Peak Oil, Business as Usual, and Katrina: Bill Henderson

countercurrents.org
Quote:

"New Orleans is sinking. The average American, North American, family has learned to spend somewhere near 10% more than it earns every year and bankruptcies are skyrocketing. Hopefully, Katrina isn't the trigger this time; hopefully, this brutal kick to the American sewage system won't lead to housing and other bubbles bursting all over America and then globally. Hopefully, rapidly increasing gas prices won't trigger a chain reaction of just in time non-deliveries, foreclosures, personal and civic strife, panic and looting. But it is going to happen sooner or later.

We should expect an angry outcry from truckers and airlines, farmers and seniors: everybody who will be pinched badly by rising gas prices and should expect attempts to force governments to increasingly subsidize transportation or at least reduce gas taxes. Totally wrong way to go but, realistically, to be expected.

We should expect Europe, Canada and Japan to send oil and gasoline to incredibly wasteful America but not to Eritrea or Bangladesh.

We should expect that those in control of government and the economy will resist all reasonable attempts to introduce non-market regulation to conserve oil and planning to hasten a post oil economy.

There is a bigger picture here: EO Wilson's Bottleneck, Bill Catton Jrs OVERSHOOT, the once and forever end of oil. There is a dawning appreciation of what good government should be but isn't, and how close we are all to chaos and cruel inhumanity when calamity strikes, and the importance of strong institutions and the rule of law.

But, like peak oil and Iraq, most of us will only awaken to reality in the wake of the storm surge."

peak oil Katrina