs or a free salary, and build and provide homes with cheap rents. This is too blunt. The real war, power struggle, fight would become very apparent to everyone, there would be no more hiding behind words, concepts and abstractions, like economic growth, investments, etc.
So everyone is extra careful never to mention what exactly is really needed, what is creating so much unhappiness and anger worldwide, be extra careful, maybe the huge deception would become too apparent…
If your dreams come true, believe me everybody would be happy.
In reality it will be the opposite.
We will ALL have no jobs and may be rotten houses, because they built a lot of them, but the way they do it, they do not last long…
I’m very amused by the April Eyesore of the ersatz “New Urbanist”-inspired false main street big barn store in Aurora (exurban Chicago) Illinois. Aurora is one of Chicago’s many doomed outer suburbs that has lost a lot of value post-housing crash and has become an undesirable and rather disreputable place with a lot of social problems, which will probably get much worse as fuel prices increase and everyone who can flees the place for places where you can at least get a train into town and don’t have to drive 5 miles for absolutely anything. Aurora is one of the many outer suburbs that will not survive the fuel descent and is probably destined to be leveled for farmland down the road as unspoiled, unbuilt- on farmland still remaining becomes stratospherically expensive.
I lately have been traveling to some of Chicago’s more distant suburbs by our METRA commuter trains here, in order to visit a friend out there, and I notice an interesting and hopeful development, which is that “sprawl burbs” like Arlington Heights and Palatine, and older, denser places like Des Plaines, are developing dense, walkable neighborhoods around the METRA rail stops, without exactly intending to. The last time I had occasion to travel to Arlington Heights, it was a typical outer auto suburb of SF subdivisions, with almost nothing close to the rail stop, but now it and Palatine look like small cities. This trend toward cozy, dense “downtown” areas clustered around commuter rail stops looks like it might save places like Palatine, which was deteriorating rapidly before the boom and had disproportionately high crime rates. Now, it appears as though the downtown area adjacent to the rail stop, which now is very attractive with a lot of new, mixed use 5 and 6 story condo and apartment buildings, is the prime neighborhood, while the town’s outer neighborhoods of SF subdivisions and old “garden” apartment complexes, continues to deteriorate.
This development was accidental, probably driven by the high prices of the housing bubble that priced many middle income people out of SF houses and steered them into condos. But since the bubble has burst, these attractive new “downtown” areas, which have all the necessities such as groceries, dry cleaners, basic retail, eateries and entertainment within a few blocks of the METRA stop, have held their value much better than SF houses in their “outer” neighborhoods, which are losing value much faster than either neighborhoods in either Chicago, or their own new urban cores. This is happening because people simply can no longer support 75-mile-each-direction car commutes and 3-and4-car households, even with cheap gasoline and easy credit. Mind you, the process is only beginning and most people in those parts are still excessively dependent upon their cars and do most of their shopping at the big regional malls and big box stores, but at least some places are providing a pleasant and workable alternative to being stranded with no fuel and no access to the necessities in an over-sized house.
will the next presidential library help or hurt the kenyan economy ?
When you hear that we have 100 years worth of natural gas, or 200 years’ worth of coal, consider how numbers like these were arrived at. If you look closely, you can see how blatantly false these numbers are.
For one thing, these are estimates and include highly theoretical “reserves” that cannot now be tapped by any technology now known, and that the estimates quoted are the most optimistic numbers and assume that we’ll be able to extract every last drop, which of course we wouldn’t be able to do even if we had the technology available.
Most of all, the numbers assume CURRENT RATES OF USE. Use the famous rule of 72 to figure just how quickly a 100 year supply will deplete if we increase consumption just 5 percent a year. It suddenly becomes a 14 year supply.
“I’m also trying to aggregate links to useful resources such as ways to locate and join your local community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm. To the rest of CFN, please chime in over there if there’s useful resources I’m missing that I should be linking to.” -Anthony
Here’s an important one from an actual CFN peeker and poster.
Tripp is walking the walk down the energy descent road in a pragmatic, realistic, and scientific manner. Read the articles and you’ll see exactly what I mean…
http://smallbatchgarden.blogspot.com/
Thanks for making a collection. This is a necessary and useful thing…
Patrizza,
Who said anything about elevators? Think billions and trillions of bionic knees and hips…transplanted hearts that can pump major rivers up the slopes of major mountain ranges…quit thinking negative!
“No, it should be cheap because, homes are abundant, there millions empty, building them is just a political choice…”
Hey, Moron. Go invest your hard earned money in some apartments. And then rent them out cheaply.
Yes, Laura (good to see your name again)
None of the numbers we are given are messaged in such a way that they simply are used to prove out a false claim that suits those who use them.
Like GDP, Deficit #’s Unemployment #’s etc.
I believe these numbers are used to buy time, so the status quo doesn’t get challenged. The day will come when it will all be seen as an illusion but by then, money will be so concentrated into so few hands (or individuals who do nothing for society) that it will be too late to do anything of consequence.
I like your earlier post about smaller centers forming out of necessity.
“Does anybody know, though, when it is going to start warming up for real, and not just in theory? ”
I do. Any day now. Its called Spring and its here. And after that comes Summer which is even warmer than Spring.
PoC,
Are you quite sure you’re not putting the cart before the horse with the immigration issue?
Here’s an idea to chew on, from a perspective standpoint…
Do some of us feel that the “political will” and direction of the country is being controlled and manipulated by corporate powers?
(The answer of course is: absolutely.)
So, where do you think those entities come down on the whole “cheap immigrant labor” deal?
The fairly obvious conclusion is: Nothing concerning [cheap, imported] labor is going to change until you get rid of those that exploit it for their own greed.
…And that is the “immigrant issue” in a nutshell.
Pick your targets. It’s not the border-hoppers (legal or otherwise); it’s those that employ them.
Another viewpoint might conclude that it’s kind of irrelevant when industrial “civilization” collapses due to the lack of black goo to run it on. Everything stops, and there’s no place for labor (imported or otherwise) to go, and a DESPERATE amount of competition for those few remaining “employers” [of whatever stripe]. Do you think any “native local” is going to stand for being muscled out of that slot? That’s when the xenophobia hits like a sledge and folks start getting killed (worldwide, no less).
I kinda see the issue as becoming more diluted and closer to moot, as time goes on.
Okay, back to reading. You guys are much too prolific! Whew…
You are SO right! Everything else pales in comparison to the problem we have with Nuclear.
So right!. With nuclear waste and god knows what type, being thrown into the pacific ocean, and then the air and food.. No one is telling us the truth about the amount of radiation being blown onto our nation, we are in DEEP trouble. Of course, there is nothing they can do about it either. But maybe a warning to stay indoors for a while or not eat certain food would be helpful. So much for the politicians and nuclear regulatory people. They are killers, just like the terrorists. Except they hide behind their “american” country first rule whereas the terrorists are saying what they intend to do outright. OMG
{Does anybody know, though, when it is going to start warming up for real, and not just in theory?}
——-
beyond the inevitable advent of spring and summer, i believe the question of when will global climate change present itself unambiguously to the lay observer (and even fox news-watcher) is worth asking.
and i know the answer. on july 21st, 2011, the temperature as measured at bradley international airport (windsor locks, ct, usa) will be 127 degrees fahrenheit (53 celsius.) all departures will be canceled because of melting tires, although arrivals will continue because these planes’ tires will be sufficiently cooled by upper altitude airflow to withstand tarmac heat stress.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the suburbs will be retrofitted. The reason is simple the burbs make up roughly half of the U.S. population. The cost in resources to herd this number into newly designed utopian cities is unimaginable. For that reason the burbs will have to do.
What will come to pass is that in the not too distant future, every forth cul-de-sac will house a small general store that is walkable from the surrounding areas on each side. Large schools that are dependent on bus fleets, will be replaced by smaller neighborhood schools to which kids actually walk. Ditto businesses, which will be rescaled from necessity and data shared via cloud computing. Those that absolutely have to have worker bees on site will have to send company busses to neighborhoods to retrieve them.
Back yards which principally grow grass, will be converted to gardens. An average back yard can easily grow enough produce to handle most family-of-four’s needs during the growing season. Johnny and Janie will learn to till a row of beans or the little bastards don’t eat.
Bicycles make a big comeback for those physically capable and the precious resources are saved for transporting those who have health/age issues.
Back yard fences will replace Facebook as those paying the utility bills inform the young-uns that all that silly ass, social networking shit is over. And not only that, missy, but while you are gabbing at the fence with Betty Lou, you might want to bend down in the spinach and remove a few weeds.
Now quit bitching and get to work.
{xenophobia hits like a sledge and folks start getting killed}
——
o3, i knew xenophobia. i worked with xenophobia. xenophobia was a friend of mine. let me tell you, you’re no xenophobia.
You couldn’t have said it any better. Oil shortage seems like a joke compared to the poisoning of all the oceans and air and food. We are in BIG trouble.
YOUR GREAT GREAT GREAT WHITE GRANDPARENTS WERE LAZY… that’s right…. they were too LAZY to do any actual work – Suburban
That statement is almost too absurd for comment. What are you going to tell me next? Jews are cheap and mean? Blacks are shiftless and stupid?
White People (WASPS) are LAZY.. – Suburban
I don’t know what circles you travel in but I know and have worked with a multitude of WASPs. They are not lazy.
I’d like to see you and your tribe of WHITE PEOPLE get along without any oil AND without anyone brown or black to do your work for you…. Suburban
This is claptrap.
“Everything has been reduced to the lowest common denominator, a culture designed to make the retarded feel normal, and the intelligent seek the warm embrace of anti-depressants.” -S.B.
I hear ya. Shocking, ain’t it?
Get with like-minded folk (yes, they’re out there and close by), and say buh-bye to the rest of the yeast-people. You’ll become your own savior. Don’t wait around for buffoons to change into sages; you’ll wait yourself into an early grave (or easy pickings for the crows).
Have your say, openly, and VOILA!, your fellows will appear. (I’m meaning, publicly and in your town, not on the intertubes where “it don’t count”.) If none of your friends hearkens to your call of, “let’s get busy”, you’ll need to make a new set of friends, eh? ;o)
“I’ve been freezing my ass off here in CT for the past 7 months, since October, but I’m on board now a little with all the global warming bullshit. Does anybody know, though, when it is going to start warming up for real, and not just in theory? Because I could use some warm weather pretty soon. And its already April.” -Marlin
lol
I can relate!
I’m sure you already know that the warming of the planet has many wowee-type side effects. I’ve been paying attention to one simple factor, since around 2003. That would be the SIZE of each storm that roars through, and the number of those “big ones”. Seems to me the frequency of large storms is increasing; huge weather patterns that look like land-based him-icanes.
So, not necessarily “warmer” in some places; just significantly WEIRDER. ;o)
…And then some Jamoke comes along and tells us that we’ve let loose the arctic air from its’ imprisonment [via arctic warming], and that it’s definitely not a good thing.
Link me, somebody, link me! ;o)
turk i,m sure that some of the things you post on this blog would get your ass kicked if you said them in the real world to a nonsympathetic listener. but thats what civilization is about is getting along. i bet most on this blog could meet in person, have a great debate, not say fucktard once and probably surprised what we have in common. this blog is a venting spot,but most must be attracted to something about jhk’s ideas. the ugliness maybe is a sign of our times.
…and I’ll second that cease and desist plea in regard to the magically-reappearing-resources guy.
…At the very LEAST, to keep the blather to a tighter framework. My index finger is becoming disproportionately large from the scrolling! ;o)
” i bet most on this blog could meet in person, have a great debate, not say fucktard once…”
There is no way, that after meeting turkey-lurkey, that I could NOT refer to her as a FUCKTARD.
Nate, you should see the roads here in SE MIchigan. One road in particular M-151 looks like it was hit with an air strike. This was once a beautiful concrete highway. Now the frost / potholes look like wide & deep little trenches going across the road. And when Monroe County gets around to “filling in the holes” they use what looks like Quick Patch. No hot tar to bind it nor a roller to press & smooth it out. Nope when they’re done it looks like 13 miles of speed bumps for your Happy Motoring ! I find it disgraceful.
…that would be dandy by me! ;o)
IDEA’s ?
Start a farmers market for people to buy, sell, trade home grown goods and set up an exchange board for swaping goods and services. One great service would be to actually go out in Teams and help show families how to get started growing and preserving food stuffs for the long road ahead. Get to work on developing that sense of Community that made rural America the bellwhether of self sufficiency.
It needs to happen this planting season. Get off the couch and see what you can do.
Phil
Yes, the nuclear situation is messy and threatening. As are our SUV`s, leaf blowers and wars.
George Monbiot is a British writer who is fearless in countering climate change deniers and lucid, in his book “HEAT”, on the path that takes us to a real reduction in our output of crap into the air using technologies that actually exist.
This week he has changed his view of the threat of
the nuclear industry. His website has a very interesting exchange with Dr. Helen Caldicott
You got that right, Ozone.
The other day, I was talking to a friend of mine about having a 9-11 truth event this year, since a decade has passed, and TPTB are STILL using it to attack other countries.
An Army recruiter standing behind me heard me, and, much to my surprise, said that he would be interested in coming to the event, because he was starting to doubt that which he has been told.
Wow! I never would have guessed.
So you’re right, say it loud and proud. You’d be surprised who will listen and come around.
Great post Jim…
As I’ve already posted here (and elsewhere before) the whole “car as primary mode of transport” doesn’t make sense, especially in suburban. Here I am on my old steel bike watching our Melbourne roads resemble monster truck madness outtakes while I struggle to breath the foul stench belching from the fire breathing bellies of these countless behemoths, all accelerating to the next stop without apparently realising the futility of it all.
