This is a cut from Will America Survive: Link he Answer is NO-I have added my own words also to the essay.
What has all this essentially free energy accomplished in America?
It has enabled the US to transform itself into an egalitarian multicultural society. This type of society has never existed before. Multicultural societies have certainly existed before. Under slavery, the US population contained as many as 20 percent blacks overall, and up to 50 percent in some areas. India contained a variety of different castes, the members of which lived rigidly separate from each other. At its peak, the Roman Empire consisted of up to 40 percent slaves. What is different now is that the various cultures in the US – various races, religions, and cultures – all enjoy the same basic rights of citizenship.
When cheap energy is gone (and the word is WHEN, not IF), the profusion of rights and privileges will disappear. Present-day life in America is not in any sense a “zero sum game.” That someone has a high material lifestyle does not mean that someone else must go without. Because of access to massive amounts of low-cost energy (and the technology to utilize it, of course), everyone can have a lot. Because the population is growing (mainly because of immigration), there are substantial opportunities for increased industrial production and generation/accumulation of wealth. The waste, the species destruction, the pollution, the environmental destruction – for the time being, all of these external costs can be simply pushed off on someone else living in another country or a later generation.When push comes to shove, individuals will protect their family and clan, not a multicultural hodge-podge that no longer possesses a cultural identity at all.

What are rights? Rights are privileges granted to the members of a society, and they last only as long as the society can maintain itself and chooses to enforce those privileges. There are no “inalienable human rights.” Rights exist only in the context of a government and its laws. If your country is conquered, you do not have the right to the air in a jug. Americans enjoy an incredible degree of freedom and rights because America is a very wealthy country. When America falls, all of those rights will be gone. The right to employment or housing without regard to race, religion, gender, or national origin will be gone. The right to a trial by a jury of peers will be gone. The right to freedom of speech will be gone. The right to bear arms will be gone. The right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment will be gone. The right to life will be gone.

Without a government to back them up, statements of “rights” are meaningless. The 1948 UN Declaration of Human Rights and all the statements of rights that followed it are nothing more than worthless scraps of paper without a government to back them up. Once food and defense are taken care of, everything else that a government spends money on is discretionary. In a high-energy environment, a lot of attention may be paid to human rights. In a low-energy environment, “rights” of minorities, which are difficult and expensive to enforce, are the first things to go.

When times get hard and there is no longer a near limitless abundance, people will look to any differences as a basis for obtaining more of the limited resources for themselves. Differences in race, differences in religion, differences in language, differences in ethnicity and national origin. This is obvious. Look at the world’s “hot spots.” The war in Rwanda: differences in ethnic groups. The friction in Northern Ireland: religion. The problem in Yugoslavia / Serbia / Kosovo: religion. The problem in Indonesia: race, religion, and ethnicity. The Sinhalese/Tamil problem in Sri Lanka: ethnicity.

The point is not that one race or religion is better or worse than any other. The point is that when push comes to shove, someone has to be killed, and there must be some basis, some rationale for doing this. That’s where differences – any kind of differences – come into play. It doesn’t really matter what race, religion, language, or nationality you were born into. As a human being, you must accept a cause and take a stand, as arbitrary as it may be or seem. Ultimately, you will be called to and must decide to kill for your cause (nation, race, religion) or you will be killed by someone else who is willing to fight for his. You must take a stand for your cause, or you will surely die for someone else’s.
When cheap energy is gone, America will quickly disintegrate. Its population is now too large to subsist on low-energy agriculture. The country will fractionalize as quickly as Yugoslavia did after the collapse of the Soviet Empire. In 1981, Joel Garreau wrote a book entitled, The Nine Nations of North America. Seventeen years later, that book is not far off the mark in identifying the likely states of North America when cheap energy is gone. Those nations are: Hispanic Florida and the Caribbean; the Hispanic southwest and Mexico; French Quebec; the Pacific maritime; New England; the industrial east; the south; the plains; and the nonmaritime west (the Rocky Mountains, midwestern and western Canada, and Alaska).
The population of North America is now too great to support with preindustrial agriculture. When abundant land and cheap energy are gone, the issues will be who will be master, who will be slave, and who will be dead.

