[Chuckmak]

this is what i think it's gonna be:

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/flash/endofworld.html

lol

[smallpoxgirl]

The other's I've considered I would maintain are still options:
1. Global Thermonuclear war
2. Climate change
3. Environmental disruption due to habitat destruction/loss of biodiversity/persistent bioacumulative toxins/hormonally active toxins/etc.
4. Unification of the world under a single autocratic government - Somewhere between 1984 and Brave New World

Y2K never held water for me. I worked with computer hardware and software enough to know that A: most things had been Y2K compatible for years. B: Most things that weren't, wouldn't been adversely affected by setting them back to 1/1/1980. C: The problem was relatively easy to assess and the time line for fixing it was obvious. The fixes were likewise obvious and could be planned to happen on the appropriate time line. My biggest worry when I woke up on 1/1/00 was my hangover.

The problems which are hard to assess, difficult to understand the scope of, and for which people aren't willing to accept the solutions, those are the ones to be afraid of.

[Ache]

A simple fact of life is that any system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is unsustainable. Despite all the warnings that we are headed for an ecological and environmental perfect storm, many Americans are oblivious to the flashing red light on the earth's fuel gauge. Many feel the "American way of life" is an entitlement that operates outside the laws of nature. At the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, "The American way of life is not negotiable." That way of life requires a highly disproportionate use of the world's nonrenewable resources. While only containing 4% of the world population, the United States consumes 25% of the world's oil. The centerpiece of that way of life is suburbia. And massive amounts of nonrenewable fuels are required to maintain the project of suburbia.
The suburban lifestyle is considered by many Americans to be an accepted and normal way of life. But this gluttonous, sprawling, and energy-intensive way of life is simply not sustainable. Few people are aware of how their lives are dependent on cheap and abundant energy. Are these Americans in for a rude awakening? In a fascinating new documentary, "The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of the American Dream," the central question is this: Does the suburban way of life have a future? The answer is a resounding no.

No combination of alternative fuels can run and maintain our current system as it is now. There will eventually be a great scramble to get out of the suburbs as the global oil crisis deepens and the property values of suburban homes plummet.

The film opens with the quote, "If a path to the better there be, it begins with a full look at the worst." You'd think from that opening we're in for a very depressing flick. Not so. Despite the serious subject matter, the documentary is actually quite engaging and entertaining. Not only is it informative for those already familiar with the issues but it's also quite accessible and enlightening for the uninitiated. It serves as great introduction and a real eye-opener for people who are largely unfamiliar with the topic of energy depletion and the impact it will have on their lives and communities.

"The End of Suburbia" marshals an impressive array of evidence that the growing energy demands of the "American dream" in suburbia will eclipse our planet's ability to provide it. The suburban way of life will soon become economically and ecologically impossible to maintain. We will see the inevitable collapse of the suburban lifestyle and the end of the American Dream. And it will happen within our lifetimes.

How bad will it get? Put it this way. We are looking at the mother of all downsizings.

For those who are familiar with the issues of peak oil and resource depletion, the usual suspects are here. They include Richard Heinberg, Michael Klare, Matthew Simmons, Michael C. Ruppert, Julian Darley, Dr. Colin Campbell, and Kenneth Deffeyes, among others. All of these individuals provide valuable information and insights concerning the coming energy crisis and the impact it will have on the lives of people on the North American continent.

When you look at all the conceivable alternatives the conclusion is there is no combination of any alternatives that will allow us to continue consuming the way we do.

But the standout star of the film is author and critic of contemporary culture, James Howard Kunstler. The sometimes humorous and always entertaining presence of Kunstler is prominent throughout the documentary--and for good reason. He grabs your attention. He explains in refreshingly blunt, easy-to-comprehend language that suburbia is screwed. His undiluted, tell-it-like-it-is style is a potent mix of George Carlin humor and wit wrapped around an incisive Chomsky-like comprehension and understanding. With Kunstler you get an intellectually penetrating person armed with a functioning bullshit detector wrapped up in an intensely candid New York attitude. Kunstler has a blog on the web he calls "The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicles" (kunstler.com). Need I say more?

Kunstler calls the project of suburbia "the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world" and says "America has squandered its wealth in a living arrangement that has no future." You immediately get the idea he's not exactly a fan of suburbia. How and why did this happen?

