Unprecedented Crisis


Dads:

I'm issuing you a challenge that you'd be wise to take.

For the next seven days, I ask you to suspend your current "understandings" of economies, national security policies, real estate values, and the overall themes that govern the actions of industry, money, and government.

For the next seven days, I urge to read the links found in the right hand column entitled "Daily News -Energy & Economy."

Peak Oil has arrived.

In place of your "understandings," substitute the following fact: the world has reached peak oil - a period where our ability to supply additional oil to meet increasing demand has reached its all-time, upper-limit maximum, and that each passing day will now bring an ever-widening shortfall gap between supply and desire (demand doesn't work here anymore).

This is not about the falling dollar, speculation, greedy big-oil companies, oilfields off-limits to production, demand destruction, etc., etc.

It is much bigger.

If the world's demand for oil (now at 87 million barrels/day) continues to outstrip supply (now at 85 mil bbl/day) AND we have no possible way of increasing supply... what do you suppose will happen?

Just look at the past year. Crude oil has doubled from $60/bbl to $120/bbl. This doubling of price will now start to accelerate.

We are in a heap of trouble.

Why this challenge?

It is my firm belief that your views of the daily news events will begin to sharpen in focus. Your fuzzy understandings of the forces that are shaping our current and future world will begin to fade, and be replaced by a stunning and intuitive ability to assemble the puzzle of world energy markets.

Seemingly loosely related matters of war policy, foreign investment, humanitarian efforts, strategic alliances of government and industry, commodity trades, border security, government entitlements, and even the current and future value of your home will begin to mesh in your mind to form a solid bond of interconnectedness.

Take the challenge and I'll make you 10 promises:

1) You will become overwhelmed with varying emotions of fear, anger, and despair.

2) You will acquire substantially unpleasant and unpopular viewpoints and convictions.

3) You will encounter urges to make radical and drastic changes to the plans for your future.

4) You will find yourself isolated amongst family and friends.

5) You will survive.

6) You will find an altogether new level of "truth."

7) You will gather new appreciation for the phrase "the truth shall set you free."

8) You will regain your emotional footing and find yourself with an exhilerating new ability to think more clearly, make wiser decisions, and plan more effectively for your family's future.

9) You will develop compassionate attitudes, language sensitivities, and infectious convictions that will be much appreciated in the near future.

10) You will become a leader for countless individuals, families, and communities.

If you accept this challenge, then this site is for your use. Here you will find mountains of information, research, insights, and warnings that have failed to reach the average Joe American - but are critical for you to know.

I'll begin rather abruptly.

We have allowed the Gerber news networks and the Pravdas-of-print to shape our understanding of the world - and lull us to sleep.

This is what they're not telling us:

We are in the middle of a national and world-wide crisis of unprecedented and possibly unstoppable proportion. At the core of this crisis is peak oil and per capita energy use. Just as our populations turn hockey-stick skyward, our allotment of cheap energy is reaching the bell-curve peak. As we witness these two graphs interact with one another, we will begin to witness structural changes - of biblical proportion - to our world.

Humanity will now endure a slow-motion train wreck. The first wheels leaving the track are already identifiable: shrinking asset values (home, auto, stocks, cash), rapidy rising food & energy prices, escalating public and private debt, among others.

The next wheels to go are the industries relying heavily on cheap transportation fuels such as airlines, tourism, manufacturing, and - most critically - pizza delivery.

This all leads to loss of employment, collapsing economies, insolvent governments, resource scarcities and volatilities, environmental degradations, food shortages, and increasing geopolitical hostilities.

Unfortunately, this band of death is no longer on the horizon, down the street, or even knocking on the door. Rather, they've slipped into our living rooms and they've come for our lives. With our children at play upstairs unaware, the cathode-ray face with surround-sound mace hastily suffocates a brief flash of primordial instinct and call-to-arms intuition... "This just in, Britney Spears shaves her head."

With delusion secure by attention detour, a drumbeat of varied pitch sound-bites roll in to overwhelm our fragmented minds. The truth of our fate never reaches us. We accept - without question - the manufactured tide of common understanding with its counterfeit problems and sophistic solutions.

Our secular religion of "exponential growth" is a Pied Piper, and he has us marching toward the cliff in a drunken stupor. Wave after wave of us, unaware of our fate and/or unable to retreat through the weighted masses, are being shoved over the edge. Try as we might, it's too late. There is no Hollywood ending to this story. Our near-term future (dare I say... even here in the U.S.?) will include mass-scale famine, disease, war, and death unlike the world has ever seen.

We're at Peak.

If this age is remembered at all by the ensuing centuries, the 50 years either side of 2,000 a.d. may well be remembered as the "Peak Era."

Peak Era of __________... what?

Just fill in the blank and we are correct.

Life - Death
Health - Disease
Wealth - Poverty
Faith - Fear
Hope - Despair
Comfort - Pain
Abundance - Scarcity
Peace - War
Feast -Famine
Security - Terror
Love - Hate
Truth - Deception

For better - and for worse - the peak era of civilization is at hand. We are living it right now. If we've been gathering our "understandings" from the New York Times and CNN, then we are probably unaware that our children will face a world far more dangerous than we've ever imagined.

Up for the challenge?

You're family is counting on you.

Friday, April 11, 2008

Across the Great Divide

It's gone away - yesterday.
Now I find myself on the mountainside,
Where the rivers change direction
Across the Great Divide.

Nanci Griffith's song, Across the Great Divide (http://youtube.com/watch?v=7i2AFRX-z0I) has always meant a day in the future for me.

But no longer.

Yesterday, now gone away, was my 42nd birthday. It symbolically marks the passing of the first half of my life. Call it a personal "peak" if you will.

As of today, I now have no option to scale back up, or to even linger at the summit. I am compelled by the laws of life and time to begin the long, steady descent down the other side. After 42 years of incessant bickering and fighting, Gravity and I have settled the bulk of our disputes and thus pledge to work peacefully together - well... at least we've agreed that we're headed in the same direction.

What bothers me is that she finally got her way.

And so it is also with her sister, Entropy. She gets her way, too, only she's exceedingly pompous about her skills of persuasion. She'll promise an eventual breakdown of all things, and laugh all the while doing it.

And now my point...

With the exertion and expenditure of energy, both of these sisters can be subdued for a while. However, there comes that dreadful day when all peoples, animals, plants, and systems begin to gradually recognize their fate.

Somewhere along this line of cognoscence is where we stand as a collective human race. Oh sure, we've had random synaptic firings that preceded and eventually formed our 'hallucinatory' theories, but this time it's different.

We are recognizing our summit.

Given that the sisters always get their way, I propose that we make nice with them.
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