Yes I guess these giant things have a purpose: To go 100km/hr (~60mph) down the highway with four or more passengers and a load to boot. The reality however is that they are mostly hauling a single occupant in traffic queues averaging 25km an hour (if they’re lucky). This makes as much sense as taking a bath in a swimming pool. 2000 kilograms for an 80kg occupant(!) and 200kW+ of power for what can be reasonably managed with much less than one twentieth of that. It seems the time will be coming sooner than later when more than just the whacko minority like types who frequent this site will ask “what the hell were they thinking”… Unfortunately that will probably be when its far too late and the petrol party is well and truly over and all that is left is the dirty mess to “clean up”.
Keep up the great work.
Wait a minute! Doesn’t the fact that indeterminate millions of foreign nationals have chosen to violate our immigration laws argue the point that in doing so they have advantaged themselves over their fellow nationals who haven’t done so? Why is it then that so many US citizens feel the US taxpayers yet owe illegal aliens more – amnesty specifically?
Doesn’t too this argument speak to the patience and decency of the US citizenry? So far the US citizenry have not risen up in tumultuous outrage at such flagrant disregard of our standing laws. Hard to understand considering that those laws were crafted and enacted by our democratically elected representatives, oath bound to serve our will as the nation’s sovereign citizenry body. As played out – especially if amnesty is enacted – our laws are defaulting to the will of these invading foreign nationals; and, exasperatingly, on excuse that weight of their numbers is too great to counter with enforcement. If such becomes the case then amnesty is misnomer; in actuality it amounts to surrender.
This deluge of illegal immigration has undercut the wage floor for our own domestic work force, weakening its bargaining strength for sustaining a job market paying livable (middle class) wages. Entry level job avenues have been choked off to our inexperienced young people and the many others within our citizen body who for different reasons need the entry job “boot strap”. “Casual labor” of Third World origin has displaced market impetus for apprenticeship programs, preempting preparation of the next generation of truly craft qualified. Home remodel and repair industry has become glutted by non tax-paying “casual labor” workers plying sub-standard Third World practices. The consumer public has suffered the inconvenience and added cost of sub-standard performance by Third World workforce. Our national infrastructure — social and physical — has been overburdened, resulting in underserved citizenry. Environment/ecological cost will reverberate for generations.
Not the least of importance; government budget planning is getting further skewed off kilter, hobbling our nation’s ability to sustain a balanced spread of governmental funding toward meeting the full spectrum of societal demands and needs.
Possibly worst of all though, the 2010 census made no distinction in its count, numbering illegal aliens on equal basis with citizens and those here with legal documentation. In effect, foreign nationals illegally in our country are given equivalency in determining apportionment of government and tax funded project disbursement. Consequently, national destiny as exclusive privilege of citizenship is being swept aside.
National policy of ages past, now judged as errant against current vogue of PC, is the bulwark of arguments for amnesty. Implicit is accusation that our citizenry of past generations have always been fully complicit to policies that wrought harm upon other nations. A less condescending examination of the past though illuminates the fact that more often than not the US citizenry itself was victimized by calculated misinformation promulgated by special interests for private gain.
Left out of this “moral” accounting is how the US citizenry have managed to preserve its democratic republic, repeatedly correcting course back to align with democratic principle.
Sidestepped altogether by polemical reading of history is the high cost incurred by the US citizenry throughout, the greatest being that of loved ones spent as cannon fodder.
Good on those who’ve internalized as personal guilt what they feel to be the wrongs committed by our national past and on which account feel need to follow some path of personal atonement. Damn those though who arrogate themselves to role of “Inquisitor” on the soul of our nation, superciliously demanding that policy making going forward be framed as ritualized atonement for perceived “transgressions” of the past rather than as pragmatic planning for real world circumstance emerging.
No doubt, the 20th Century was the American century. No surprise then that as the most powerful and wealthiest nation in all of history our wake has delivered harm along its path as well as benefit. Had the national make-up been different racially, ethnically, religiously, — or by any other trait of characteristic — would our trace across history been that much different?
A “yes” answer underscores the simplistic theme of “America the Damned” (too white, too European, too Christian, ect., ect.). Continuing that moral hyperbole (the world’s woes product of US “evil doing” alone) leads to equally simplistic notion that “grace” can be achieved only by the single act of dissolving US sovereignty. In essence, a “state of perdition”, presumably served until a state of “contrition” is reached whereby we’ve “equalized” to global standards of overpopulation, environment degradation and standard of living measured by minimum caloric requirement.
That’s reads like teabagger hog wash. Where is the mention of corporate complicity in this debate on immigration? Immigrants especially those in the food industry are treated no better then indentured servants of the 1600 and 1700 propping up the US with cheap labor. I say get your ass of your fucking computer and go out and replace a Mexican in the fields. No need for new cheap labor if you take the step of doing it your self.
But then again I think that rant of yours is not yours at all. Reads like Ran Paul vomit.
Yes it has me down also. I am older than you. Have seen the same changes only more of them.
It is sickening. No common sense.
Don Henley sing ‘GIMME WHAT YOU GOT’. “The first word Baby learns is MORE.” he’s from the Eagles.
Anyway, I feel same as you always have felt I didn’t belong here in the USA. Moreso now. Stuck, Dear in Headlights.
It feels to me like we are in freefall now.
in a few years things will be much worse.
and impossible for most others to be in denial, but then too late.
Like E. says enjoy now. Especially if you have to stay here.
roach, are you implying that America needs millions of undocumented immigrants simply to tend the fields? This need could easily be met by issuing seasonal permits to the number of farm workers required. Imagine if there were no illegals. The ones who came in through legal channels such as this would have more rights and would make more money. Additionally, there is a large amount of slack in the US labor market. If positions could not be filled by people here legally, then more legals could be brought in to for the jobs. The illegal labor market is certainly not a requirement for America to function. It has become a defacto way of doing business, because many like the access to very cheap labor.
Have you actually made a comparison between indentured servants of the 1600 and 1700’s and today’s immigrants? The former typically paid all or most of their wages to pay off their debts and lived in squalor. I don’t think it compares to having a nice cash wad in your pocket from under the table wages, a flat screen tv, and free medical care at the emergency room.
“All we have to do is build beautiful, walkable towns, trade our cars in for trains and trolleys, grow food and conduct business locally, throw our televisions and cell-phones in the trash, and reconnect with notions of hard-work, self-respect, craftsmanship, and meaningful social interaction.”
I’d like a hot tub while you’re at it.
All we need to do is go back to how America was in 1910….with three times the population. What could possibly go wrong?
I don’t have time to read thru slowly but I get the gist of your post.
I, for one, actually like the way you think.
Naively I thought a house was supposed to be a HOME.
How wrong I was. Housing is for profit. Big business. This is the way it is set up.
For the owners to profit from the renters.
I find that wrong. I AM naive.
If I was a younger person these days I would be so upset about life, and the way our society is.
anyway gotta get going. run some errands.
🙂 that’s a smile
Are you kidding me? The US gov has been the most manipulative and destructive force on this planet in the post-WWII era (with some competition from the Soviets) curtesy of the DOD and the CIA. Nearly every major country in South America underwent a US-supported military coup. We are the primary arms dealers to the entire world. Our financial system wrecks others countries for fun and profit. For starters…
And then there were the wars…Vietnam, Korea, Iraq, and Afghanistan, plus all the proxy ones. Ring any bells?
Get your head out of your azz, man. Go get a copy of “Killing Hope” by Blum or “Anglo American Oil Politics” or “Resource Wars” or any of about 200 books that argue the same. Yours is just another rehashing of the idea that Americans are blameless, exception angels in a world of dark skinned savages. Wake the f*** up.
If we’re getting some of our own medicine back in our faces (blowback anyone?), as they say, karma is a beotch.
Crude is at $108 per barrel right now, but it hardly merits a mention on the cable news shows, not even on Bloomberg or CNBC.
The fighting in Libya and the meltdown in Japan are almost (not quite) forgotten, too. Instead, on CNBC anyway, guest after guest keep talking about the ‘recovery’ that we are now in. They have all the stats to back them up, stuff that’s hard to understand for the non-economist. These business networks are perpetual optimists, never a discouraging word. For supposed hard-core business people this seems to be an unrealistic, pollyannish view of the world.
On the other hand auto traffic ’round here hasn’t seemed to let up at all. The roads and parking lots are still chock full everywhere. The state announced yesterday that they are going ahead with the new 9 mile, $1 billion ‘busway’ from New Britain to Hartford, two burned out cinders of cities which saw their best days 60 years ago. Whole neighborhoods have to be wrecked to build it. As far as I can tell, the only people using it will be those who travel from New Britain to Hartford to apply for welfare or pick up a welfare or AFDC check, or those travelling from Hartford to New Britain to score some coke, heroine, oxycondin, crystal meth or illegal weapons. I’m sure it will be a fun ride. You’d better learn Spanish.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
Ditto Helen, even made friends with some posters here, and learned a few good things along the way.
You don’t sound like you have bought in to the whole mass transit plan.
Let ’em eat plutonium!
listen to this one: http://geraldcelentechannel.blogspot.com/2011/04/mike-rivero-radioactive-sushi-from.html
This is a joke right?
This business about an American Empire is grotesque. We ought to know better than to say such stuff. Why? Because at one time Canada was part of an Empire, the British Empire. We have direct experience with Empire, we know what it’s like. 1.6 million Canucks fought in two world wars in defence of the Mother Country and her Empire, more than 100,000 died, hundreds of thousands more were wounded. When She went to war Canada went to war. When I was in grade school we would hoist the Union Jack and Red Ensign and we would sing God Save the Queen. America is no empire.
The reality is that Poland had an occupying army from the Soviet Union from 1939 to 1941 which inflicted horrendous suffering, deaths in the hundreds of thousands not to mention deportations numbering over a million. A large portion of pre-war Poland was claimed and carved out by the Soviet Union. After 1945, when the Germans were forcibly removed from Poland, the Polish Communist Party ran the place and when the Solidarity movement started to make trouble the Soviet Union massed troops along the border and threatened invasion.
The further reality is that the Yanks have pretty much no idea we exist. In the 1980s we screamed for things like the free trade agreement when their foreign policy apparatus was preoccupied with the dissolution of the Soviet Empire (and which could easily have turned violent). And it was hard to get their attention. We hardly registered with Reagan, we never registered on Condi’s radar nor on Bill’s nor Hillary’s and as far as Obama is concerned he could hardly be bothered to get off the plane when he visited here.
Let me submit a treasonous thought: the Yanks don’t give a damn about us or what we do.
“America is no empire.”
Over 700 military bases throughout the world and…not an empire?
What are all those for then, protecting free-dumb?
There are many different kinds of empires. It is falacitious to say that America is not or does not have an empire simply because it is different from the British one.
Oh, but I care. I like your excellent skiing mountains and comfortable furry hats.
Nathan;
Snow melted off up there in VT yet?
I’m on board with mass transit. We had a house in Spain, where my wife is from, just outside Bilbao. We took the train everywhere. There was a station just down the street and a train appeared every few minutes. They were clean, fast, efficient, safe, and ran until the wee hours. You could drink at one of the many cafes in Bilbao until 3 or 4 in the morning, stagger to the station, and catch the next train for Sadupe. No Problem. Fare was cheap, too.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
Have I mentioned how much I like you Marlin? Now, when am I coming to your Spanish villa? 😉
American Empire…here we are.
http://www.alternet.org/story/47998/
Or, ya know, read some Chalmers Johnson.
“Since 1973…, our economy has tripled in size while our energy use has increased by only a third”
There’s no *FSCKING* way we’ve increased energy consumption merely 33% in the last 40 years. It’s at least quadrupled since then (in the US, and EU).
As to the economy – bah, it’s all “smoke and mirrors” for decades. I don’t even want to dive into that mess of printing presses and microsecond investments (70% of market trades).
You’re an American aren’t you? So why don’t you tell me why you have 700 bases around the world?
Once again, if the US were an empire, we would be the first place occupied. What do empires do? They conquer other people’s land. They kill, displace, dominate the occupants and move in and rip things off.
What do we have here in Canada? Oodles of fertile land, giant energy deposits (oil, coal, uranium), fresh water, wide open spaces, everything any self respecting empire would grab.
What don’t we have here in Canada? A functioning military. 60,000 underequipped troops, around 5,000 of which are rifle carrying infantry. This would be the most ludicrously easy conquest in history. Your biggest hazard would be slipping on the ice.
So why do we not have an American military governor here in Canada? Why do we not have US troops swaggering on our streets kicking our asses? Why do we pay our taxes to Canadian treasuries and not American? Why do resource companies pay royalties to Canuck capitols and not American?
The answer is because the US is not an empire. Not by any common sense definition of the word. Not even close. Canuck troops didn’t fight in Vietnam, nor in Iraq. We have 2,800 troops in Afghanistan. We lost 155 troops there in about 8 years. Contrast this to WW1 in fighting for the British Empire: we lost 66,000 in four years. In WW2 we lost 44,000. Add to that hundreds of thousands of wounded. That was when Canada had about ten million people. My home town has dozens of names on the town war memorial and it is a small place. THAT was the cost of empire.
Ix, the energy statistic is widely quoted and (AFAIK) correct. Have you seen how huge and inefficient cars were back then, for one thing? Appliances, cars, et al. have gotten a lot more efficient since the 70’s.
Of course the US is an empire, just more along economic/cultural/financial lines than physical ones. America intervenes using other methods and generally uses troops as a last resort. It was Cheney and the neo-con’s stated goal to dominate the globe militarily for the next 200 years, as well as to maintain American economic and financial dominance. He and his lil gang were the top-level thinkers in the Bush admin. Please see the PNAC report. Also, Bzig’s book “The Grand Chessboard” is a really good read.
And sure, the US hasn’t occupied Canada (yet), but it is heavily involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus other ME countries like Israel and Egypt, which are halfway around the world.
It turns out that directly occupying other countries militarily is very expensive and unpopular (with those countries), so that’s generally not the first line of attack. Military and economic aid packages are the primary form of intervention.
