Runing on Empty - Article on DU Homepage

[Paranoid Pessimist]

If you skipped this article

http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/05/08/20_fumes.html

and headed right for the Forums, like I did, I hope you'll click back and read it. It does a good job of saying what I and a lot of other people are thinking. I agree with pretty much everything he says, except this paragraph:

"We Americans should feel a sense of jubilation regarding the coming end of an era where oil and its attendant imperialist politics have come to define the lives of multiple generations. Maybe as our dependence on oil recedes, our human thirst for the water of life will return."

Well ... when (I wish I could bring myself to say "if") oil based global capitalism collapses, we're going to be LITERALLY thirsting for the waters of life, and for food, and for warmth during cold weather -- all of these things are dependent on the machinery of oil-based civilization. I can feel no jubilation about what's coming down on us. I hope the economy doesn't tank for awhile yet. I hope (unlikely as this is) that people get together in partnership with one another to transition into a post oil world in such a way that suffering is kept to a minimum. I hope there really is a light at the end of the tunnel of the approaching dark age.