Malcolm X attributed the problem between blacks and whites to the fact that the white race is inherently evil. The source of racial strife, racism, and slavery is not genetic: all races have practiced slavery. The source of racial strife, and the source of religious, linguistic, and ethnic strife, is economics. In a low-energy, land-poor setting, the dominant group in any area will be homogeneous, from racial, linguistic, religious, and cultural perspectives.

Given that the answer to the question is “No,” a second question may be asked. Will the surviving small industrial population be “Out of America.”? The answer here would also appear to be “No.” By its policy of massive immigration of foreign cultures – races, languages, and religions – it is no longer a viable culture at all, but a fractionated multicultural mess that will hold together only as long as the “free” energy of fossil fuels holds out. It is not a people. It is an out-of-control, growth-addicted, energy-addicted, incredibly wasteful and destructive industrial cancer that is destroying not only itself but also its host – planet Earth. Its democratic form of government – a wonderful idea for a homogeneous population in a low-population-density, low-energy setting -- has slowly paralyzed as the population has been converted to a balkanized hodge-podge of competing races, languages, religions, and cultures. No single culture is in charge any longer. In a sense, the planet is a ship with 229 captains (countries), and the United States is a ship with no captain at all.

I quite agree with you, Mr. Leaf. Only abundance holds this backed up crapper of a country together. Everyone here is bribed not to kill each other.

What gets me is that they set this up on purpose. Years ago reasonable men were saying, "Hey, all this immigration could lead to trouble down the road." Pat Buchanan was warning about it.

Now the die is cast. It's going to be very ugly. I hope to survive it, and film much of it as a historical record warning future generations against multiculturalism.

Good points. The book "Who Are We" by Huntington brings out these points - though not with the energy perspective. I think the future of America will be notably violent - with ethnic hostilities adding to the problem.

And make no mistake, those ethnic hostilities are real and present. They are hidden by the thinest patina of tolerance - one which will evaporate in an instant.

Minor nitpick:

The coming conflict will be CULTURAL ... but NOT specifically ethnic or racial.

White Moslems against Arab Christians for example.

Mind you, I suppose some rednecks will assume anyone wearing a turban is an "Ay-rab" or "Moz-lem" ... even Sikhs who are certainly not friends of Islam.

Multiculturism failed in Yugoslavia ... they ended up with "cantons" 99% full of like thinking people.

So the UK could end up for example with the cities 99% Moslem, and the rural towns 99% Christian (or more correctly white atheist).

ah, but this is project Britain
No-one knows what keeps us together, no constitution, little interest in pyscho-patriotism

Blair is trying to destroy Britain with a fake set of BS ideas about Britishness

post peak oil... brick up the damn channel tunnel, rebuild the navy and hunker down. There'll be ethnic and class (yes classes do exist!) tensions and a shitstorm but it will be a very British shitstorm, cat 2 while most everyone else will be cat 5

I do see America breaking along the old civil war lines. Though we all know the south really won that war, every president has to be from south (like clinton), there will be blame directed against the south which will revert i'm sure to a theocracy. unless most americans realise it's those people that led them astay

But Britian... different story

Martin

Perhaps a breakup along these lines?



From The Nine Nations of North America, a 1981 book by Joel Garreau.

"Forget the pious wisdom you've been handed about North America.

Forget the borders dividing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, those pale barriers so thoroughly porous to money, immigrants, and ideas.

Forget the bilge you were taught in sixth-grade geography about East and West, North and South, faint echoes of glorious pasts that never really existed save in sanitized textbooks.

Forget the maze of state and provincial boundaries, those historical accidents and surveyors' mistakes. The reason no one except the trivia expert can name all fifty of the United States is that they hardly matter.

Forget the political almanacs full of useless data on local elections rendered meaningless by strangely carved districts and precincts.

Consider, instead, the way North America really works. It is Nine Nations. Each with its capital and distinctive web of power and influence.... These nations look different, feel different, and sound different from each other, and few of their boundaries match the political lines drawn on current maps....