Okay, Canada wasn’t in Nam. It is in Afghanistan though.
So, sure, US is/has an empire. It is just very different from those of the colonial period, because that’s just not how things are done now, by anyone really.
“the energy statistic is widely quoted and (AFAIK) correct. Have you seen how huge and inefficient cars were back then, for one thing? Appliances, cars, et al. have gotten a lot more efficient since the 70’s.”
I’m fully aware of the 9MPG cars back then. I’m also fully aware of the *MEGLATUDES* of commercial/residential buildings that have been built/heated/cooled since.
A mere 33% energy consumption increase in 40 years is total HORSE-SH!. Someone’s cooked those stats, if they really exist. The population about doubled in that time, and they’re still setting their thermostats *the same way* (plus, now they have many more appliances/computers/etc).
Oh – millisecond investments – MY BAD!!!
“So why don’t you tell me why you have 700 bases around the world?”
Why to protect the empire of course! 😉
That and line Haliburton and KBR’s pockets.
You can read Chalmers Johnson. Or on the other hand you can think for yourself. Try believing the evidence of your own eyes.
If you want to believe America is an empire for whatever reason go right ahead. It’s your country, you pay taxes there and you would know your fellow citizens better than me. Plus you’re entitled to your own opinion and you’re entitled to voice it. After all you are not Communists.
Turkle and Cash, as I read your comments, I see elements of truth in both positions.
Yes, there has been blatant interference on the part of the U.S. in the politics of third-world countries, Latin America being a particularly vivid example.
On the other hand. What took place in Europe from 1946 until 1989 was for the most part very much different.
Some agencies/departments of the U.S. governments, because of exaggerated fears of communism, were too lenient on Nazi officials who should have been arrested and tried at Nuremberg. Fear drives stupid decisions, and the U.S. was no exception to this after the Second World War.
There were bright spots, though, that eventually became much more meaningful — such as the Marshall Plan. It was not so much the money in the plan that was important; it was that the plan was a display of confidence by the U.S. — which was followed by the investments of the western Europeans themselves to bring their national economies into something like functional status again.
Was the U.S. the dominant force in western Europe during the Cold War? Yes. Was this overt imperialism? Hardly. The Europeans, as nations, were glad of the presence of the Americans, because it allowed them to develop more productive (and profitable) economic pursuits. Meanwhile, our economy grew more and more dysfunctional as more resources went to guns than butter.
The U.S. was upset when De Gaulle told us to get out — but hardly imperial enough to seriously contest his decision. The Germans did not dare do the same — for they were only too aware of the threat posed by the Soviet troops in the DDR.
The U.S. did much good in western Europe. It is indeed sad that our approach to the third world has been so different, with results ranging from the profoundly negative to the indifferent. The one exception that stand out is that of the Republic of Korea.
Cheers
I’m thinking the 33% energy consumption increase over the past 40 years is a *GLOBAL* statistic, that subtracts out the past 10 years of China…
Ix, most everything has become more efficient since the 70’s: lights, refrigerators (huge energy wasters if inefficient), televisions, cars, housing (better insulation/construction), hot water heaters, etc.
In some cases, notably appliances like refrigerators, the efficiency gains have been enormous, like 3-4x.
Look at the example of cars you use. If 10 people each have a 10 mpg car, that’s the same as 20 people each having a 20 mpg car. (Did I do that math right?)
Efficieny improvements really are the bee’s knees.
Not an empire in Europe, eh?
Take a look see here pls. There most certainly was a large effort to dominate Europe politically to make sure they didn’t go commie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio
I never said the US didn’t do any “good” in the post-WWII era either. Eastern European countries would have loved to be under Uncle Sam’s thumb as opposed to the Soviets.
The most egregious example of US monkeying around was in Chile, which was appalling. We deposed a democratically elected government and installed a military junta that systematically starting “disappearing” its own citizens.
Kind of like we did with the Shah in Iran, which is one of the reasons they now hate us so.
Yeah, go down the rabbit hole, take the red pill, etc. You’ll discover some rather unpleasant facts about America’s fun and games.
(US*) In the 70’s, there were ~50,000,000 cars getting 10MPG, that were driven an average of 5,000 miles per year.
Now, there are 200,000,000 cars getting 20MPG, that are driven an average of 10,000 miles per year. That alone is 300% increase, not 33%.
We can get into how many more McMansions have been built, but we’re arguing a moot point – *I THINK*.
Ix, if you break it down in the US between 75 and now…
Petroleum use is roughly the same.
Nat gas use is roughly the same.
Nuclear energy is up.
Coal is up.
Renewables are (slightly) up.
Well, I’m looking at a chart that goes to 2000. Could be a bit different now.
This is a good place for some US energy stats.
http://www.wou.edu/las/physci/GS361/electricity%20generation/HistoricalPerspectives.htm
See Figs 2 & 6.
“Well, I’m looking at a chart that goes to 2000. Could be a bit different now.”
MOOT.
LOL @ “wall of poast”!!!
“I’m getting tired of being called racist, or worse, by asoka, ixnei, mila51, surburbanempire, and turkle for saying that the US is ALREADY overpopulated and that immigration has to stop.”
Did you read my reply last week? Maybe? It was about the clear relationship between racists and anti-immigrants. When exactly did *YOU* immigrate?
That’s what I *THOUGHT*.
Yeah I’ve heard that argument too. But you are stretching the definition of empire. No doubt you have influence, but give yourself some credit, sometimes American arguments and views actually make sense.
But let’s not go too far, most of the world’s societies are a whole lot older than the US and their ways and cultures have deep roots. Your influence goes only so far.
You think we’re under your boot? Is this why we sell you stuff? So why do we sell our stuff to you guys? Because we want to is why, we make money and live well off trade with the US. Why do we drink Coke? Because we like it.
IMO you are confusing the coercive power of empire with the persuasion of so called “soft power”. And sometimes other people’s national interests coincide with yours. So you think you’re ordering the world around? No, sometimes we go along with you because it’s in our own national interest. But sometimes we don’t.
A lot of what Americans brought to the world was adopted because people wanted it. They look at the American way of life, American culture and music and they like it. Or at least some of it. What does an Afghan want? Does he want to die for Allah? Maybe but if he had his druthers he’d take a refrigerator. The American Dream, a house and a car. The Chinese see what you have and they want it. Would a Chinese peasant rather own a donkey cart or a Buick? Does this constitute “empire”?
I don’t want to sound insulting but man oh man you have too high an opinion of your power in places like the Middle East. Do you seriously think anybody’s paying attention to Hillary or Obama or any of their predecessors? If I was a betting man I’d bet the Israelis can hardly keep a straight face dealing with your diplomats. They look forward to American diplomatic visits because it’s a chance to do some fine dining and boozing. I’ll bet the Palestinians laugh in their beards when they hear about the “peace process”. But when your emissaries leave it’s back to the business of assassinations. If your power was what you think it is peace would have been imposed a long, long time ago and guys like Ahmedinejad would be sleeping peacefully in their graves.
Military and aid packages? How come we aren’t getting any? I’m pissed.
Turkle, some comments.
“Gladio” — as much a creation of the intelligence / security agencies of the European governments as something supported by the U.S. For those who want a summary (from Wikipedia):
If you think that Gladio was strictly a U.S. operation, I think you’re quite wrong about that. The only areas in which the CIA has been effective is those where there were powerful locals who were only too happy to use the assistance/meddling for their own ends. So one has to decide where “imperialism” and good old national power politics blend into one another. As Cash has repeatedly pointed out, blaming it all on the U.S. is fatuous. The CIA had plenty of help from locals.
You’re damned right the western powers intended there be a resistance movement to any communist takeover in western Europe that might have happened. The western Allies had gotten enamored of such concepts after the occasional successes of resistance movements in countries occupied by the Nazis during the Second World War.
On a much more personal level, I’ve had more than a couple of meaningful conversations with Europeans, both eastern and western, from different walks of life about the presence of the U.S. in Europe.
I think the one that touched me most deeply was the old Pole who, as a POW, had been a forced laborer at the “Dora” underground V-2 rocket site in eastern Germany. When he learned I was an American, he got this kind of distant look in his eyes, and said: “Ah, an American. I remember when your army liberated us.”
You see, I’ve had too many conversations that went along those lines. The people weren’t politely bullshitting me, either. They had lived in dark times and made it through — in many ways, I think they were beyond simple bullshitting anymore. For them, for any faults the Americans may have had, the U.S. had made a profound and positive difference in their lives.
But these are my experiences. From my standpoint, it was not all empire and it was not all bad. And that is the point of my ramblings here — it is easy to focus solely on the negative aspects. To achieve an accurate view, however, we should be willing to view both the bad and the good.
Cheers
All kidding aside, I’m not appealing for US “absolution of sins” — regularly recited as you just have, and with justification, I’ll add.
My argument is that dissolving the US as a sovereign nation – ending its entitlement to democratic rule by its citizen — will not (cannot) rectify the globe’s current problems.
Proposals to that effect are abstractions divorced from the reality that no matter how heinous are perceived much of our nation’s past it is aggrandized illusion about our respective power to believe our nation alone can account for the current state of the world.
Aggrandized illusion opposite is that we have national power to achieve the opposite, simply in a symbolic gesture of atonement involving surrendering sovereignty. Get over it, that kind of “last judgment” scenario will only disable us from avoiding here the disastrous social and environmental conditions in other parts of the world.
The one exception that stand out is that of the Republic of Korea. – Mont
Maybe you woudn’t put Japan in the category of the Third World. But I think American influence and military presence there paid huge dividends. Without this Japan might have remilitarized the way Germany did during the 1930s. Japan’s economy has been a mess for twenty years but the post war outcome could’ve been a lot worse.
I agree, even if I’m not convinced the U.S. will survive as a (single) sovereign nation in the near term. Any group in the world is capable of making themselves miserable with or without external influence/meddling/etc.
Cheers
… it is aggrandized illusion about our respective power to believe our nation alone can account for the current state of the world. – Cave
My sentiments precisely.
Cash –
Get a job. Or volunteer. Take up a hobby. You’re retired and you keep blathering on about the same old shit here week after week, month after month. Or maybe work up some new material. Or go watch some reruns of “Talking with Americans”.
C.R.
Ah,….that works nicely; labeling me as a “tea bagger” dismisses obligation upon you to counter with reasoned argument. So much for substantive political debate in America.
Cash, re: Japan. No doubt their neighbors in Asia still have issues with them, but yes, I think they’ve been a success story in a variety of ways. My comment was more about U.S. involvement in the third world.
Cheers
“Japan…they’ve been a success story in a variety of ways.”
Chernobyl-style, *TO BE SURE*! We’ll be celebrating their *FAILURE* for millenia!!!
Here’s an interesting little snapshot of our area in 1913. It was in our local newspaper, the Chronicle, on today’s editorial page. The article was by Julie McDonald and described a brochure she had run across.
To set the scene, Chehalis is about half way between Seattle and Portland, in Western Washington state. It’s on the railway line. Centralia, where I live is right next door. Now a ten minute trip by car. Back then, there was a trolly line between the two towns. Cheahlis in 1913 had 6,500 people.
There were 3 coal mines. 4 billiard halls, 8 restaurants, 4 drug stores, 2 bookstores, 8 real estate & insurance firms, 3 dry goods stores, 2 jewelry stores, 2 department stores, 3 hardware stores with furniture, 3 harness and saddler shops, 4 second hand stores,3 notions stores, 3 photographers, 10 grocery stores, 11 saloons, 3 bakers, 5 milliners, 6 confectionery, fruits & cigar stores, gotta go, will continue later.
Yes, helped by natural catastrophes of huge magnitude, to be sure.
Does that reduce the failure of the Japanese to provide for such catastrophes? Of course not.
But it also manifestly unfair to mention such things without also mentioning that it is on the basis of risk analysis that such ventures are made.
And I can assure you that the risk analysis of other countries has been no better in that regard. The day of the U.S. in terms of a nuclear plant catastrophe is coming, and I mean one that will be far worse than TMI. So we should not gloat over the agonies of the Japanese.
Cheers
Why do we even discuss these things here, anymore? We know it’s all coming down like the proverbial, “House of Cards.” Do we continue to *tune in*, hoping they can continue to *DELAY* the *INEVITABLE*?!?
“Why do we even discuss these things here, anymore?”
Well, why don’t you answer for yourself given that you’re here, too…
Well, you know, once things have come to a certain point, they often seem to have been inevitable.
Sometimes, we have gifted leaders who cause turns for the better.
But, yes, I also wonder where anyone with better ideas may now be.
Cheers
“helped by natural catastrophes of huge magnitude”
Huge catastrophes? Are you serious? The *BIG ONE* was well known, and supposed to hit about 20 years ago, in Japan. When my sister was in Japan, in ’95, I was constantly worried about the next mega-quake. It was *NOT* an accident – it was *WELL KNOWN* that the SH! WILL hit fan.
Mont, do you really think the main problem is a surfeit of ideas? There seem to be plenty out there.
Hoping *THEY* can continue to *delay* the *inevitable*… I’m spammin’ liek *TOOTSIE*!!! Sad daze ahead…
Ixnei, yes, I am serious. Predicting a “big one” for Japan is quite different than specifying exactly where it will hit, with which magnitude, what sort of tsunami will result, etc.
Industrial operations of any kind accept risk. How much risk is avoided boils down to a question of cost. The question of how much cost is accepted to mitigate a risk is driven by how often such risks occur — even with something as potentially disastrous as a nuclear plant catastrophe. That may sound absurd given what has happened in Japan; but if the quake had happened in such a way that no nuclear power plant was affected, then no one would be in the slightest bit concerned about the issue, either.
Is there a lesson here? I think yes, and the lesson is, if people want the benefits provided by certain kinds of industrial activity, then the risks have to be accepted. If people don’t like the risks, then the activity should not be undertaken — but everyone should also realize there is another side to the coin, such as increased cost for electrical power, etc.
