Re: OT Gas Prices

Since discussion has been so lively, I thought I'd post this.

David, via the miracle of cut and past

Begin ------------------------------

From the blog of James Howard Kunstler:

http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/clusterfuck_nation/

Desperation

April 24, 2006

America commuted back into the unknown country of $3-plus
gasoline and $75-plus oil (per barrel) last week, and President Bush
revisted the Tomorrowland of hydrogen cars in the absence of any
reality-based response to the global energy crunch that will change
all the terms of America's "non-negotiable way of life."

Actually, we are negotiating, or bargaining, as Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross once put it in describing the sequence of emotional
reactions of humans facing certain death:

denial > bargaining > depression > acceptance

Events seem to have dragged us kicking and screaming beyond the
sheer denial stage, since this is now the second time in six months
that oil and gasoline prices have ratcheted wildly up. Something is
happening, Mr. Jones, and now we want to talk our way out of it.

The main thread in this bargaining stage is the desperate wish to
keep our motoring fiesta going by other means than oil. This fantasy
exerts its power across the whole political spectrum, and evinces a
fascinating poverty of imagination in the public and its leaders in
every field: politics, business, science and the media. The right wing
still pretends we can still drill our way out of this, if only the
nature freaks would allow them to. The "green" folks thinks that we
can devote crops to the production of gasoline substitutes, even
though a scarcity of fossil fuel-based fertilizers will sharply cut
crop yields for human food. Nobody, it seems, can imagine an American
life not centered on cars.

This is perhaps understandable when you consider the monumental
previous investment in the infrastructures and equipment for motoring,
which includes the nation's car-dependent suburban housing stock --
which in turn represents the average adult's main repository of
personal wealth. If motoring becomes unaffordable, then what will be
the value of my house twenty-eight miles upwind of Dallas (Atlanta,
Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, et cetera)? The anxiety is
understandable.

But the problem is not going away. It's not five or ten years
down the road -- it's here, now. We're in the zone. We're entering a
world of hurt. The pain will ebb and flow, as the pain of a fatal
illness ebbs and flows over the days. The price of oil and gasoline
will ratchet up and down, but along a discernable upward trendline.

Can we bust out of this narrow tunnel of fantasy? Can we imagine
living differently? Can we turn more fruitful imaginings into action
before the American scene becomes a much more disorderly place? It
would be nice to see President Bush really lead by taking a
well-publicized ride on the Washington Metro, or dropping in to visit
an organic farm, or signing a bill to increase incentives for
small-scale hydro-electricity, or turning loose some federal
prosectors on WalMart's human resources department. It would be nice
to see the Democrats put aside their preoccupations with gender
confusion and racial grievance and start campaigning to restore the US
railroad system. It would help to see the science and technology
sector return from outer space. Corporate America and its leaders are
probably hopeless, but so is the current scale and scope of their
operations, and circumstances will decide what they get to do. The
mainstream media, representing the nation's collective consciousness,
remains in a coma. This morning's electronic edition of The New York
Times displays not one home page headline about oil or gasoline
prices, despite the trauma of the week just passed.


.

Loading