AS THINGS FELL APART, NO ONE PAID MUCH ATTENTION

                                     Talking Heads --" Nothing but Flowers

If Americans had any sense of history longer than last week's episode of Dancing with the Stars (how about that Bristol Palin!), they may have noticed that the modern age has lasted a mere 150 years and has been completely dependent upon cheap plentiful oil. This is a mere eye blink in the history of mankind.  American exceptionalism refers to the opinion that the United States is qualitatively different from other nations. Its exceptionalism is claimed to stem from its emergence from a revolution, becoming "the first new nation" and developing "a unique American ideology, based on liberty, egalitarianism, individualism, populism and laissez-faire". This feeling of superiority stems from the belief that we have a moral superiority and God has chosen our country to be a shining symbol for the rest of the world. It is the ultimate in hubris to think that we are the chosen ones. An enormous amount of credit for the American Century (1900 --" 2000) must be given to pure and simple luck.

Everything characteristic about the condition we call modern life has been a direct result of our access to abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have permitted us to fly, to go where we want to go rapidly, and move things easily from place to place. Fossil fuels rescued us from the despotic darkness of the night. They have made the pharaonic scale of building commonplace everywhere. They have allowed a fractionally tiny percentage of our swollen populations to produce massive amounts of food. All of the marvels and miracles of the twentieth century were enabled by our access to abundant supplies of cheap fossil fuels. The age of fossil fuels is about to end. There is no replacement for them at hand. These facts are poorly understood by the global population preoccupied with the thrum of daily life, but tragically, too, by the educated classes in the United States, who continue to be by far the greatest squanderers of fossil fuels. --" Jim Kunstler --" The Long Emergency

Every accomplishment, invention, and discovery of the 20th Century was due to cheap accessible fossil fuels. The American industrial age was powered by cheap plentiful oil. One hundred and ten years after the discovery of oil in Titusville, PA an American walked on the moon. We harnessed the immense power of oil and rode it hard. An empire was born and grew to the greatest in history through the utilization of oil and oil byproducts. It is no coincidence that U.S. GDP has been dependent upon the growth in fossil fuel consumption over the last 150 years.  

 

      

The self centered delusional myopic American citizenry see no parallel between the American Empire built on a foundation of oil and the Dutch Empire built upon wind and water or the British Empire established on the discovery of vast quantities of coal. The Dutch Empire of the 1600s had 6,000 ships and 1,000 windmills generating power. The British Empire used coal to power steam engines, pumps, locomotives and ships and forged a great empire in the 1700s and 1800s. Today, the Netherlands has a GDP lower than Mexico. The U.K. has a GDP on par with Italy. You can be sure you are no longer an empire when your GDP is on par with Mexico and Italy. The United States has grown its GDP to $14.7 trillion by exploiting fossil fuels. The American Empire is clearly waning as its dependence on foreign oil slowly bankrupts the country. We consume 140 billion gallons of gasoline every year keeping our suburban sprawl mall based lifestyle viable.   

Cars, Highways & Billboards 

 

 

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Years ago
I was an angry young man
I'd pretend
That I was a billboard

Standing tall
By the side of the road

I fell in love
With a beautiful highway

This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town
Now, it's nothing but flowers

The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong

                                    Talking Heads --" Nothing but Flowers

Americans believe our ingenuity, brilliance and blessings from God have led to the elevation of our country to eminence as the greatest empire in history. But, in reality it was due to a black sticky substance that we stumbled across in 1859. Those who believe in American Exceptionalism scoff at the idea that our empire would not exist without oil. They prefer to ignore and downplay the impact of oil on our society. Too bad. Here are the facts from www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/.

• Approximately 10 calories of fossil fuels are required to produce every 1 calorie of food eaten in the US. 
• Pesticides and agro-chemicals are made from oil. 
• Commercial fertilizers are made from ammonia, which is made from natural gas. 
• Most farming implements such as tractors and trailers are constructed and powered using oil-derived fuels. 
• Food storage systems such as refrigerators are manufactured in oil-powered plants, distributed using oil-powered transportation networks and usually run on electricity, which most often comes from natural gas or coal. 
• The average piece of food is transported almost 1,500 miles before it gets to your plate. 
• In addition to transportation, food, water, and modern medicine, mass quantities of oil are required for all plastics, all computers and all high-tech devices. 
• The construction of an average car consumes the energy equivalent of approximately 20 barrels of oil. 
• The construction of the average desktop computer consumes ten times its weight in fossil fuels. 
• According to the American Chemical Society, the construction of single 32 megabyte DRAM chip requires 3.5 pounds of fossil fuels. 
• Recent estimates indicate the infrastructure necessary to support the internet consumes 10% of all the electricity produced in the United States. 
• The manufacturing of one ton of cement requires 4.7 million BTUs of energy, which is the amount contained in about 45 gallons of oil. 

Our entire civilization will collapse in a week without oil. Try to imagine life if the 159,000 gas stations in the country ran dry. We are running on fumes and refuse to acknowledge that fact. We sooth our psyche with delusions of green energy (solar, wind, ethanol); drill, drill, drill mantras; abiotic oil theories; and vast quantities of shale gas. The concept of energy required to extract an amount of energy completely goes over the head of media pundits and those who prefer not to think. If you expend 2 gallons of gasoline in your effort to extract 1 gallon of gasoline, you've hit the wall. We have sacrificed our future in order to maximize our present, as William James concluded in the late 1800s:

"The most significant characteristic of modern civilization is the sacrifice of the future for the present, and all the power of science has been prostituted to this purpose."

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