For me personally, I could probably learn to live with a lot less electrical power. I’m not keen to be exposed to radioactivity any more than you are.
Cheers
Turkle, you’re right. My impression (however narrowed by the blinders I’ve acquired) is that few of the mainstream politicians have new ides, or at the least, desire to introduce them as a serious element in political discourse.
There are plenty of good ideas IMO in this forum alone. But I think times will have to get much harder before they are seriously considered.
Cheers
OK, so illegal immigration is undermining our country. What steps do you propose we take to deal with this issue?
“OK, so illegal immigration is undermining our country. What steps do you propose we take to deal with this issue?”
I suggest you paint your skin brown, and sit outside Home Depot waiting for $15/hr.
Oye?
The issue here is risk vs. reward. What benefit is received by having a nuclear reactor? What are the costs, i.e., construction, maintenance, health and cleanup should the reactor be damaged or destroyed? We compare risk and reward, using probabilities. Then this analysis should be made public; let the people decide if they want to assume the risk. Then if or when something bad happens, the government can whip out the analysis and say, “We told you the risk and you decided to take it, it’s ultimately your responsibility. Now let’s get to work and straighten this mess out.”
Maybe the Japanese government did make this analysis and made it public. I don’t know. But given that the plant is near the coastline in a major earthquake zone, it seems rather stupid to me that it was ever built.
Such sarcasm. So you think the problem is either unsolvable or really isn’t a problem at all? If not, then try to be more serious in your replies.
Call me cynical but…
Who else is tired of everyone’s if-I-were-the-dictator, 10-steps-to-perfect-utopia, everyone-needs-to-do-as-I-say, internet ramblings?
I’m even sick of it when I do it myself.
I guess it beats expending much physical energy to do anything that might actually matter.
Ix, why do you use so many astericks? Is it to make up for the fact that there is no “shout” button or perhaps that this blog is plain old text without any bold or italic fonts?
It doesn’t really add anything, FYI. I’d leave them out, but, hey, if it floats yer boat, keep on keeping on I guess.
It’s always easier to be the good guy when confronted with problems. You ideas on immigration for example are true, but not the politically correct thing to say, so you must be a racist. What people don’t seem to understand is that the world’s population is booming and they would ALL come here if they were able. I brought up the analogy of a house before. I could fit a few more people in my house, but at some point, I’d have to stop. Where should that point be? When I have 15 or 20 people crammed in my two bedroom house? The point is, no matter how many you take in, there are more waiting. It has to stop sometime. I would say that 11 million illegal Mexicans coming here is not illegal immigration, it’s an exodus. Big difference. When will it stop, when we’re as crowded as India? As long as we allow it, they will never stop. The US is just the blowoff valve for Mexico’s overpopulation problems. It may not be politically correct, but that’s the reality of it. I know, I know, dealing with reality sucks.
Hi there.
Oh, hey, wow….HTML tags work. Who woulda thunk.
Hey, Ix, now when you want to emphasize something you can use HTML bold or italic tags. Neat eh?
People migrating from more populated to less populated areas is like a natural law of physics. I don’t deal with rights and wrongs so much, but this type of movement is pretty much inevitable and has been throughout human history. So, no, I don’t think it can be easily stopped, especially since America is so rich and Mexico comparatively poor, which adds yet another whole level of pressure differential. At least, I don’t think it is easy to stop without implementing some rather draconian laws such as e-verify for all employees, very stiff fines or prison sentences for those hiring illegals, a massive number of INS/ICE agents, militarizing the border, etc. These would all pretty much be unprecedented actions for America (with a few exceptions from our past history).
Well, Spaulding, I think you’re right about the exodus part. Mexico is a fairly sucky place to live in terms of poverty, lack of good government, corruption, climate, etc. US is pretty good in comparison.
So, to my mind, maybe we should work on changing this disparity. We’re willing to sink at least 4 billion a month into a country halfway around the world (Iraq). Wouldn’t that money be better spent directly helping out Mexico, which shares a 1000+ mile border with us? Its internal politics and economics end up having a huge effect on us, probably more so than any other country. I believe the law enforcement aspect has its limits unless you want to have a totalitarian/fascist state here.
I dunno, I just find the “We’re Americans. They’re not. Let them fry.” attitude to be kind of distasteful and short-sited, though in some way I understand it. Oftentimes empathy seems to stop at the national borders or it is confined to Americans, and I wonder why that is when so many people proclaim themselves as Christians who care about the plight of all mankind.
Spauld, America does have a low population density compared with the rest of the world. Trying to keep it that way going forward is going to be, let’s say, a somewhat tricky business.
There you go. I guess you get the crackerjack prize.
Re: Imminent Government Shutdown
“troops would be paid only through April 15”
So, if our troops are not paid, will they continue to fight? Are they patriotic “defenders of freedom” or are they looking for a government handout, tuition-paid-by-taxpayers college education, GI Bill, etc.?
Will they continue to risk their lives if they are not rewarded with dollar payments? Patriots or mercenaries?
We cannot afford to pay soldiers if the country is broke, as the Tea Party people say. Paying soldiers would only increase the debt.
More importantly, if our troops are not paid, is the contract they signed to “serve” our country now null and void? Can they leave their units with impunity?
Tea Party people say the USA has no money, so the USA has no money to pay troops, so the government defaults on it contract with the soldiers: the “stop loss” fine print becomes invalid.
Oh, yes, I got a prize!
Ouch! I guess the truth hurts but you can’t hide from the facts. I take it you are projecting a breakdown in social order as competition, even among citizens becomes tense.
Houses are empty and will stay empty because people can not afford to pay the annual property taxes.
Telling lies is considered completely moral by Leftists as long as it furthers the Revolution. As are threats, theft, vandalism, and murder. Futhering the Revolution is their ONLY moral consideration. Therefore, nothing they say can be taken at face vaulue. Nothing. Everything fact they present has to be checked for distortion and outright falsehood. Thus no real dialogue is possible. In Truth, there is nothing to say. The coming battle will be determined by Strength.
(Cont’d from 3:34 PM). 6 contracting carpenters and construction companies, 3 garages, 5 blacksmiths, 5 livery stables, 2 bicycle and automobile repair shops, 7 barber shops, 3 merchant tailors, 2 shoe stores, 4 meat markets. Also; 2 newspapers, 8 churches, 3 banks, 2 hospitals, 5 hotels, high school, 2 grade schools and the Holy Rosary Academy. Manufacturing: furniture plant, condensed milk plant, tank & silo, gun powder, 2 lumber mills, brick & tile works, bottling works, mattress factory, Ice plant, glove factory, feed mill, laundry, 2 foundry & machine shops, cooperative creamery and two marble works.
Things not mentioned in the article I also thought of: library, city hall, county seat. Train station. Police and fire departments. By 1911 I think thee was the rudiments of telephone exchange, electrical system and water works.
A microcosm. A little universe. A world made by hand. So, why so much in such a small town? Being on the main line of the railroad. Plus, there were all kinds of spur lines running up into the surrounding farming valleys. Saturdays, all the country folk came into town.
As “the film runs backwards” on our civilization, it’s worth looking at these businesses and services to perhaps catch a glimpse of what may be of value to people in the future.
It is kinda funny, Vlad, but in most of your posts, one could substitute “Right” for “Left,” and “conservative” instead of “liberal,” and it would read just fine. Could it be that the tactics are the same regardless of professed ideology?
Vlad said: “The coming battle will be determined by Strength.”
=====================
Hmmm… sounds like the natural physical superiority of Blacks might come in handy.
Thanks, Lew. That’s mighty interesting stuff…
Oh snap!
You’re entirely welcome, Helen. Now perhaps you enlighten me as to why Whites don’t have the right to their own Nations but Blacks, Browns, and East Asians do. And why I’m a racist, but those Non-White Nationalists are not?
If I say that everyone should be able to live wherever they want, do I get another prize?
‘Just like the comicbook conservaties, guys like you on the kneejerk left spew factoids without any historical knowledge. Pathetic’
hahahha
the ampedstatus site is OK, was slow to load on my PC.
‘People migrating from more populated to less populated areas is like a natural law of physics’
gee in my 50+ years what ive seen is the opposite.
In US, Mexico City etc.
For that I will award you the “FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT” prize.
Unfortunately there are few true believers in freedom. Most want to build walls and pay armies to defend borders TO PREVENT FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT on the planet.
Evil Corporatists and Faux News Zionists lie too. They only want to win just like the Left. But I’m not one of those fake Conservatives nor was I speaking to them. There are few if any rich, right wing liars on this site. There may a be a couple of their dupes though.
‘Ixnei’ is latin for ‘Scroll Past’.
No. We’re sick of “minorities” (Whites will never get minority status and its benefits – even when we become one) following us and sucking us dry. If they’re so great, why don’t they build something of their own?
Hey, asia.
Yes, that’s true. I shouldn’t have written in such absolutist terms.
In general, people move from the poor, crowded third world to come to the less crowded, rich first world (e.g. America). There is a lot of immigration from India, China, and Mexico into the US but almost no reverse flow.
Now, internally to a given country, the dynamics are not purely reflective of population densities, primarily because in the rural areas, there aren’t many good jobs, whereas the cities have work for people.
I should have also mentioned that moving from a poor to a rich country is also like a physical law. It may even be more important than population densities, though they are often related, in that overpopulated places are oftentimes poor.
I call him Xenu. His use of *’s instead of quotation marks is just too cool.
“Ix, why do you use so many astericks?”
*MOOT*. You really don’t seem to get me/it.
“Who else is tired of everyone’s if-I-were-the-dictator, 10-steps-to-perfect-utopia, everyone-needs-to-do-as-I-say, internet ramblings?”
Tired! Hehehe!!!
“‘Ixnei’ is latin for ‘Scroll Past’.”
Q-Wow!!! Finally, a coherent sentence that I can understand, *fact-based* EvEn…
Babble (sp?) on!!!
As much as I think this guy is merely a *MASTER DEBATOR* flip-flopper, I gotta give this one a *THUMBS UP*:
“Unfortunately there are few true believers in freedom. Most want to build walls and pay armies to defend borders TO PREVENT FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT on the planet.”
“7 barber shops”
Now that is simply sad. I’ve been shaving my own head for 20 years, and it’s a 15 minute job now (used to take 50+ minutes)…
“Houses are empty and will stay empty because people can not afford to pay the annual property taxes.”
Maybe you should be liek Bon Jovi, or the *Boss*, where you own hundreds of acres, but pay a mere $100/year in property taxes (my property taxes are $3k/year – rediculous!)
“Hey, Ix, now when you want to emphasize something you can use HTML bold or italic tags.”
*MOOT*. Let’s talk about *CLEARCUTTING*!!!
Me Tarzan, you King Kong, huh? Tarzan was King of the Apes. He beat up the Ape Chief by using martial arts instead of brute strength.
How *totally* absurd is it, earning ~$30k/year, and saving $15k *every year*?
It works, *sometimes*!!! LOL @ *speak for yourselves*
Anyone want to talk about the clearcutting/slash and burn tactics that have devastated almost 50% of the *AMAZON BASIN*?
I thought *NOT*.
Turkle: Not sure there any good ideas out there, with or without us doing X. There’s the inevitable crash of capitalism and then it will matter little what anyone wants to do. Circumstances will run us. Meantime, the SYSTEM will do it’s damnedest to keep as mush of the status quo going as it can. The real adjustments are going to be in our heads. That is if we’ve not fried ourselves out of existence. Jack
Uh, oh, Vlad is speaking about himself in the plural again.
“If they’re so great, why don’t they build something of their own?”
Yeah, cuz like in all all the countries made up primarily of the brown skinned, people live in caves and eat human flesh.
Why U so *sarcastic* – LOL!!!
“Yeah, cuz like in all all the countries made up primarily of the brown skinned, people live in caves and eat human flesh.”
Yummy!!! I *DROOL*
Re: Imminent Government Shutdown
Anybody think the Republicans are going to support the Democrats to support this bill?
Anybody still believe there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats?
Sometimes Jim is way over the top, but not this time. He really lays it out clearly and (somewhat) concisely that the whole “drill baby drill” attitude is delusional. LIke his sizing up of Yergin too 🙂
Thank you, Ixnei. It is about time someone defends cannibalism, the condemnation of which is another instance of speciesism which maintains that there is something morally very special or distinctive about simply being a human. Speciesism says that Homo sapiens as a species that deserves special treatment.
But we are animals, too, and there is no morally relevant distinction between humans and all other creatures, so what’s the big deal about cannibalism? If you are not vegetarian, you have already shown you’re down with eating animal flesh (cows, pigs, horses, dogs, rabbits, etc.)
Cannibalism is a practice that used to be widespread. The cultural conquest of the world by Western thought has made it morally repugnant.
I am not convinced by the so-called “Western” values that killed human beings by the millions in the 20th century, yet self-righteously condemns cannibalism (based on the propaganda of cultural background and cultural conditioning). Shrug off the conditioning, dudes.
Be consistent and swear off killing (both humans and animals) altogether. If you justify other kinds of killing, your condemnation of cannibalism rings hollow.
CORRECTION
Speciesism says that Homo sapiens is a species that deserves special treatment.
“The main issue I have with this website – and I’m including myself here – is everyone has their opinions and beliefs…” BUT
“I see us as all talk and no action.”
-btb-
Bill,
There are multiple levels of action. IMO, this website enables the perfection of the first of these levels – BITCHING
Beyond that, some of us are operating on the practical and physical level. TrippTicket is the best example of this — but there are many, many others.
Thought and actions have to be tailored to the situation in which someone finds himself or herself. Not everyone can control 1000+ acres, like our JDFarmer. Some of us have a chicken behind the shed, mushrooms in a spare bathroom, or a goat on a rope.
===================
But real human action that can produce change – happens on the mental, psychological, and collective levels. That means group consensus and/or political action.
