The idea that we are going to savagely dig up the world’s coal supply and burn it off in a rampage is badly flawed. There will be insufficient economic activity to produce such a demand. Coal consumption is now primarily driven by oil, when the oil disappears so will much of the usage of coal.

Ah, but your carrots do.

What could possibly be next as the system absorbs this largess and yet cries for more, like the plant in "The Little Shop of Horrors". Can you picture Bernanke as Seymour, stumbling around to find the next blood as the cynical and conniving ever-hungry plant/beast (banks, funds, traders) pushes for more and more extreme measures to keep it Fed?

The world, as we know it, is slip-slidding away... Someone cut up the lifeboats to build McMansions...

We aren't fundamentally different than any other species except that we make up stories about what it all means and complain a lot.

Partly because I live in a city that is driven by greed and materialism, so this is the only place I can come for a meaningful conversation. If it wasn't for PeakOil.com, I probably wouldn't talk at all.

Sometimes it seems that I have wasted my whole life. Yet, how could I have gotten here any other way?

Peak oil is like a bonfire.

Ever been to one of those? Large several story high piles of wood that were not wanted, so you call your friends to burn them.

There is a point I call peak bonfire. It is really fun! But almost before it starts going down, it becomes less fun already and no matter how fast you throw stuff on it, you can't make it blast like that a gain.

People start moving in closer and some go home.

We are past peak bonfire, some people are already going home now.
Soon there will be ashes, and a few people eating marshmallows and a lot of memories.

"It has been financial madness for some time now. The "American Dream" is really a nightmare - but most folks are still too immersed in the slumber of consumerism to really understand that yet."

I hate this board...it has power over the mind.

In the end it will set a course of its own---out of control, into the (rising) sea.

The films ends with a picture of humanity returning to nature. But it didn't mention that a global Earth-Mother-values paradigm change is not nearly enough. Six and a half billion motherfuckers can't all live like the Indians did.

I've found it impossible to sustain a "shocked" emotional state over material like this for more than a week or two. I think it was back in 2002 that I felt my own week or two of Peak Oil shock, decades ago for shock over eco-destruction. But it's like trying to hold a realistic smile for a slow photographer. It fades.

And once you contemplate death seriously for a while, it just doesn't seem to matter very much. (I think this is the secret learned in war by veteran soldiers).

So an introductory film like What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire is just fucking boring after you've already seen better films, read a bunch of books, devoured every article and discussed it all ad infinitum online.

The films ends with a picture of humanity returning to nature. But it didn't mention that a global Earth-Mother-values paradigm change is not nearly enough. Six and a half billion motherfuckers can't all live like the Indians did.

I've found it impossible to sustain a "shocked" emotional state over material like this for more than a week or two. I think it was back in 2002 that I felt my own week or two of Peak Oil shock, decades ago for shock over eco-destruction. But it's like trying to hold a realistic smile for a slow photographer. It fades.

And once you contemplate death seriously for a while, it just doesn't seem to matter very much. (I think this is the secret learned in war by veteran soldiers).

So an introductory film like What A Way To Go: Life At The End Of Empire is just fucking boring after you've already seen better films, read a bunch of books, devoured every article and discussed it all ad infinitum online.