Of course we're more prepared. We've had the Mad Max movies to watch the last 30 years.

Conservation, while admirable from a point of purely personal responsibility, will not get us through this next one of a series of crises. Energy will be the first. The easy-to-find stuff is now diminishing. So let's all use CFL's and drive hybrids! It'll be great!

Ummm...wait. Unless we begin doing something now to devise the means of transport, heating, cooling, and lighting that are useful in a post-combustion-based energy infrastructure world, all we do is postpone the inevitable shutoff. It bears repeating as often as needed - we can not conserve our way out of this coming mess.

Next in line will be things like water, coastal inundation (roughly half the world's population lives within a couple meters of sea level) as sea levels continue to rise, food shortages of several types, and more. All these will not be solved by conserving, they will require vision, innovation, skill, and a great measure of what we might simply call political will. Few if any of these things are apparent in most of the conservation-based arguments and even less so in the body politic.

The peoples who demonstrate those qualities will in fact inherit the earth - although I'm not sure how thrilled they will be with that prospect.

What the U.S. needs to wake up is another fairly powerful and Western country to collapse first. I think if we saw a Germany or a UK or a France falling apart, we might wake up and start closing Orlov's so-called "Collapse Gap."

Unfortunately, the U.S. is the country that seems worst off and most poised for a catastrophic collapse.

Don't look now, but the 21st Century might very see the inception of America's Northward Manifest Destiny..

Orlov says he's not an expert and he's right about that. The USSR collapsed but the rest of the world didn't collapse around them. They were isolated from the west while the USA is the lynchpin in the the world's economy. IF we stop buying 40% of what China makes China collapses. If the USA and China collapse it starts a cascade failure.

Why would suburbanites rush to the cities when food is scarce and/or expensive? There's a lot more space in suburbia than cities to grow truck gardens and put up food for the winter. If half of America winds up defaulting on their mortgages who's gonna enforce evictions? The big banks who fed us the mortgage mess will be forced out of business before they come anywhere near making us all homeless.

Communities will become more self sustaining. Neighbors will come to rely on each other more. We won't be spending our days in front of a blank computer screen or our nights in front of blank TV screens.

We won't be commuting to jobs that no longer exist 30 miles away in vehicles there's no fuel for. We'll go back to what our ancestors did 100 years ago and for eons before that, we'll farm. We either adapt and survive or we'll perish.

clearthinker you seem pretty cranky about your new pet theory. If all is lost and you think you can't make it then why not beat the rush and go commit suicide tonight?

I learned how to ride a horse as a kid, not that I'd ride one while plowing. The land in my yard was a farm decades ago. I found part of an old harness while digging up my mother's garden in the 1960s. This good black Illinois soil is why hundreds of thousands of people immigrated to this state for over a century. Water is more problematic but it is a big reason why 5 Great Lakes States and Canada have all signed on to an agreement to preserve our water supply. If you live on the Great Plains or the desert you're shit out of luck. We won't be piping water to you.

Oh and while we're at it you're also wrong about speculation in commodity markets like oil. It's making a bad situation much worse much faster.

Once upon a time, the US used to sell it's products to it's own citizens. But in the 1990's the transformation was complete: the finanical sector passed the manufacturing sector as the dominant one in the US economy.

You write as if none of this can ever change, we've already gone off the cliff, it's all irrevocable, all that's left for us to do is wait around to die.

Here's a simple question for you: do you know how to get enough food from an acre of land to not only feed yourself and a family -- including the wintertime?

My neighbors and I will learn if need be. Our ancestors lived that way from the advent of agriculture until about a century ago. My great grandfather owned a farm and his wife and kids including my grandfather worked it while he worked all day in the mine. Your ancestors probably did the same.

You will also have to defend yourself against prowlers and hunger victims.

We will do that too.

For all the sturm and drang about China we produce 20 tons of carbon per person in the US, while it's 5 tons in China and 2 tons in India.

As for Russians bearing proficies color me skeptical. I was married to a card carrying member of the communist party of the Soviet Union once. She had two masters degrees, one of their best and brightest and was just chock full of pessimism, dire predictions and dumb theories.

Check out RFK Jr.'s article in Vanity Fair

The Next President's First Task (A Manifesto)

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/rfk_manifesto200805

clearthinker I'm not emotional, I'm repulsed by this stupidity. You on the other hand seem despondent.

You may be up to your ass in debt, buried financially in way more house than you ever could realistically afford and tooling around in a gas guzzler but I'm not. But here's the thing, in the event a total collapse occurs there won't be a bank to repossess your McMansion or collect on your debts. My little car will be just as useless as your Hummer, your ATV and your waverunner. You will pay no greater penalty than anybody else other than the humiliation of knowing you were part of the dumbest generation that destroyed America. I on the other hand have lived frugally without debt and put 100,000 miles on a car every 10 years because I work from home. I get to participate in the great collapse too without ever having enjoyed the pleasure of living like a profligate fool.

So WTF are you whining about? You're ahead of the game. If the game ends and leaves you with an assortment of useless booby prizes and skills you'll have to learn new rules for the new game that replaces it.

CT when you write stuff like this:

It should be pointed out that we could have conserved fuel (we didn't) and we could have not gone into reams of private debt (despite government telling us to spend, spend, spend). It is hypocritical to blame the government, when the future was in our hands all along. After all, Republicans and Democrats and Independents alike have bought larger cars and taken out ridiculous amounts of credit.

I assume you're speaking for yourself because you surely aren't speaking for me. If that's an unfair attack I apologize. But how would I increase CAFE standards, other than trying to influence government leaders to increase them?

All the car companies foreign and domestic built and marketed gashog SUVS and pickups like there was no tomorrow. Not because Americans necessarily "wanted to buy them" but because there was a lot better profit margin for the car companies with the huge numbers they were cranking out. When they gave buyers in 2006 with a family of 4 the choice between a Tahoe with a V-8 or a Malibu with a basic 4 banger in it at about the same monthly payment when gas cost $2 a gallon what did you expect them to do?

Orlov says we should ignore politicians and elections. How's that working out in the Rodina? I happen to think democracy is the last best hope for this country. Your mileage, as they say may very.

Frankly wringing your hands about some smarmy Russian's silly power point presentation is beneath you CT. Let me remind you the Soviet Union collapsed because they had a lousy single party system that produced people like him who bailed out for the comforts of the west at the first opportunity instead of building a real democracy. I wonder what kind of car he drives, what he does for a living and where he gets his food.

I know other people who stayed in the former USSR, a long way from the salons of Moscow who saw opportunity and built real businesses providing real products and services out of the chaos and collapse that still cripples towns and cities all across their 10 time zones.

I look forward to the opportunity to fix our problems before it's too late, you seem to be throwing in the towel.