I first came to this website planning to find political consensus. I have found some – but I have learned to look beneath the layers of the ClusterFuck for consensus. There will always be one, two, or three who ScrewUp the consensus.
Here, asoka and vlad come to mind.
Beyond that, though, I’m astonished at how much useful information I have begun to implement that I discovered on CFN. Permaculture and fungi farming come to mind.
Keep asking questions, BTB.
You are good at it!
The mania/passion/emoting without reason, is just as high now, as it was back in the 60s. We are already beyond peak oil usage.
Meanwhile, while Birkenstock shod wailers wail, synthesis of hydrocarbons, space exploration and reaching out, rather than lowering expectations, will have Saturn making Saudi Arabia look like a shirt stain.
We are not the only planet. time to move on.
Hate humans? you are not alone.
Just want to sell your writing? Well, are you pregnant yet?
Biofuels are kind of cool. It makes food prices so high that 2 billion people starve, and we have un-done all the preservation of life that “franken-foods” have done. James, you have to like that one as you trade insults with Eva in your bunker.
Progressorconserve said: “There will always be one, two, or three who ScrewUp the consensus.
Here, asoka and vlad come to mind.”
==========
Yup, I’m a non-conformist. I have a different view. I am often optimistic, and provide facts to back up my optimism.
I am definitely pacifist and condemn violence, whether related to war or the animal on your dinner plate.
I believe in FREEDOM OF MOVEMENT on planet earth and do not believe in borders or limits on immigration based on imaginary lines. Do you see the imaginary lines on our beautiful globe:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/0/885/modis_wonderglobe_lrg.jpg
I am proud my rational and evidence-based views make me a minority on CFN.
Thank you for the compliment, progressorconserve.
Damnit Old – you really need to CALM down a little.
Patrizza writes a thoughtful response to one of your posts; you quote her back to herself:
“The rent shouldn’t be cheap, should be the right price, like everything else.”
-patrizza- to old69 – back to patrizza –
And then you have the temerity to call patrizza a “Right Wing Thug”
You’ve got some good ideas, old. But you are losing all your readers with the the overly long posts, the repetition, the double posts, and the insults. Why insult Patrizza, for example??
Relax, why don’t you? More people will read your posts when you concentrate on one idea at the time.
“Excellent read, Sir. I don’t think about what car my next one will be, but if there will be a next one. Often, when out driving, I look at all the waste land around every cloverleaf, highway exit, etc., and wonder, if or when we’ll be planting it to grow food, because of the severity of the crisis that we are in. Doing so would give the land more value than the highways themselves will have, as far as fossil fueled transportation is concerned.”
I don’t believe that any soil touched by cars, asphalt or industry will be fertile.
“Yes, Mr. K, it’s all about the cars.
People are nuts for their cars. Men, in particular, can have an entire conversation on the gas mileage of various vehicles, most usually pick-up trucks. (I know this for a fact because I recently had to break one up so we could get the original conversation back on track.)Geeezzz….
When people are no longer able to drive their cars as they always have, look out.
Uprising straight ahead.”
—————
An uprising to go back to the future that could never happen.
PoC,
Are you quite sure you’re not putting the cart before the horse with the immigration issue?
Here’s an idea to chew on, from a perspective standpoint…
Do some of us feel that the “political will” and direction of the country is being controlled and manipulated by corporate powers?
(The answer of course is: absolutely.)
So, where do you think those entities come down on the whole “cheap immigrant labor” deal?
The fairly obvious conclusion is: Nothing concerning [cheap, imported] labor is going to change until you get rid of those that exploit it for their own greed.
…And that is the “immigrant issue” in a nutshell.
-ozone-
Good points, Ozone. But I’m not sure how you are going to “get rid of” the corporate powers and entities that exploit cheap immigrant labor and most of the rest of us – without a revolution.
I’m not seeing a revolution happening until food runs short and the power goes off.
Meanwhile – the last thing we need is more human souls in America adding to the degradation of Planet Earth’s resources.
I’m going to do what I can to encourage potential immigrants to stay home and work on the problems in their home countries.
Let me know where you think I’m wrong.
“”The US used half of the oil we use today, and life was not Mad Max.”
No kidding? For fuck’s sake there was well less than half the population we now have. Naturally, we used less oil.”
I think he/she meant that oil wasn’t as widely used as it is today, regardless of population.
“Immigrants especially those in the food industry are treated no better then indentured servants of the 1600 and 1700 propping up the US with cheap labor. I say get your ass of your fucking computer and go out and replace a Mexican in the fields. No need for new cheap labor if you take the step of doing it your self.”
-theroachman- replying to cavepainter
That’s the whole point, roach. I have watched immigrant labor completely undercut and eliminate native born labor – here in poultry plant country where I live.
The jobs went to the immigrant “lowest bidders” who were willing to live 10 to a house, pay no taxes, and never complain.
Middle class America got cheap chicken. Corporate America got all of the profits.
That model is breaking down.
What do you think would be a reasonable maximum population for the continental US?
“What do you think would be a reasonable maximum population for the continental US?”
The same as India?
First of all, ixnei – PLEASE, PLEASE explain what you intend to say by:
“wall of post” – ixnei
If it’s a joke or an insult – you must explain!!
Then you fluff:
“the clear relationship between racists and anti-immigrants. When exactly did *YOU* immigrate?”
The “clear relationship” between racists and anti-immigrants only exists in your mind. They are two different issues completely.
Prove me wrong – in the context of *peak everything* and resource depletion.
The native american population of the US was 30 million, when Columbus got here. We are now at 315 million – only because of fossil fuel. Tell us, of CFN, why this is going to have a happy ending, please.
My girlfriends Grandfather told me a story about his upbringing. He said that his father was a house painter during the depression and they couldn’t afford to buy food, so they grew their own veggies and had a few chickens.
He said that he and his brother (when they were very young) had the job of plucking the eyes out of potatoes and placing them (not chucking, lest they wanted a beating) in a bin in the cellar. His mother boiled all of them in jars and that was their food for the cold New England winter.
What he said next left me stunned and teary eyed.
“We had it pretty damn good back then.”
ProCon said: “The jobs went to the immigrant “lowest bidders” who were willing to live 10 to a house, pay no taxes, and never complain.”
=========
You are right about not complaining. Complaining draws attention and risk deportation. Immigrants also observe the laws, stopping at every stop sign, for the same reason.
You are wrong that they “pay no taxes” … unless they never eat out at McDonalds or KFC or any other fast food place… unless they never shop at WalMart or any other box store… unless they never buy gasoline, etc.
I assume Georgia has a sales tax and immigrants are paying taxes every day they spend their money in the local economy. With every post on immigration you confirm your racism.
“We don’t need alternative energy, we need alternative lifestyles. Good luck telling THAT to the American public.”
Tell that especially to the Palinites.
Thanks for the response, Captain. Sometimes it looks as though anyone expressing a practical thought here – must have LOST HIS/HER MIND!
You say:
“The US is just the blowoff valve for Mexico’s overpopulation problems. It may not be politically correct, but that’s the reality of it. I know, I know, dealing with reality sucks.”
-cs-
You are correct, CaptainSpaulding.
Meanwhile, asoka is trolling me with that googleearth picture he posts every week – of nations without borders. But the borders are plainly visible, to anyone with eyes. The borders are rivers, mountain ranges, deserts – visible, practical borders.
The Rio Grande border between the US and Mexico is a perfect border. It is visible and easily defended – from either direction.
The Treaty of Guadaloupe Hidalgo established the US/Mexico border as a legal and defensible border under international law.
All the rest of this is just noise.
And the planet destroying desire of US multinationals for cheap labor – to beyond absurdity and into collapse.
Jack,
That is the most important advise to those with limited options (ummm, most of us).
Like I told an aware 22 yr.-old t’other day: “Stay flexible; travel light; don’t get in the habit of “needing” much to get by.”
The “Eating Fossil Fuels” article convinced me that humanity is ultimately doomed. Modern agriculture is not even close to sustainable. Read it and weep.
See you in the bunker.
Captain,
I am being trolled so badly. Here’s what asoka just said to me:
“With every post on immigration you confirm your racism.”
-asoka-
What an impediment to honest dialog. Meanwhile, asoka continues to demonstrate his own racism. Only his racism only favors the “M&M’s” as asoka called them last week.
Do you have any suggestions, Captain? Or does anyone else have a suggestion?
“To let a lie stand unchallenged is to give it some truth”
-anon-
So, ignoring a frequent and repetitive poster is not a solution, from my perspective.
ProCon said: “The Rio Grande border between the US and Mexico is a perfect border. It is visible and easily defended – from either direction.”
==========
Do you say this with a straight face, after millions have waded across this so-called “border”?
The Reconquista of land taken from Mexico is well underway.
You can whine and bitch all you like, but nothing will stop the Mexicans from taking back their land, land that was forcibly and violently taken from them.
The Treaty you refer to is not so rosy as you make it out to be. You also ignore that for 70 years after the Treaty was signed the border between the USA and Mexico was open. People went back and forth both ways with no problems.
Then the “border patrol” was created in 1924. That’s when “illegal immigration” really got going, and the “border patrol” has been an obvious failure and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
¡Viva La Reconquista!
“What do you think would be a reasonable maximum population for the continental US?”
The same as India?”
-berger- to PoC
berger, whether you are serious or not – we’ve got two big problems, here.
One, is that India’s population is only sustained by fossil fuels. They may burn less, per capita, than the US – but without fossil fuels, fertilizer, and all that these entail, 100’s of millions of the Indian people would die.
Two – the US is not India. ALL of us immigrated here to the US because we were unhappy somewhere else. This makes us a fractious Nation – genetically disposed to being uncooperative and to having a need for wide open spaces.
There were +/- 30,000,000 native Americans in the US at the time of Columbus. We have exceeded that population by a factor of TEN!
We have to stop growing the population of this Country.
It may be too late, but I refuse to give up until death claims me.
Turkle – when required, a man must fight.
-bhagavad gita-
Okay ok you say it’s time to move on, we are not the only planet
you go first.
Yes you are good at it.
I like both of you guys’ posts.
He’s still going, Captain –
“The Reconquista of land taken from Mexico is well underway.
You can whine and bitch all you like, but nothing will stop the Mexicans from taking back their land, land that was forcibly and violently taken from them.”
-asoka-
Asoka denies a legal treaty. He denies the Rio Grande. He shills for corporate American multinationals as they pack the US full of desperate souls.
He is a racist. But because he speaks in favor of “La Raza” (“the race”) it is all OK???
strange
Funny. A year from now my life is going to be very different. No particular plan, as yet. I figure opportunities will present themselves and way will open. But right now, I’m divesting myself of “stuff.” Whatever it sells for is what it’s worth.
I think I’m sticking with Western Washington. Or, maybe the Alaskan panhandle. I’ll be 62. Maybe, I thought, I’ll just throw a small camper on the truck (Ranger, short bed, standard, less than 50,000 miles) and kick around for awhile. See what’s out there. See if anyplace calls to me.
ProCon, not only are you a racist, you are a coward. You won’t talk directly to me… you crybaby to Capt. Spaulding.
You are also ignorant of Spanish and the meaning of “la raza” which means “the people”
ALL THE RACES … ALL THE CULTURES … LA RAZA
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=la%20raza
Be honest ProCon and at least admit you have no idea what you are talking about when it comes to translating “la raza”
I am not talking about what is “legal” … anybody can pass a law and instantly make human beings “illegal”. I am talking about what is right. You are denying the reality of “La Reconquista” trying to denigrate it as “illegal”
Any comments on Orlov’s book “Fleeing Vesuvius”?
Thanks.
According to ProCon and his racist buddy Vlad, “la raza” means “the race”
Yeah, I’ve heard of that term before and I agree:
THE HUMAN RACE
consisting of ALL CULTURES and ALL PEOPLES
Now he is calling me names, Captain.
“ProCon, not only are you a racist, you are a coward” -asoka-
And then asoka spins and quibbles about the dictionary definition of “la raza.”
http://www.spanishdict.com/translation
So try this. Type in “la raza” into ANY Spanish-English translator.
The definition will return in English as, “race.”
strange
NCLR IS AN ORGANIZATION AND KNOWS WHAT IT’S NAME MEANS. THEY CHOSE IT.
Many people incorrectly translate our name, “La Raza,” as “the race.” While it is true that one meaning of “raza” in Spanish is indeed “race,” in Spanish, as in English and any other language, words can and do have multiple meanings. As noted in several online dictionaries, “La Raza” means “the people” or “the community.” Translating our name as “the race” is not only inaccurate, it is factually incorrect. “Hispanic” is an ethnicity, not a race. As anyone who has ever met a Dominican American, Mexican American, or Spanish American can attest, Hispanics can be and are members of any and all races.
The term “La Raza” has its origins in early 20th century Latin American literature and translates into English most closely as “the people” or, according to some scholars, as “the Hispanic people of the New World.” The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions.
Mistranslating “La Raza” to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, “La Raza Cósmica,” meaning the “cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.
And this is not just NCLR’s interpretation. According to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, “La Raza” means:
“…Mexicans or Mexican Americans considered as a group, sometimes extending to all Spanish-speaking people of the Americas.”
Furthermore, MSNBC’s online Spanish-English website, Encarta, translates the term this way:
“Hispanic Spanish-speakers in the Americas: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, or Spanish-speaking people of the Americas, considered as a group.”
The Free Dictionary, available online, similarly finds that the term “La Raza”:
“…embodies the notion that traditional, exclusive concepts of race and nationality can be transcended in the name of humanity’s common destiny.”
“”wall of post”” I believe it was *wall of POAST*, I might be wrong. You spammed for multiple pages – CLUE-BEE?
“Then you fluff:
“the clear relationship between racists and anti-immigrants. When exactly did *YOU* immigrate?””
I guess you didn’t read my *POAST* last week – should I re-POAST it here for you, and derail the *convo*?
