THE CUSSEDNESS OF WHOLE SYSTEMS

"As more of the liquid fuels supply is made up by tar sand extractives and other substitute fuels, larger fractions of the annual supply of energy, raw materials, and labor have to be devoted to the process of bringing liquid fuels to market, leaving a smaller portion of each of these things to be divided up among all other economic sectors ... the costs of growth would eventually rise faster than the benefits, and force the global economy to its knees. That’s what’s happening now ... Ever more elaborate towers of hallucinatory wealth, ably assisted by reams of doctored government statistics, will project the illusion of a thriving economy onto a society in freefall ... demand for renewable-energy systems is dropping too, as people who have no money find solar panels as unaffordable as barrels of oil. For that matter, the people who are insisting in today’s media that the United States will achieve energy independence by 2050 may just turn out to be right; it’s just that this will happen because the US will have devolved into a bankrupt Third World nation in which the vast majority of the population lives in abject poverty and petroleum consumption has dropped to a sixth or less of its current level."

Ein Artikel von John Michael Greer über Peak Oil, asymmetrische Hubbert-Kurven, systemische Widerstände in der Abkehr aktueller Zustände, der immer höhere gesellschaftliche Schaden an der Ausbeutung unkonventioneller Öllagerstätten sowie die öffentliche Selbsttäuschung über unsere energetische Situation. Erschienen auf The Archdruid Report ( 27. Juni 2012).