"Leaving suburbia, entering hell"

[flaminbats]

Creative Loafing, March 23

Yet this is our reality. In metro Atlanta, we've built the fastest-spreading community in the history of the world on a foundation of cheap oil. This is the lifestyle that Vice President Cheney says is non-negotiable. This is the culture that has spawned the sanctimonious and shortsighted Republicans who now lead us and want more of the same.

Last week, I felt like my German reporter friend as I watched the documentary End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream.

It's based on the peak oil theory that we're fast approaching the point where the world has slurped up half its oil. Once the oil is halfway gone, it becomes much harder and more expensive to recover. At the same time, China is clamoring for more oil and Americans are merrily buying Hummers and McMansions, shaking our fists at the rest of the world.

After the peak, the costs of oil and natural gas will explode upward.

And then, as author James Howard Kunstler points out in the movie, we'll enter a "political, economic and social shit storm."

http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/news_humbug.html

[billbuckhead]

1. This is exactly the world I live in

America is going to get scary very quickly. Cherokee county is very scary, but simultaneously winnable for the reality based community.