The native american population (THERE YOU GO – from England?) of the US…
“It is about time someone defends cannibalism” I quoted turkle, not sure I supported it…
But yeah, *BROTHA OF A DIFF’ MUTHA* You and me, we’re *THE SAME*.
Ahahaha, argue *THAT*.
Again, Captain, words have meaning.
Making recourse to a Spanish-English dictionary, an organization could choose many definitions.
http://www.spanishdict.com/translation
el pueble = the people
la comunidad = the community
la raza = the race
Perhaps La Raza should rename themselves with a name that translates in a less divisive manner.
=============
And, no matter where one looks it up, “la reconquista” translates into English as “the reconquest.”
That sounds divisive, at best.
“”wall of post”” I believe it was *wall of POAST*, I might be wrong. You spammed for multiple pages – CLUE-BEE?
-ixnei-
CLUE-BEE???
I spammed for multiple pages????
WTF???? are you talking about, IXNEI?????
Sorry, ix, I’m picking myself up off the F, which I have been RO, while LMAO for a second.
You have confused me with another poster with whom you have been battling.
If I’m not battling on CFN or the local political blogs – then I’m out battling in meatspace, and with the bugs and weeds in mygardenspace, and communing with nature in woodspace, down next to the creekspace.
“If I’m not battling on CFN or the local political blogs – then I’m out battling in meatspace, and with the bugs and weeds in mygardenspace, and communing with nature in woodspace, down next to the creekspace.”
That SH! rhymes – make a song already!!! Do us a *FAVOR*, for once. *PLEASE*
WALL OF *F* text. (asoka LOL)
Allah Who?
Why thank you, IX –
“That SH! rhymes – make a song already!!! Do us a *FAVOR*, for once. *PLEASE*” -ixnei-
I would like to do that IX. But, for now, I must get myself away to bedspace. I am done for nowspace. Which makes no sh*tspace!
*YOU* write *the* song that makes *the* whole *world* *sing?* *?* *?* *!* *?*
The US is just the blowoff valve for Mexico’s overpopulation problems. It may not be politically correct, but that’s the reality of it. -cs-
It f’in goes way beyond that.
The govt of Mexico is destabilizing the USA.
Props – Barry stole that one from me!!! He’s a good boy, so *HOW* could I punish him?>!
My Doctors from a small city in Iowa. He went back there a few years ago.
‘THE TOWNS RUINED, THERES A MEAT PACKING PLANT, PLACE IS FULLA WETBACKS.’
HOW DOES A RACIST THINK..
IN 10,000 WORDS OR LESS?
ProCon said:
And what do you call yourself, an “American” as if the people of Honduras and Nicaragua are not “Americans”, as if the people of Bolivia and Chile are not “Americans”
One man’s “divisive” is another man’s “justice”
I really feel for you, ProCon. You White Male Protestants are now a minority, and it seems to be bothering you. Mexicans will soon be a majority and that seems to bother you, too. You have lost your country, dude, due to your own racist xenophobia that prevents you from embracing all who cross the “border”
You can whine and bitch all you like:
NO THATS WHAT YOU DO.
Cavepainter | April 3, 2011 11:54 PM |
In reaction to a Florida preacher exercising his First Amendment right of free speech by burning paper pulp (the Koran in this instance) a bunch of people in foreign nations having 11th Century mind-set react by killing people. Reaction from politicos in our nation’s capitol was predictable: statements to the effect that somehow the acts are equivalent. Oh, I see, PC demands that we “temper” our behavior to comport with the ignorance of the 11th Century.
I say fuck’em! Yeah, I’ve heard the pitch that the Reverend’s action endangers the safety and lives of Americans in those retarded countries. Well hell, that’s easy: pull back all official or military involvement in those countries — including foreign aid. As for US civilians, corporations or NGOs who choose to “adventure travel”, proselytize or do business to such places; leave them to whatever “luck of the draw” outcome (risk upon them in choosing).
Essentially, leave foreign nations to whatever fate they choose no matter how primitive from our viewpoint, but don’t dare ask that we shift our viewpoint or surrender Bill of Rights privileges to appease them.
CAVEPAINTER..THE LESSON HERE IS MUSLIMS TRUMP FREESPEECH.
PC TRUMPS CITIZENS RIGHTS.
Speaking of PR, have you seen this one? Very powerful – ads can be used to awaken people not just delude them.
http://swineline.org/media/
Don’t forget that the Left adores mass immigration – it fits in with their agenda to undermine separate nations. And of course, the Democratic Party loves them too – as do all Social Service Agencies. The more clients, the more voters, the more power. Truly mass Third World immigration has brought the two parties into a secret accord – a marriage made in Hell.
We are in a trap. The solutions to at least the major problems like Houses, Salaries (or Jobs, whichever you prefer, it is irrelevant, because they only reflect power relationships in a Technological Economy that produces all it needs with very little real labor needed at all) and Energy are all very simple and completely available. Just give out Free Salaries or create real jobs with huge public – private endeavors like Skyscrapers and Rockets to Mars, Cheap Rents, and use high density living, apartment houses – clustered centers or Skyscrapers like Seoul and BUSES for mass transit.
Simple. Very simple and too simple. But we have all the past investment of past labor (Your hard earned money and rent out cheap), prices of houses in New York and Paris are high, etc. We only look at the situation on the ground, and the situation on the ground is the only thing we can even imagine, we can even conceive, all other possibilities cannot even be conceived, as if that is the only game possible, as if they are laws of physics. In fact, they are, they are arbitrary laws that have evolved and have put a gridlock on everything, nothing can possibly change (if not for worse). We are trapped in a process that is beyond any control, but this process is geared towards giving only advantages to the dominating classes.
For example, a simple law that forces Rents and Home prices in New York and Paris to be tied to minimum wage, bar none, so minimum wage is 800 dollars, rents or mortgages (you can buy if you want, nothing wrong with that) cannot be more than 200 dollars would easily finally solve this problem. Who loses ? No one, everyone gains. Don’t like that solution. ? Ok, another solution could be the “government” can build homes for the minimum wage workers, and build enough so that there is no fake “scarcity” inducing prices up (by the way, home builders and apartment builders would love this, and the government can pay all of this with the trillions of dollars the FED constantly prints and gives, for free, to AIG, the Banks, and so many other already super rich entities: at least the money would be given for real work to produce real goods).
If rents and home prices are high in New York and Paris, that is a law of physics that no one even ever doubts. No one even can imagine it being different, no even ever challenges it. It is a given. It is like this and cannot be any other way and will always be like this, just like the sky is blue. Same for “labor always costing, oh so much”, same for everything that even slightly attempts to challenge the status quo and dominating classes. But everyone thinks they have “something to lose” if this arrangement changes, everyone thinks that they are gaining by high rents and union busting, and beating up all the lazy slob workers, by lamenting resource scarcity, etc. Everyone is so completely brainwashed by all of this, that it is virtually impossible to hope for any change.
So go on, wall street, keep on robbing, hike up prices of real estate as much as possible, kick out all the lazy bum workers (workers are all, by definition, lazy bums robbing money from the poor entrepreneurs and employers and capitalists) go on. Go on, everyone, keep on saying oil is finishing therefore there is not enough room for anyone to live anymore (all the “others” should simply die off or slug it out like in Libya) kick out all public workers, they are all parasites. Go on, concentrate money in as few hands as possible.
For example, a simple law that forces Rents and Home prices in New York and Paris to be tied to minimum wage, bar none, so minimum wage is 800 dollars a month, rents or mortgages (you can buy if you want, nothing wrong with that) cannot be more than 200 dollars a month would easily finally solve this problem.
Yes it boggles the mind – people blaming the preacher as if he killed those UN people. Why on Earth should any Western Country want any of these people as residents. We have a serious death wish. The question becomes: who taught us to hate ourselves? Or did it come from within?
All night service? That’s living in a way we’ve forgoten or perhaps never knew. Our ideal has been the lonely farmhouse – in Europe farmers lived in the village and walked to their fields everyday. Thus we evolved the cult of the car.
asia, thank you for having the courage to address me directly instead of being a cowardly resident impediment impeding dialog by addressing your remarks instead to Capt. Spaulding.
I want to know if anyone on CFN thinks radiation from Fukushima will be a problem in the US
I’ve got my eye like a hawk on the radiation over in Japan…this is the best site I’ve been able to find so far in terms of independent (non-government) monitoring:
http://radiationintokyo.com
So looking at that (as of this writing), it seems like even over there things are pretty much OK. But for how long? It’s a big concern.
MR Kunstler – I did chew on the idea of electric cars after reading this paragraph:
“Here’s something to chew on: we run about 250 million cars in the USA. Let’s say we ramped up an electric vehicle fleet of 10 million cars – which, by the way, is a purely hypothetical and wildly optimistic number. Do you think it might be a political problem if 10 million lucky Americans get to drive electric cars while everybody else either pays through the nose for gasoline, or can’t even afford to own a car anymore
I have not had a cornucopian idea for a long while…but here is one idea:
What if there was a martial law of sorts or ban on gasoline cars. Say, by 6/2014 gasoline cars will be outlawed. Shipping trucks excluded until 12/2016. Can there be any way a government could enforce this without violent civil unrest? Will having only electric cars achieve anything worthwhile. Is there enough battery material to go around?
Maybe Obama isn’t really lying? Maybe he’s just a submissive, Masochistic personality that is simply disinterested in knowing the Truth? Maybe he doesn’t have an independent Self?
Bravo – a beautiful post. You said it all. The Inquisitors? There are tens of millions of them. Political Correctness is a religion. It’s adherents sacrafice other Whites and support White Dispossesion. Thus they prove to themselves, the High Priests, and to Minority “judges” that they are good Whites – not like those other Whites. Thus the Believer is saved from the original sin of being born White and Racist. All Whites are Racist by birth – the PC Doctrine of Origianl Sin.
“People migrating from more populated to less populated areas is like a natural law of physics.”
WRONG. Just the opposite, they go from less populated areas to more populated areas. They go to where the JOBS are. So it is always and will be increasingly so, in fewer more populated mega-cities. Why is this ? Because everyone wants the “market” to do its own thing, and hates “big government” or planned economies, or any intelligence applied to problems as that would interfere with how perfect the anarchy of the free market is.
Why do people concentrate in large numbers ? because large numbers of people generate large enough markets to sell all kinds of goods and services, hence creates jobs. Also, because many jobs are essentially often “status challenges – conflict/confrontation points – judgment points – assignment of winner and loser” endeavors (as much REAL work is no longer necessary in a Technological Economy), so large numbers of people have to search each other out and fill up a small area so as to measure each other, compete with each other, be physically next to each other to be aware of each other, etc.
I phantom the world 100 years from now will be not more than 100 cities with 100 million people each inside, in millions of Skyscrapers…
“…roughly 1,100 teenage women give birth every day. According to the CDC, that means one of every ten new mothers is a teenager. The majority are Hispanic or African-American, with respective birth rates nearly double that of white teenagers. Combined, all teen pregnancies cost taxpayers about $9 billion a year.”
I’m now reading Nicholas Shaxson’s “Treasure Islands”. You don’t have to get into the book that far to realize that the ultimate destination of the present international offshore banking system is the financial destruction of nations, the end of sovereignty as we know it. It’s all over. The multinational corporations and transnational banks will bankrupt governments and strip them of their sovereignty, setting up a semi-feudal, corporate neo-colonialism.
Mornin’ Marlin, I’m on board with the warm-up. Snow flurries last night and this am it’s 28 degrees out back and now the grounds froze up again. most of my bulbs are up but they are not doing much. I can’t do sh@@ outside. I think I might head down to E Hartford today to Cabela’s and pick up that Henry 22 lever action they have on sale. It looks like a sweet little plinker. Good day to all the CFNer’s out there. The sun is shinin’ right now so I’ll put on my smiley face! I finally started my toms and peps yesterday, YIPPEE!
;o)
Nicholas Shaxson’s “Treasure Islands”. Sounds to me like more and more people are waking up to this new stage of imperialism with a twist. It’s no longer about nation states, It’s about huge money and power by a few who are dismantling the social contract between people and governments.
Alvin Toffler described this years ago in Mega Trends and the Third Wave. Naomi Klein describes the mechanics of how we destroy economies through the “Shock Doctrine, the rise of Disaster Capitalism”, it will give you nightmares and it’s all true and well documented.
When you look at what’s happened here you can see that we were set up for the disaster and now they have to undo a century of progressivism in work and all aspects of life while they sell off the public sphere for pennies.
Yesterday I went to http://www.Keiser.com and listened to what’s happening in Greece. Some very wealthy Americans want to buy Greek Islands on the cheap.
It’s up to the population to resist the attempt to privatize everything. It means the zero sum game! Someone gets all the money and you get the liberty to get gouged!!!–Hope you can afford it.
Greenbacks= bad , Silver= Good , silver is closing in on 40 bucks today. as far as energy effiency goes . I always had Ford vans in the ’70,s. straight six cylinder 240 ci single barrel carbs, three on the tree, I would consistently get 25-26 miles a gallon on highway trips with these vans, and they were full size econolines outfitted as campers with bed, sinks, and full of gear. of course I would only cruise at 57-58 mph. They probably made 100hp at best. more then enoough to cruise all day on the ol’ super slab. Today you can’t find a 6 cyl standard van. Everything is a V8 and hp,hp,hp. even the small cars are advertised by their hp. The speed limit is 65 people. Slow the F### down. I drive a Tacoma with a 4 cyl and it still puts out like 170 hp and only gets about 20 mpg. I wish I could get one with a 3 cyl diesel with 75 hp. I could probably get 35-40 mpg. It would still do highway speeds and haul all my crap. The public won’t buy them so they are not made for US import. When I leave work I go by the interstate on ramp and I see dozens of people in monster f150 and f250 fords with ONE person in them headed to work. These people are in pretty-boy trucks they never use to haul stuff and get maybe 10 mpg. They have the audacity to complain about the price of gas. DUH!
