Agreed. In most of Europe you can jump on a train and visit almost any town you want, and if it doesn't stop in the town there will almost always be a bus. In the UK many of the major towns and cities, if not all, have converted all the central streets to pedestrians only. Big wide roads are now paved for walking pleasure. They also drive small engined cars 1.0L to 2.0L being the norm and the countries just aren't as big, so most things are close by. Sure you could give the Americans $8 gas but it will hurt them a LOT more.

Yeah, been feeling pretty darn doomed lately myself, but I realise all the worrying in the world won't help, so I very consciously don't let myself dwell on it. Not good for the health.

Don't get me wrong. I'd love to see it all fall apart tomorrow, but realistically, I think it's going to be a fairly long slow slide. Are we ready for $8 gas today? No. But it ain't gonna happen tomorrow either. $8 gas is several years off. A LOT of the energy that people use is totally pointless, and realistically people are going to be amazed by how much we can go without and barely even notice.

The good thing is most of us will probably avoid the collective general public TSHTF moments. It's kind of like New Orleans ahead of Katrina at least we know the storm is coming and have the sense to get out the way as best we can. It's clear most will be emotionally, financially and possibly physically crippled by this. Of those, many are bound to be completely helpless. On a positive note I don't think there will be much violence seeing how sheepish, stupid, collective and feminized the population has become. Most will just burn out and become weak and desperate like homeless people. This is victimization at its finest hour. I think the bottom line for all of us individually is not to become a victim of this thing. Having the foresight to see what's coming we really have no excuse.

I couldn't agree more with both of your sentiments. With the exception of "I'd love to see it all fall apart tomorrow". After all it's all fun and games here until the real pain hits. A pain that no one is immune too, no matter how well they think they are prepared.
Now, guys like Heineken and I may not have too much to worry about. We may still pass on from this world with some comfort and a modicum of respect in the end, at least someone to place a shovel of dirt over our heads. However, I'm less certain about the under 40 crowd here.

That might have all been different had we adopted a more European life standard in the US and else ware. I traveled there as well, extensively, throughout my adult career. For the most part in the early days they were born, lived and died within 25 miles of their home. Everyone had a small garden, excellent mass transportation and people lived in small well made homes or flats. My European friends coming here would always remark on the excesses of the American life style, big cars, big portions of food, and the girth of the average citizen to match.
I'm not trying to paint too rosy of a picture here, because they have their problems as well and they like the rest of the world are changing believing that "free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity", no matter what or who gets in the way.

I also believe that we will never know when the tipping point actually comes. When there was that one defining moment, on that one day, in which it could have gone in either direction and then it became too late to retrieve. From there is will be a long and agonizing spiral downward.
"This is the way the world ends, not with a bang, but with a whimper" is the last line of the poem "The Hollow Men" by T.S. Elliot ...

My read on this is different. That wasted energy has powered the US economy for so long that we're really gonna notice it without it. Forceful elimination of energy waste (and all the associated waste) from the US = doom. Funny, isn't it.
I think we're not ready for this at all, and that we're never going to be ready for it, until it's too late.
Millions of Americans are living on fumes right now (literally and figuratively). Who knows what marginal 10-cent increase in the cost of gas sends them over the edge?

How many millions of jobs depend on wasted energy? Can we really retool that fast? The seriousness of the problem is only just now beginning to penetrate the thick public consciousness. Actual solutions are miles away.
Collapse will be like an avalanche, gathering mass and momentum as it moves down the mountain into the Valley of the Greater Depression.

I'm really not too psyched for it at all. I think about it every day. We really need to stock up on some food.
I try to do something every day.
Today I sold some cast iron cookware, so that goes into the savings which will be spent on next year's heating oil the second they let us pre-buy.
I checked my sap buckets and wandered around on snowshoes with the dog. It was sunny and perfect.
That's like mental health money in the bank.

