The Peak Oil Crisis: Civil UnrestBuried in the millions of words that were written about the shootings in Arizona last week was a recent poll showing that only 13 percent of the American people think favorably of the U.S. Congress. Why are so many, so mad at the Congress? The answer is simple - they have no idea what is happening to their lives. Since the beginning of the great recession way back in 2007 they have been told by two Presidents, their senior officials, 99 percent of the Congress, and most of the media that recovery was on the way and that prosperity would return shortly.
As unemployment in the U.S. grew and grew, every politician with a prayer of winning positioned him or herself as the "jobs" candidate who could and would get us all working at good high-paying jobs again. This of course has not returned and is unlikely to do so. We are not only contending with a growing debt bubble of gigantic proportions, we are also rapidly running out of the cheap, abundant energy that allowed us to be so prosperous for the last 200 years.
The real problem, of course, is that without a continually growing source of cheap and abundant energy, such as that provided by fossil fuels, there will never again be significant economic growth in the sense to which we have become accustomed. It is inevitable that we are all going to get much poorer, in a material sense, and this is the great secret of our age that so far few have had the courage to express. The easier path has been Keynesian stimulation of the economy, government bailouts of what were held to be key financial and industrial institutions, and tax cuts to mollify those who believe all problems stem from taxes. These measures were accompanied by endless expressions of hope that things would soon be better.
As has been frequently noted by the media in recent days, the level of political discourse in America has been droping markedly in recent years and while no one of any stature seems to be openly advocating violence, some are getting mighty close. Another few years of economic stagnation and increasing unemployment could easily bring us to the point where the line will be crossed.
The recent movement of Mexico from a state of relative order towards the lawless disorder of a narco-state coincides very uncomfortably with the loss of output from their oil fields. Over the last 5 years Mexico's oil output has declined by one-third, while their revenue-generating oil exports have fallen by almost half. Since nature abhors a vacuum, the drug trade has moved in to fill the void.
While I’m not saying that the US is in the same imminent danger as Mexico, the point is that we ignore the linkage between energy and civilization at our peril. Cheap energy, in particular cheap oil, is the main component of the thin veneer of civilization that papers over our baser instincts.
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