Mornin’ LLB. I hope at least some of the saloons are still open!
LLBooks;
It sounds like you have a pretty good plan. Godspeed to you. You mentioned you have a pension from the State of Washington, and you’re 62 so you can qualify for SS. And you can always pick up some part time work if you so desire.
If the cities on the west coast are anything like cities here in the east they are best to be avoided. Life is still tolerable in small towns and the country if you can stay away from the ignorant rednecks.
Thoughtful people are caught in the middle, but there is still room to navigate.
Ripthunder, you’re right, unbelievably, its still all about “Horsepower”. I shouldn’t talk because I have a big Silverado. The dealer was right down the street and I got it for $12,000 less than the $40,000 sticker price. A few weeks later the dealer, which had been in business since 1916, closed. A few months later GM itself went bankrupt. So what I thought was a good deal turned out to be not so good.
One of my neighbors is a District Attorney who recently bought a new Cadillac. 554 Horsepower! I asked what the hell do you need all that for? People, even the well educated, seem clueless as to our predicament concerning energy, and act like it was still 1968.
A new Henry! How I envy you.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
“…I’m not sure how you are going to “get rid of” the corporate powers and entities that exploit cheap immigrant labor and most of the rest of us – without a revolution.”
-PoC
************
Why would one think that it’s any harder to “reach out and touch” the Oligarchs than any other common mook? (Now they might want you to BELIEVE they’re untouchable, but they’re not.) Cast your mind back to Romania and mad-dick-tater-fer-life Chow-ches-que. (However that’s spelled; you know who I mean.) He bused in a huge crowd for propaganda purposes, and appeared on the balcony to address his beloved people. Someone piped up with an angry remark, the “adoring crowd” turned ugly, and less than 24 hours later, ol’ Chowie was executed and lyin’ in the cold, cold ground. Injustice can be borne… until it can’t. Then, there’s always “a way through”.
*************
I’m going to do what I can to encourage potential immigrants to stay home and work on the problems in their home countries.
Let me know where you think I’m wrong. -PoC
************
I’d be interested to know how you’re going to go about convincing desperate folks to not be so desperate, and stay home in their desperate circumstances, but that’s just me. They’ll go where they think they can find a way to provide for their families or make A future. That’s the driver.
I don’t think you’ve got it “wrong”, I simply think the causes [for this mass exodus] are not being thoroughly internalized. (Or, if they’ve been internalized; taboo to discuss.)
There are many different opinions on the matter, but after quite a bit of mulling (and watching Bush and Clinton smirk and smile over it), I find mine to be the most “reasonable”. Big surprise there, eh?? ;o)
It’s all about profit and payoff, and tough shit for the “little people” crushed beneath the millstones of privilege and power.
On practical trucks with small engines –
“The public won’t buy them so they are not made for US import.”
-rt-
The trend away from practical things and toward gaudy and oversized things, for guys who don’t need them, really got rolling in the (you guessed it!) go-go 80’s.
We bought a towable 26 foot sailboat about 10 years ago. It was 30K new. I bought it 3 years old for 20K. Just sold it for 10K. I had it advertised for over a year on a national website that specializes in that particular make of boat.
Got a lot of responses from all over the country. Far and away, the serious lookers were retired military guys. Finally sold it to a retired Army captain. Anecdotal evidence, to be sure – but I’m thinking only National govt. retirees have the security of income and free time to make a purchase like that, anymore.
But I digress. I want to replace the thing with something smaller, with a useful little cabin, and a lightweight single axle trailer. They don’t make things like that anymore! I’m looking at ragged out boats from the ’80’s right now, thinking I can at least find a hull that meets my specs and rebuild everything else.
Yeah, RT, and your post brought back some good memories for me of some of the vehicles I drove in my younger days. I had a 3/4 ton Econoline work van with a 302. You could not break the thing. I could put 2000 pounds of sand and cement in it, tow a cement mixer, and carry enough men to work all day. If I had hit something or rolled it over it would have killed us all, loaded like that.
They say the Good Lord looks after fools and drunks!
Anybody have any thought on the Pastor in Florida who burned a copy of the Koran, resulting in those riots in Afghanistan?
BBC reported last week about events in Ethiopia, 50 Coptic Churches burned and 10,000 Christians displaced, some murdered, because of a perceived slight to the prophet mohhammed made by some Christian somewhere. Funny not a peep about it by Patreaus, Hillary or Obama. Not a peep.
I personally have witnessed anarchists burning an American Flag on the Town Green in New Milford, CT. And who can forget Mapplethorpes ‘Piss Christ’, the Crucifix in a jar of urine, and later in the same museum a statue of Mary with elephant shit thrown on it? That was protected speech by the 1st amendment, and at the time I didn’t her any dickhead congressman like Lindsey Graham threaten to hold fu—g congressional heatings over it?
Just saying, that’s all.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
LLB,
Sounds like as good a “plan” as any, and it factors in a lot of flexibility, which can be freeing. (Some inherent danger as well, but, hey, that’s the cast of the everyday die anyhoo, right?)
Thanks for the postcard and photo from early in the 20th. Sure looks like there’s plenty of things to do in a lowered energy woild!
Ps. Tripp’s got new pics up; my, how stuff pops in good earth and warm climes!
RT,
Any day the sun’s out is a good ‘un! :o)
May do some splitting today, we’ll see.
Enjoy the ride and the plinker!
I am trying to picture Jesus burning the Koran in a rage of fear and hatred of the unknown. Ever hang out in Florida? Some real geniuses there.
I wonder if there is anything that can be done about this. As the world doesn’t want to recognise next to any of the trouble around, can it even be addressed?
When in darkest thought about abandoned facilities, I came across nuclear. No words for this then.
Now I think, it might be worthwhile to concentrate on renewed disarmament and shut down movements. Not any more to prevent things, as I do not believe there is anything that can be done really, just for the fun of intending to do the right thing.
Do you think that the “leaders” on this planet, any or some, understand what is unfolding and keep on acting insane as it is?
If you like reply to: yes2bertl(at)gmx dot at
If you don’t like my posts scroll past me. By the way your screen name is too stoopid by half.
A lot of competition from the Soviets. I think you’d get a lot of argument from people living under the Soviet boot.
And I think you’re discounting the effects of the Kalashnikov rifle, a Soviet invention, around since 1947, produced in the tens of millions by Soviets and others, ubiquitous throughout the third world and which some argue is the worst weapon of mass death ever devised. I don’t know that there are any accurate estimates of people killed yearly in conflicts throughout the world but I’ve read that the AK rifle and its variants are responsible for a quarter million deaths per year.
Marlin said:
But Congress did hold hearings on flag burning, which you can read about in this book:
The Flag and the Law: a documentary history of the treatment of the American flag by the Supreme Court and Congress. Marlyn Robinson and Christopher Simoni. compil, New York: William S. Hein & Company, 1993. (This compilation includes all relevant Court decisions and Congressional hearing records.)
What is most sacred to USA citizens is not the flag, not the Bible. What the USA holds high is the almighty dollar, and they build their highest buildings to glorify trade, like the World Trade Center.
People criticize a few Arabs for “overreacting” to burning the Quran. When the WTC was taken down, the USA “overreacted” killing hundreds of thousands of people in revenge. The USA had got real upset when people messed with Wall Street and what is really sacred: trade.
Nathan, no doubt N Florida is cracker city and the Pastor is an idiot, but it works both ways.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Division
Cash, an estimated 100 million Kalishnikovs have been produced since 1947. Also, millions of more variants have been made in many countries, east and west. Really it has been the most prolific killing machine of the past half century.
Well Asoka, you got me there dead balls. Touche!
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
But here’s the thing Asoka, the Arabs had to learn the Cardinal Rule of modern history. DON’T F–K WITH THE USA! Like it or not, that’s how it’s been since 1846 when your Mexicans got their asses kicked all the way to Mexico City. In 1898 Spain learned the hard way. It was Pershing and the AEF who rolled up the German Army in 1918. In WW2 Germany and Japan were bombed to rubble. Read Victor Davis Hanson’s book about the American way of war, also Curtis LeMays book about the Air Wars over Germany and Japan. The Arabs should have read those books before they pulled their stunt on 9/11. The Iranian leader should read those books now while he still has time.
-Marlin
CFNation YD Post 1
New England Chapter
Marlin, Marlin, Marlin,
I’m surprised at you. Don’t you know that “Piss Christ” is a work of great artistic depth and nuance and that the dung covered statue of Mary is among the greatest works in the Western tradition, one that climbs the Everests of thought and feeling? What do you mean go fuck myself? It has to be so, these works were greatly celebrated by our intellectual betters. And get with the program, mockery of Christianity is in vogue and has been for a long time.
OK I’m not much good with sarcasm. Never had the knack. Why don’t muslims and darker skinned people get taken to task by our pious leaders for doing stuff that you just mentioned? Don’t you know that liberalism has at its core the the rottenest fucking racism going? In the liberal mindset they have to cut some slack. I don’t think it’s what some call the “soft racism” of lower expectations. IMO it’s the “hard racism” of low expectations and there would never in a million years be any thought that non whites and non westerners are adults just like us and as such have in them a full complement of moral and intellectual faculties.
Up here, among our towering, sneering liberal superiors, Christianity equals hypocrisy and if you are evangelical, as a bonus, you are an idiot besides. And up here, despite this anti Christian bigotry, we have a few politicians that make no bones of their Christian beliefs. These politicians are widely mocked. Why? The underlying but unspoken reason is that the politicians white, raised here, and as such, there is no excuse for them. But you can bet your bottom dollar that if some non white politician publicly professed their belief especially in Islam or Hinduism, whether they’re raised here or not, there would not be one peep of derision. IMO this is liberal racism in action, that comes out of a liberal assumption that non whites are not up to snuff and so have to be allowed their superstitions, Racism, capital R, pur et dur, pure and simple.
Have you ever talked to an anarchist or heard one speak? Every one I’ve heard is a poseur, totally full of shit. They’re grandstanding, trying to look cool in front of their friends, nothing more.
Error: The underlying but unspoken reason is that the politicians white
Should read: …politicians are white
replied to comment from Cavepainter | April 5, 2011 1:04 PM | Reply
“That’s reads like teabagger hog wash. Where is the mention of corporate complicity in this debate on immigration? Immigrants especially those in the food industry are treated no better then indentured servants of the 1600 and 1700 propping up the US with cheap labor. I say get your ass of your fucking computer and go out and replace a Mexican in the fields. No need for new cheap labor if you take the step of doing it your self. ”
Field labor is only about 6% of illegal alien work. We can reinstate the Bracero program to temporarily import Mexican men to do this work. That’s how it worked in WWII. Getting rid of illegals would lower apartment rents and allow the wage levels of Americans, like men in the trades, to rise to where more money would go to the Middle Class than to the oligarchs. “What about food prices!!!”…relax, no illegals wouldn’t raise them at all:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003265139_imprices19.html
“A decade ago, two Iowa State University agricultural economists estimated that removing all illegal farmworkers would raise wages for seasonal farmworkers by 30 percent in the first couple of years, and 15 percent in the medium term.
But supermarket prices of summer-fall fruits and vegetables, they concluded, would rise by just 6 percent in the short run — dropping to 3 percent over time, as imports took up some of the slack and some farmers mechanized their operations or shifted out of labor-intensive crops. (Winter-spring produce would be even less affected, they found, because so much already is imported.
Marlin said:
==========
LOL! “that’s how it’s been”
As they say on CFN, things continue as they are, until they don’t.
The USA will not get away with murder. The USA is cruisin’ for a bruisin’ (which will probably be administered by AQ, in a suitcase nuke sort of way… when it’s least expected)
“How wrong I was. Housing is for profit. Big business. This is the way it is set up.
For the owners to profit from the renters.
I find that wrong. I AM naive.”
No you are stupid. What possible incentive would an investor have to build apartments (which obviously, people need for housing) if he was not to profit from his venture? Try (I know its really, really hard) to use the limited brain that god gave you before expressing such moronic thoughts in type.
The reason the nuclear wind-down thing has me worried is that it takes so long to decommission a reactor, ten to fifteen years, and I can’t see them even beginning to think about it until it’s way too late – just look at how they’re dawdling with peak-oil.
The whole problem gets even worse when you start to understand the scale of it all. The Chernobyl mess was caused by only one of four of the reactors going into meltdown, three others were eventually shut down, the last in 2000, but they didn’t meltdown. If you consider how many reactors there are at all these various plants worldwide, up to six, and multiply them by the 442 in service, then you have potentially thousands of Chernobyls waiting.
The cost and time related to decommisioning all these reactors (not power plants) would be astronomical, and unlikely to happen if modern society shuts down due to the permanent decline of oil. In fact I think the big reason they don’t do it now, decommission older plants and instead write-up new service extensions, is because the cost would cripple the companies that run them.
Then there’s all those nukes sitting in silos, and the reactors in naval vessels to consider as well – what the hell do you do with all that deadly hardware when even the military structures fall apart?
I’ve been able to get my head around a bunch of problems related to the end of oil but I just can’t see any way to avoid a planet-wide catastrophe that mass-meltdowns would cause…
And, they want to build more of them and extend the shelf-life of all the old ones!!! Is it madness, or is that they can’t see any way around it either?
Vlad it is vanity for the most part, and why they flagelate themselves. The middle aged white women is and has been the swing vote in this country and most politics and mainstream thought patronizes them, from Donna Reed to the Clintoon’s soccer moms.
It is why asoka must speak in the passive aggressive voice so as to not upset those who matter. Imagine the Democratic party without white women as its fronts, angry low IQ minorities, crazy zionists who think everyone is a nazi, union thugs in Mercedes Benzs, all exceptionally ugly and stupid.
White women and the she-males or the hapless male figures in their lives get a little vanity boost by being anti-white. Lenin called them the useful idiot types, like Helen.
