The Machine Stops
(Conspiracy Nation, 06/11/08) – We are so fu**ed.
Whatever you think about the “Peak Oil” theorists, glimmers of the scenario predicted by them are starting to emerge.
About five years ago, Michael C. Ruppert emerged on the scene. He warned of “Peak Oil”, the idea that oil production would plateau then decline. Ruppert speculated on what would happen thereafter.
Also coming to the fore in the same time frame was James Howard Kunstler. This editor called him, “Dour Kunstler.” Whenever his face is imagined, a Puritan hat sits on top.
Belatedly, some of the newsfakers are now telling us about an “oil crisis.” Bloomberg news assures readers the International Energy Agency stands ready to release emergency stockpiles. How comforting. Why is it so many people can be comforted with the thought of some bureaucracy standing by?
Checking in on Dour Kunstler, he is advocating we all wear Puritan hats. His May 25th editorial in the Washington Post boils down to a return to Puritan times. Price of oil will keep rising. (Gazprom predicts $250 per barrel in 2009.) Interlocking systems, like transportation, food, tourism, education, governance, and health care will mutate into Nathaniel Hawthorne's “Scarlet Letter.” (“Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/23/AR2008052302456.html)
At his website (http://www.kunstler.com/), Kunstler includes other dour reports from “Clusterfu** Nation.” The latest from Clusterfu** is about rural Americans especially hard-hit by inflating gas prices. There are thoughts to warm your gloomy heart. “Truckers get paid less for their loads than the cost of transporting the load. The airlines have financial cancer and will be dead in eighteen months. Container ship costs are heading out-of-sight. Municipalities are going broke. A weekend flood just destroyed part of the Midwest corn crop.”
Three years ago, Conspiracy Nation reported, “And God said unto [Michael C.] Ruppert: the end of oil is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through it; and, behold, I will cause the oil to peak then run out.” (“Ruppert's Ark”, http://www.shout.net/~bigred/RupsArk.html)
Ehud “Cluster Bombs” Olmert knows how the earth is filled with violence because of oil. With the oil in decline, Olmert, Israel's Prime Minister, fears his cluster bombing days are over. He subscribes to “Clusterbomb Monthly,” a magazine featuring a scantily-clad ClusterMate of the Month. Olmert's frustrated libido has been building up since he ejaculated over Lebanon in 2006. He is hot for some last cluster bomb action before the oil disappears. If necessary, Olmert will “go it alone” (auto-eroticism).
Will Olmert spew some last cluster bomb semen? Or will greater oil-related crises dwarf his erectile importance? “With brutal efficiency,” writes Carl Mortished in today's London Times, “the oil price is beginning to duff up a monster of the 20th century: globalisation.” As Dour Kunstler had foretold years ago, “The New World Order is dead.” Can the United States afford to fund Israel in post-Peak Oil times? If the New World Order is dead, why should we? (“Oil price crisis threatens to reverse globalisation,” http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/columnists/article4107268.ece)
Speculative post-Peak Oil novels have begun to appear, guessing at how declines in oil will play out. At Dour Kunstler's web site, one article reviews some of these novels. “Retrieved from the Future” by John Seymour foresees our “Age of Plunder” ending because there is little left to plunder. Go local, including massive de-centralization, or face an “Age of Chaos.”
The earliest of such sobering speculations is reportedly found in a book published in 1909, “The Machine Stops” by E.M. Forster. Humankind had become utterly dependent on a single, central Machine for all of its basic, everyday needs. But then the machine stops.
Conspiracy Nation
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