Home > Out of Gas: America needs to start THINKING about what happens next...
Out of Gas: America needs to start THINKING about what happens next...
by Open-Publishing - Thursday 14 October 20041 comment
According to James Howard Kunstler in a new video entitled, "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream," when the world’s oil supply runs out, American suburbs are doomed. Without gas, suburbs will become "the slums of the future."
That’s a dreary thought.
Bush is always telling us that Al Qaeda is about to jump our bones.
Now this futurist is telling us that suburbia is doomed.
Where is the good news?
Who in corporate America is telling us stuff like, "We are doing research on alternative energy. Everything is going to be okay."
Who in Congress is telling us, "We are going to stop using our wealth to manufacture yet more useless oil-war machines — and start using it to create shining cities."
Who in our pulpits say, "We plan to stop all that yammering about writing ’thou shalt not kill’ on the walls of public buildings and actually go about stopping all this grisly killing-for-oil — so that our future will be Christ-like."
Who on TV is showing us commercials that say, "Let’s give all our children a free college education so that we can think our way out of this swamp." Or "The future is ours if we prioritize what it is that we actually do need and stop buying trash meaninglessly." Or "Let’s start using our Yankee ingenuity." Or "When there is no more oil, we will still be okay because we can do this, this and this..."
It’s like we are surrounded with Chicken Littles but have no Gandhis, Jeffersons or Einsteins.
What IS going to replace our gas-loving SUVs and soon-to-be-obsolete freeways? We need to start THINKING about that. When I turn on the TV, I want to see stuff like this. Right now the only show that might possibly be dealing with this subject is "Survivor".
All this lack of paying attention has got to change — and change fast. We have a very short time-frame within which to start making alterations to our costumes if we still plan to keep dancing at the ball.
If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs. According to "The End of Suburbia," our eggs are about to get broken BIGTIME. So let’s make sure that, when this happens, we have an omelet pan handy.
Sources: Order the video at
Baltimore chronicle review of the movie:
http://baltimorechronicle.com/080304ThomasWheeler.shtml
"It’s the End of the World as We Know It," by Thomas Wheeler
Oil Wars: Transforming America’s military into an oil-protection service:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1008-23.htm
From Mike: Oil companies see record profits as US and world economieshurt...
http://money.cnn.com/2004/10/08/markets/oil/
Kelpie Wilson Four More Years for the Earth
http://www.truthout.org/environment.shtml
From C.W. Swinney:
great source for neo-con lies, damn lies and statistics.
From Robert: Iraq faces soaring toll of deadly disease: 13 October 2004: Soaring rates of disease and a crippled health system are posing a new crisis for the people of Iraq, threatening to kill more than have died in the aftermath of the war.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=571593
Forum posts
14 October 2004, 05:42
I don’t believe that James Howard Knustler has or would ever say that the world’s oil "supply would run out". The problem that he and others are talking about is when supply can no longer grow, not when it disappears entirely.
Indeed, in this movie (it’s not new by the way) talks about oil running out, it specifically says that running out is the wrong question, that the world will not run out, that 200 years from now someone somewhere will still be pumping it.