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We are PhuckedMay 21 '07 Write an essay on this topic.The Bottom Line Unable and unwilling to change behavior, the US has gone off the cliff. Short Version The US has built itself into a corner. Neither the populace nor those who govern us understand what is about to befall us, we will not react well when reality hits us. Get the hell out. Huh? A bit more please... Behavior matters. Unable and unwilling to change behavior in the face of massively shifting realities, the US is driving itself off a cliff. The US has built itself a huge and growing dependence on a dangerous and unsustainable combination of optimism, asset appreciation and oil. The massive Baby Boomer generation that governs this country is completely unaware of how fragile and precarious US 'prosperity' is. Their children are even less able to comprehend reality; they've seen unreality for so long, they expect it to continue. It wont. It not only WILL end, it is ABOUT to end. And when it does, the society, already delusional, will react violently and with tremendous amounts of irrationality. How did we get here? The Interstate Highway system. Thought up in the 30s by GM, planned for by cities in the 40s after World War II, and funded by President Eisenhower in 1956, was a massive accomplishment. Video of GM Futurama of 1936 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WU7dT2HId-c The GI Bill, especially the provision of subsidized housing for returning GIs, had a huge effect on the layout of the US. We abandoned efficient cities for auto-dependent suburbs. The promise of tranquility, economic growth and a house all your own with a job that paid for the good life; the Post War Ideal. "Little Boxes" - satirical but accurate song of post WWII ideals. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TH6g61VEjWs Get a car made by well paid American workers, to drive on the Interstate, to and from your office or factory, work hard, get a raise, raise a family so they can do even better; the model for development of the United States after World War II. Underwritten by Abundance (of Oil) not Scarcity of Classical Economics All of this took a lot of Oil to sustain. Cars are voracious oil users. Single family homes are huge energy guzzlers. This mattered little to the US, as the US had huge oil reserves and was an oil EXPORTER well into the 50s. Pennsylvania started to run dry, so they stuck holes out in Oklahoma and Texas, and more came pouring out! California (Chevron and Unocal) provided another bounty. With so much oil, and with the nasty experience of lack of demand of the Great Depression hanging over their heads, policy makers decided the biggest problem was TOO MUCH. Classical Economics with the problem of "Not Enough" was 'old' - the new problem was how exactly everyone can use the "Too Much" that the system was creating. Baby Boomers - the Cultural Imprints of Youth Baby Boomers grew up with this ethos. All around them everyone was worried about lack of demand, everything was available to them. The rest of the world was poor. The US was massively wealthy. The rest of the world starved and faced scarcity; the US had abundance. These were 'realities' that were burnt deeply into the minds of Baby Boomers. Human's ancestoral environment had long periods (thousands of years) of stability. As your parents did, you were likely to do. Ideas of the world made in youth tend to go well into adulthood. Intellectual understanding of change rarely penetrates to the core of a person. Then the World Shifted Modern humans are not in our ancestral environment. We are in a world much more actively changing, and in 1971, the US faced a problem not foreseen by those who worried about 'Too Much' - Peak Oil production in the United States. http://www.netl.doe.gov/publications/others/pdf/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf (page 16, lower 48 production chart) In 1973, the US got another shock when OPEC was created and the pricing of Oil was moved from the Texas Railroad Commission to the powers that be in oil exporters. This, and Nixon's closing of the gold window (in 1971, the "Dollar Shock") combined to create something not worried about here-to-fore - shortages and massively rising prices. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixon_Shock North Sea, Alaska, Cantrell, The Carter Doctrine and the Shift Back The first three are oil producing regions, one is an oil field in Mexico. All are among the largest in the world, all were found or came online in the late 70s, early 80s. The Carter Doctrine is obviously not an oil producing region, it is a document that states that the Middle East is a national security priority, that the Persian Gulf was militarily important to the United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Doctrine "An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." This shifted things back; Suadi Arabia became a VERY close US ally. The US eventually supported Saddam to erode Iran's power, and a decade later during Bush 41s term, decided that the US better back up with force what it was saying on paper; and Gulf War I was underway. The US Today The generation that went to grade school during the start of Interstate Highway construction, who watched their parents drive huge cars, went on nice vacations, having nice jobs, living a good life while the US still exported oil is now alive to see the US import 70% of its oil needs. And it has not realized, in ANY WAY, that the underlying reality of their childhood has been completely overturned by subsequent events. They still have an amazingly naive view, supported by their own histories but little logic, that the world is an abundant place. And they have built the XXL version of their parent's ideal; huge highways filled with gargantuan cars to get to and from their entirely auto-depedent and air conditioned houses. They go on lavish vacations to far off places, paid for by their heavily subsidized college education and rising prices in their heavily subsidized ex-urban homes. View of Exurbs of Houston - Futurama XXL http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qze7NWZ5ho So What? What happens when a generation runs a country where the fundamental economic rationale for excessive consumption went away long ago and now lives on borrowed money to create a completely unsustainable lifestyle? I dont know. But I'm not going to stick around the find out. It's been quite a ride. Too bad it's about to end.  |
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