Most importantly, each nation has a distinctive prism through which it views the world."

I commented on Garreau not that far back on this thread:

http://www.peakoil.com/fortopic17315-0-asc-30.html (Scroll down)

Personally I think bio regional nation states make more sense. I'd argue with Joel's map and his logic (I have talked to the author and he tends to disagree with the premise that energy will be our undoing.) but the concept works for me.

The map itself: It has been 25 years since the book's release. Immigration and migration have changed things. So to will consideration of energy and long distance travel. I'll post back some deeper ideas later but, I am pretty sure the Empty Quarter won't be a functional state. There are huge cultural differences between the inhabitants of this area (mormons in Utah, Navajo in NM and AZ, Innuit in Canada/alaska.) I see splintering here too. Mexamerica's northern borders have shifted further north as have the "Islands"

Well, if you read "Coalition" as "Oceania", and "Britain" as "Airstrip One" then at least there is some hope for equality amongst races.

America? Break up?
Not a chance in hell.

Is there a anti american commie socialist weirdo on this thread trying to hide?

"phsyco patriotism"
You better have some form of love of your land and country or your just another slut whore multiculturalist wack job.

And what evidence do you have to support this?

Umm, what the...

You apparently have not studied the US Civil War very much. The United States brought the Confederacy to its knees. The Confederacy was in a crisis (Georgia considered seceding from the secession at one point). After the battle at Gettysburgh, the North was victorious in battle after battle, rampaging the south. The south was outnumbered in troops as well. When it was all over, the south lost on virtually every front, both in terms of trade and of course in terms of slavery. The United States also set its own terms for each of the seceding states could reenter the country. Entire states didn't have any say in national elections for up to 10 years after the war was over. It took a political deal between the north and the south for the troops to finally leave the south in 1876. I'd say the south lost pretty badly. And if you thhink they are somehow biding their time by quitely cooperating, then blatant discrimination against blacks would not be basically illegal (either literally or via lawsuits) in this country, including in the south, as a lot of the older southerners very much want to discriminate.

Dont worry as sure as the sun shine this will make its way back! Multi-cult-Diversity-Quaota-and "equality" like there was ever such a thing" will be the very fisrt things to fall by the way as the article states come post peak energy! As for blacks ..they had theier golden age from 1965 to around 2010...what did they do with it? What? Invest on movingfrom rural to city- welfare-free handouts- a youth of baggy pants rap music-gangs- beer-crime.....ohh well the golden age is about to end what is to come....well peak oil will decide but I have a pretty good guess.

Hey Leaf - what happened - you got bored of trolling the limeys?

The US government can shove itself up its own ass for all I care, but I've got news for you, the people understand what makes the USA great, and we can't be stopped, you'd be better off joining us.

The following quote (from Lincoln I believe) has been buried deeply within each of us US citizens in public education (at least the pre-bilingual classes students):

United we stand, divided we fall.

This simple quote, and the machinations behind it, are why we, the USA, own/run the entire globe at this point. We will feel the peak symptoms last of all nations on this planet. We will fix what needs to be fixed when it's obvious it needs fixing, and we'll fix it quickly. My neighbor could be the biggest douchebag to ever walk the Earth, but when a common enemy materializes, we unite to fight to have the right to disagree with each other. What a system. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

BTW, I'm not being nationalistic, it disgusts me. I'm being realistic.
Go ahead and bet against the citizens of the USA - we'll disappoint you every time. Our system is the best on the planet, imperfect of course, but there is no equal. It simply relies on both the charity and greed of man, simultaneously.

Please crawl back into you eastern european hole and if you're real nice, maybe we'll save you again in a couple decades before you eat your arm off.

And that pretty much summarize it, not the quote, but the fact that it is being buried deeply in public education where even illegal Mexican go to ESL class (despite that US has no official language) and learn US civics. The end result is that they become Americans first and whatever their diversity is second. And the fact that there is a great diversity is very important. After all, Mexican demonstants didn't torch cars in L.A. unlike mozlem rioters who torched Paris suburbs. Why was that?