"The End of Suburbia" outlines the seemingly rational and logical impulse behind the project of suburbia, tracing the beginnings to the late 19th century when it was originally envisioned as an antidote to city life and an escape from the hideous aspects of industrialism. Modern suburbia traces its beginnings to just after World War II when the suburban project took off with a massive housing boom and the increasing dominance of the automotive industry. This car-centered suburban project ended up being the template for the massive development of the second half of the 20th century. That project was wrapped up, packaged, and sold to the American public as "The American Dream."

"The End of Suburbia" points out that the rise of the suburbs was made possible by abundant and cheap oil. It allowed for the creation of a system of habitation where millions of people can live many miles away from where they work and where they shop for food and necessities. And there is no other form of living that requires more energy in order to function than suburbia. But the voracious and expanding energy needs of our industrial society, our insane consumer culture, and the affluent suburban lifestyles are brushing up against the disturbing reality of finite energy resources.

The biggest impact will be felt by those who currently live in the sprawling suburbs of North America. The end of cheap oil will signal the end of their way of life. Frankly, many of the things we take for granted will come to an end. "The End of Suburbia" makes clear that the effects of energy depletion go way beyond paying more at the pump. It will literally get down to the question of how you will feed yourself and your family.

Although the documentary mostly avoids the gloom and doom of some peak oil theorists, it does occasionally touch on some of the darker aspects of fossil fuel depletion, notably how it will impact food production. The film briefly looks at the energy-intensive process needed to bring food to supermarkets. Our modern industrial agriculture relies heavily on petroleum for pesticides and natural gas for fertilizer, not to mention the energy used in planting, growing, harvesting, irrigating, packaging, processing and transporting the food. It stands to reason that if suburbia is going to collapse, it also means this centralized model of agriculture will collapse too.

"The End of Suburbia" shows how the suburban way of life has become normalized and reveals the enormous effort currently put forth to maintain it. On a foreign policy level, it means continued aggressive attempts to secure access to the remaining reserves of oil on the planet in order to prop up and maintain the increasingly dysfunctional and obscene suburban lifestyle. But "The End of Suburbia" makes it crystal clear that suburban living has very poor prospects for the future. Any attempt to maintain it will be futile. There will eventually be a great scramble to get out of the suburbs as the global oil crisis deepens and the property values of suburban homes plummet. Kunstler asserts that the suburbs will become "the slums of the future."

What about alternative sources of energy? "The End of Suburbia" points out that no combination of alternative fuels can run and maintain our current system as it is now.

What about hydrogen, you ask? The film does a great job of shooting down the hysterical applause for hydrogen. The idea of a hydrogen economy is mostly fantasy. Hydrogen is not a form of energy. It is a form of energy storage. It takes more energy to make hydrogen than you actually get from hydrogen. Same with ethanol. It is a net energy loser. It takes more gasoline to create and fertilize the corn and convert it to alcohol than you get from burning it. When you look at all the conceivable alternatives the conclusion is there is no combination of any alternatives that will allow us to continue consuming the way we do.

What is in our future? The consensus is the suburbs will surely not survive the end of cheap oil and natural gas. In other words, the massive downscaling of America--voluntary or involuntary--will be the trend of the future. We are in for some profound changes in the 21st century. The imminent collapse of industrial civilization means we'll have to organize human communities in a much different fashion from the completely unsustainable, highly-centralized, earth-destroying, globalized system we have now. There will need to be a move to much smaller, human-scale, localized and decentralized systems that can sustain themselves within their own landbase. Industrial civilization and suburban living relies on cheap sources of energy to continue to grow and expand. That era is coming to an end. One of the most important tasks right now is to prepare for a very different way of life.

While "The End of Suburbia" doesn't provide any easy answers, it does provide a much-needed look at the reality of the situation many in North America will be facing in the coming years. For that reason, "The End of Suburbia" is one of the most important must-see documentaries of the year.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ache', 'A')t the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, "The American way of life is not negotiable."

[Ache]

I just downloaded these 2 movies on. They are on format MPEG.

The End of Suburbia

Size : 696 MB (729,927,640 bytes)


Arithmetic,.Population.&.Energy.(Environmental.Damage,.Energy.Crisis).(Dr..Albert.A..Bartlett.lecture).(1994)

Size : 400 MB (420,093,952 bytes)

If U want me to send it email me to

qbanache@yahoo.com

[RonMN]

So you've just viewed "end of suburbia"...