I dunno, PoC, wasn’t it just last week when Asoka smugly recommended that you follow my excellent example and ignore him? Now this week we find him whining like a small child because because you choose not to address him. There’s just no pleasing some people.
“The Arabs should have read those books before they pulled their stunt on 9/11.”
Now how in hell you gonna blame a single terrorist incident on an entire ethnic group of a billion+ people. Talk about moronic…
I was thinking who would fare better in the coming collapse – Europe or USA? I think this is very interesting topic. I can’t decide :). I come from a small country in the Balkans – Bulgaria which is a case of its own (like the whole Balkans of course). Despite overpopulations problems you mention in Bulgaria there is the opposite problem – depopulation. Currently we are 7 millions – to compare 20 years ago the population was 9 millions (Soviet style collapse, massive immigration). It is a poor country still gasoline costs around 6.5 US dollars.
You and Vlad should go get a room….I mean militia compound…together.
I’d say Europe because it has a functioning rail system, compact cities/towards built around it, a socialist culture where most people will get at least the basics, local farming, etc.
The US is basically a mad house of gun-toting loons.
Europe is kind of screwed in terms of fossil fuel resources though…it has none.
For all you CFNers…
Here’s a paean to the happy motoring culture of the early 1960’s. Have fun!
“Shut Down” – Beach Boys
Tach it up, tach it up
Buddy gonna shut you down
It happened on the strip where the road is wide
(Oooo rev it up now)
Two cool shorts standin’ side by side
(Oooo rev it up now)
Yeah, my fuel injected Stingray and a four-thirteen
(Oooo rev it up now)
We’re revvin’ up our engines and it sounds real mean
(Oooo rev it up now)
Tach it up, tach it up,
Buddy gonna shut you down
Declinin’ numbers at an even rate
(Oooo movin’ out now)
At the count of one we both accelerate
(Oooo movin’ out now)
My Stingray is light the slicks are startin’ to spin
(Oooo movin’ out now)
But the four-thirteen’s really diggin’ in
(Oooo movin’ out now)
Gotta be cool now power shift here we go
Superstock Dart is windin’ out in low
But my fuel injected Stingray’s really startin’ to go
To get the traction I’m ridin’ the clutch
My pressure plate’s burnin’ that machine’s too much
(Al Jardine’s Stratocaster guitar solo)
Pedal’s to the floor hear the dual quads drink
(Oooo pump it up now)
And now the four-thirteen’s lead is startin’ to shrink
(Oooo pump it up now)
He’s hot with ram induction but it’s understood
(Oooo pump it up now)
I got a fuel injected engine sittin’ under my hood
(Oooo pump it up now)
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
Shut it off, shut it off buddy now I shut you down
The photo “Piss Christ” was done by Andres Serrano, not Maplethorpe. This “art” was totally irresponsible and led to a drastic reduction in funding to the National Endowment of the Arts by congress.
Serrano is is a narcisstic a#shole, in my humble opinion.
Jen
“Lenin called them the useful idiot types, like Helen.”
As opposed to you, a useless idiot.
“Anybody still believe there is not a dime’s worth of difference between Republicans and Democrats?”
Yeah I’d say its slightly more than a dime’s difference, however.
The CBO has said it “…can’t conceive of anyway ” the economy can continue past 2037 given its current trajectory.
Paul Ryan’s proposed budget would cut SIX TRILLION DOLLARS over the next ten years. That is a difference. That is a $6,000,000,000,000.00 difference.
Don’t mess with the US eh? I think the Afghans will do fine without having read “the book.” They’ll kick us out on our cans eventually. They have got all the time in the world. We have the attention span of gnats.
I’ve never been in the USA. Your view is maybe true for western Europe, but for the Balkans I suspect it would be different (currently it is very different). Here I am afraid it will be much worse than western europe – the region is notorious with its history. On the other hand it is not populated at all (compared to many, many other countries) and land is pretty good.
Well, Dmitri Orlov compared the collapse of the Soviet Union to getting thrown out a first story window, in that things were already pretty basic. On the other hand, in the US, people expect a lot, running water and basic cable being just the start. So if Bulgaria is already a bit “primitive”, I’d say that’s probably a good thing.
“The US is basically a mad house of gun-toting loons.”
You are such a complete douche. You flit about making ridiculous statements such as this all the time yet back them up with nothing. But let us not get off track here. If what you say above is true or better yet, if you believe it to be true and you choose to remain in the U.S., what would that make you?
“We have the attention span of gnats.”
Wrong again. YOU have the attention span of a gnat. Some of us have worked our way all the way to that of a wombat. And some of us have progressed a bit further. But you sir, DO have the attention span of a gnat,
USA said: “Paul Ryan’s proposed budget would cut SIX TRILLION DOLLARS over the next ten years.”
===========
Yes, I understand Paul Ryan’s willingness to deny other people salaries.
My question is will he support the Democratic bill that would deny Obama and all congressional representatives (including Ryan himself) any government salary during a government shutdown?
I think Ryan is full of hot air if he wants to make cuts for others but will not forgo his own government salary during a government shutdown.
“So if Bulgaria is already a bit “primitive”, I’d say that’s probably a good thing.”
Another bold proclamation. Of course you neither live there or will most likely visit there. Another douche statement by a douche.
Does a wombat have a long attention span? Clue me in here…
Well, the idea is that if you’re already living on a farm doing mostly subsistence farming, when TSHTF/TLE occurs, you will…continue to live on that farm and do your farming. Not that complicated an idea really. It was basing on an extrapolation from Dmitri Orlov’s thoughts.
Anyways, I’m glad to see you’ve taken such an interest in my posts. And here I thought no one cared about anything I said (according to your previous proclamation).
Wombat (noun)
Wombats are Australian marsupials; they are short-legged, muscular quadrupeds, with a very long attention span. They are found in forested, mountainous, and heathland areas of south-eastern Australia and Tasmania.
“My question is will he support the Democratic bill that would deny Obama and all congressional representatives (including Ryan himself) any government salary during a government shutdown?”
So you think this cute little bill means something? The shut down, if there is one, will last about 5 minutes. It is political theater. Nothing less. And a cute little bill that magnifies the theater is a waste of time and aimed at morons such as yourself.
Now 6 trillion in cuts? That s a horse of a different color. And additionally one of the more adult, responsible proposals to come down the pike since Obama took office.
Running water has ever been during the Soviet (and Bulgarian) collapse, it never stopped. What does really americans expect a lot?
“It was basing on an extrapolation from Dmitri Orlov’s thoughts.”
Wow man. Extrapolated thoughts. From Dmitir Orlov no less.
STFU douche-girl. You sound more fucktared by the minute. Go glance in a mirror for point one second (I know it’ll be hard to limit the time, you being such a narcissistic half-wit). Hopefully your horrid image will remind you that you are and always will be a FUCKING IDIOTIC BLOWHARD.
“Anyways, I’m glad to see you’ve taken such an interest in my posts.”
They are interesting in the same way coming upon a car crash is interesting. You know its going to be really ugly and really fucked up but something prevents one from looking away. No substance, just a reminder that life can be ugly and fragile and populated by fucktards who can neither write nor think.
My guess is that some areas of Europe will come out better.
In terms of community organization, the European model is more sustainable in the face of disruption to the food supply, since some food can be grown in the fields surrounding most of the towns and cities.
This is a nice starting advantage that the U.S. won’t in many cases have — people in the U.S. will have to reorganize their communities as a first step to arrange more survivable models than what is currently offered by the suburbs. The exurbs will probably become real farms again.
As Turkle mentioned, the U.S. in general has more domestic energy sources to call upon, but they may be difficult to impossible for regions to access if a general emergency sets in.
Your question can have many different replies because there are so many variables.
Question for you — gasoline in Bulgaria is $6.50 for what, a liter?
Cheers
Oh, look, how cute. I think it is trying to communicate…
I’m astounded by how many posting to this site express expectation of a secular version of the Biblical Last Judgment, where after (pardon the metaphor borrowed from Isaiah 11:6) “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them.”. Bullshit!
Neither earth nor mountains are moved by humanity’s abstract notions of justice, God, or any other wishful thinking (Obama’s “Hope”). To such wishful thinking the earth is screaming back that it has finite capacity to accommodate human population — a finiteness already exceeded.
That message somehow just isn’t getting through to us earthlings.
This applies equally to that little bit of earth known as the USA: Here, our tribal myth narrative of American exceptionalism has us clinging to the unreality that we are beyond temporal restraints; can do the equivalent of Christ’s feeding of thousands on few fish and loaves of bread.
Sorry folks; from here on it only gets uglier because of all the reasons JHK has been elucidating. America can’t save the world by either export of its notion of “exceptionalism”, nor by absorbing the spiraling upward overpopulation of the rest of the world. If humanity survives at all it will be only in pockets of sustainability – which is already in question for us as a nation. Absorbing more population (particularly of peoples holding beliefs in large families) is suicide.
It was unable to answer my question about Paul Ryan: why is Ryan keen on eliminating other people’s salaries through trillions in spending cuts, but won’t support the Democratic proposal to eliminate congressional and presidential salaries during a government shutdown.
Ryan is willing to “sacrifice” other people’s salaries but wants to continue receiving his government salary, even when the government is not working. That is not “shared sacrifice,” that is rank hypocrisy.
Sorry I missed – for gallon, I converted in US gallons and dollars.
That’s pretty much my sentiments exactly. Well written, too.
Though some on here are leaning more towards Book of Revelations, I’d say, the fire and brimstone parts.
Expensive for the U.S., sounds about 2/3 of what it costs in Germany where fuel is heavily taxed.
Cheers
“(workers are all, by definition, lazy bums robbing money from the poor entrepreneurs and employers and capitalists) go on.”
That’s why they get cororate welfare I suppose.
I have friends on both sides of the spectrum.
The Rich ones do not share. Oddly enough.
Life isn’t fair. It seems like you either are on top, srong, take *unfair* advantage, tho that is subjective as to what ‘unfair’ is. I suppose.
And yes I agree we are in a trap. certainly feels that way.
Derailed.
Sorry CASH meant that for OLD 6699.
had one for you tho, but decided not to post it.
but you nailed it and I laughed ! re : CR to RR. FUNNY.
Thats’ a really bad screen name.
Fuck You ! how’s that.
I’m not stupid.
I was talking about Houses for families being unaffordable.
Not investment real estate.
“but while you are gabbing at the fence with Betty Lou,”
As in telling her how fucking stupid she is.
I would not want You for a neighbor.
I may be stupid, but you are Mean.
Actually never said I was smart.
But I am trying to learn.
I am rubber you are glue, everything you say bounces off me and sticks to you.
Now leave me the fuck alone on here. Thank You.
That’s the spirit.
Hello~
I’m new here as a poster. First of all, I would like to thank Mr. Kunstler for his thought provoking books and articles on this site. I cannot wait until Monday each week!
I find it difficult to keep up with the comments, but I’ll try harder this year.
A bit about me: 66 yo female living in suburb of Denver called Aurora (326,000 people, many minorities), retired, some on the Left except vehemently against illegal immigration from any country.
Thanks to those on this list who have the guts to being it up, as it’s complete shoved under the carpet in most political discussions.
Kay
“Fuck You ! how’s that.
I’m not stupid.
I was talking about Houses for families being unaffordable.”
No you were not. You said:
“How wrong I was. Housing is for profit. Big business. This is the way it is set up.
For the owners to profit from the renters.
I find that wrong. I AM naive.”
You are saying that it is wrong for owners to profit from renters. And that is stupid. If there were no owners there would be no place for renters to hang their widdle hats. For owners to “own” there must be an incentive. And the incentive is “profit.” No go away and learn something. Your ignorance is showing and it is annoying,
Bullshit asoka-herself. I answered this earlier. It is all theater. And Ryan ain’t buying a ticket to the play. And you are a moron if you think it is anything other than theater.
Welcome Kay,
Eventually, you’ll find that some posters are best skipped over, but some are brilliant–even though you might not totally agree with their ideas.
My son is heading to Boulder for college in the fall! You live in a beautiful area.
Jen
Kay,
What is ridiculous about arguing FOR illegal immigration is that it completely negates the very idea of nationhood. If you do not have a country with defined, defensible borders you will soon have no nation.
Looks like our good old *SPAMMER* tootsie is back again, flingin’ his SH! every 3rd poast or so…
“Looks like our good old *SPAMMER* tootsie is back again, flingin’ his SH! every 3rd poast or so…”
And this post would be what? What did you just offer the teaming masses yearning to breathe free? Hmmmmm?
You blame black fail on a few whites, deal with it.
Ayup, I was waiting for it – he (tootsie) was holding out – but:
LO! BEHOLD!!!
“fucktared”
Hmm, guess he’s only typing with *1* hand!!!
You construct good English grammar sentence.
Can you quote me where I blame black fail on a few whites or are you just soaking the usual straw men in gasoline and lighting the match?
“populated by fucktards”
JHK (James) – would you *please* finally ban this @$$holes IP address. Take a look at what he does – every 2nd poast, no contribution – only FLAMING/CURSING.
It can’t be that difficult!
That reply was from USA – not sure how MONTSEGUR got in there…
Yeah I meant whites in general, excuse me, but please stop blaming whites for black failure, thanks.
Anyway a question of our libs, where in America has a non-white demographic created a decent community that is open to the “diversity” of whites moving in and bringing their culture with them?
“You construct good English grammar sentence.”
Why do you continue arguing with known racists on this site? Are you bored? Do you think you can change their pea-brained minds? Or, do you just get a kick out of making them look incredibly stupid?
Just wondering !!!
Way to change the topic to your favorite one (black vs white).
We were discussing your ludicrous statement that seemed to imply that 1 billion or more Arab people are collectively responsible for the actions of a group of 20 people on 9/11, which is ludicrous.
That’s like saying America is collectively to blame for the Weather Underground kidnapping Pattie Hearst.