I dunno. I look around where I live. Not much work. Most folks have to drive 30 miles into town to work $8/hr jobs. On one hand they'd seem pretty much on edge. On the other hand, what prevents them from getting together with 3 friends, trading their car for a van, and carpooling? Presto chango, instead of $10, that trip to town now costs $2.5. More to the point, pretty much the only reason there's no bus service to our community is that nobody's really interested except in tourist season. If people swallowed their pride and rode the bus like they do a lot of other places, suddenly that trip to town is now down to like $1. Even if gas prices triple, its still quite affordable. It's definitely an existential crisis for the criminal in chief to convince us that life is better living with less, but it seems a bit naive to me to think people will starve rather than ride the bus.

Good comments, Lore. The contrast between Europe and the US is too big to grasp; you sort of have to FEEL it.
We are going to have to pay for the choices we ugly Americans have made, individually and as a society, for the past 100 years or so.
We are going to have to pay big-time.
When driving my dad to the VA med center in Richmond we pass through almost literally endless strung-out 100%-car-dependent shopping and tract-housing strips. Superhighways snaking in and out of all of it. You know, Kunstler's landscape of "fried-food shacks and muffler shops." How much of America looks like that? Way much. It's not going away easily. We're invested in it up to our necks. And that's not even touching on the ag sector.

SPG, I'm not disputing that at least some of these changes can happen, but what will they do to economic growth, without with the towering DEBT cannot be serviced?
If enough people ride the bus instead of drive their cars, it will put millions of people out of work.
With rising food prices and no jobs, starvation becomes a real possibility, I assure you.

I've been thinking doomish thoughts lately myself.
I came to the conclusion that I've survived worse than this already (don't ask; I had a shitty GenX latchkey upbringing). Seriously, the worst anyone can do to me that hasn't already happened at least once is kill me. When I realized that, things got back to okay. I worry about my kids, but parents always do, I guess.
Just now while reading this I noticed that the Kleenex box was empty, and I started thinking of what I could use this for without realizing it.
Okay, maybe I am unhinged like everyone says ...

No argument. The debt bubble is a huge problem. Obviously there's gonna be a lot of defaults. Eventually the US will default on it's debts to China. What happens then? I suppose the main thing is that the dollar devalues, which mostly means that all the trinkets disappear and Wal-Mart closes it's doors. Right now, the lowliest homeless guy in the US is at more risk from obesity than starvation. Really the only way this leads to starvation level poverty in the US in the next decade is as a result of large scale political disruptions (riots, etc). That's not impossible, but seems to me fairly unlikely to affect most people in the US. The major cities OTOH? Who knows.

Although I've tended to use "starvation" as a metaphor in this discussion, it will inevitably happen literally as well (more for the reasons MonteQuest gets into, though).
The Great Depression was known more for malnutrition than for starvation, but in a Greater Depression . . . ?
Anyway, I think the potential ramifications of what's happening extend much further than Wal-Mart and Chinese trinkets, SPG.
We've had nearly full employment for a very long time. We've forgotten what it's like to have 20% or more of the able-bodied population out of work. Out of work and out of health care.

William Gibson called it: The Sprawl. Our own little Athabasca of pavement, telephone poles, what have you.

He also says:


And perhaps more to the point, the opening lines:

Well...I don't know where you live, but around here, probably 50% of the population is uninsured. I take care of tons of people without "healthcare". I guess I don't quite understand why the debt bubble has a lot to do with unemployment. There's plenty of work that needs to be done right here in America. If our currency devalues, then A: we won't be able to afford outsourcing and B: we won't be able to afford fuel to run as much automated machinery. Both of those should generate more work. Seems to me the basic problem vis a via employment is that Americans all want to be white collar. We have to import people from Mexico to pick our food because we're too good to do it. Is it going to mean a lower standard of living? Sure. Almost everywhere in the world has a lower standard of living than us, so it's not like it can't be done. The biggest crisis, it seems to me, is the existential crisis of realizing we are no longer the master race, just some lowly schmucks who need to make sure the potatoes get harvested.