It's an eye-opener, ain't it

[MicroHydro]

That would be TEOTWAWKI (Te-Ot-Waw-Ki, pronounced Tay-Oat-Waw-Key) to those in the know. Sounds native American or Maori. Great name for a boat. And yes, I feel fine.

[HonestPessimist]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('rogerhb', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ache', 'A')t the Earth Summit in 1992, George H.W. Bush forcefully declared, "The American way of life is not negotiable."

[medicvet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MicroHydro', 'T')hat would be TEOTWAWKI (Te-Ot-Waw-Ki, pronounced Tay-Oat-Waw-Key) to those in the know. Sounds native American or Maori. Great name for a boat. And yes, I feel fine.

[AdzP]

Hi all,

Although its a somewhat grey area...

End Of Suburbia was made by a couple of independent Canadian journos and filmakers, one of whom is Greg Greene. I know Greg and he's a very decent chap.

It was not financed by any TV company or major production house but by the guys themselves. They were filming it back when hardly any one else was talking about any `peak oil` scenarios, I think it was even before peakoil.com was formed (correct me if i'm wrong). `Back` in 2003. We first met at the ASPO conference of 2003 in Paris. There were hardly any other journalists there.

In this particular case the journalists who make the content you want are not - as I`ve said - part of any big group with huge cash backing.

So really, why don't you actually purchase a copy rather than download one?

Surely you'd like to support their efforts? If you want independent media who are prepared to take risks and work outside of major corporations then people really have to wake up and pay for it. Otherwise it's the most certain route to not having an independent media.

You can get one here http://www.endofsuburbia.com

best
adam

[Elfstrom]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ache', 'A') simple fact of life is that any system based on the use of nonrenewable resources is unsustainable.
etc...

[Lokutus]

This is worth a read about Peak Oil's silver lining.

Navigating the Collapse of Civilization: a Spiritual Map

Recently, I seem to have been bombarded from every direction with the theme of collapse. Whether in the writings of Mike Ruppert, Richard Heinberg, William Kötke, Jason Godesky, James Howard Kunstler, or Jared Diamond, the theme of collapse keeps reverberating, unsettling me, relentlessly reminding me that the demise of human civilization is in process and will not go away.

As I share my awareness of collapse with others, I meet a variety of responses. Many, especially those folks in academia, and the history profession in particular, view the idea of collapse with bemused scorn, asserting that while civilization might appear to be collapsing, current events are not really new and are merely variations on prior historical occurrences. At the opposite end of the spectrum, fundamentalist Christians read current events through the tea leaves of biblical prophecies—some putting their own and the planet's life on hold as they await “the rapture”—and still others, like the LaHaye-Jenkins crowd, bankroll millions from the profits of their “end times” prognostications.

Click link at top to read the full essay.

[Graeme]

'The end of the world' has already begun, UW scientists say

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n its 4.5 billion years, Earth has evolved from its hot, violent birth to the celebrated watery blue planet that stands out in pictures from space. But in a new book, two noted University of Washington astrobiologists say the planet already has begun the long process of devolving into a burned-out cinder, eventually to be swallowed by the sun.

By their reckoning, Earth's "day in the sun" has reached 4:30 a.m., corresponding to its 4.5 billion-year age. By 5 a.m., the 1 billion-year reign of animals and plants will come to an end. At 8 a.m. the oceans will vaporize. At noon – after 12 billion years – the ever-expanding sun, transformed into a red giant, will engulf the planet, melting away any evidence it ever existed and sending molecules and atoms that once were Earth floating off into space.

[Kylon]

From that perspective the end of the world began as soon as the world itself began.


As soon as the world began, it was on it's way to becoming engulfed in the sun.

[BlisteredWhippet]

Its true. Truer than Jesus or Muhammed. Truer than the twinkle in your eye. Truer than a history book. Truer than everything you will ever teach your children.

The response, for us, is challenging. Stephen Hawking's recent suggestion, to build a spaceship and find new galaxies is certainly bold and daring, but he is a complete idiot. True.

We can't even build consensus. All we can build is shit. Shit on top of shit, cascading streams of shit.

Time to clean house. Clean the "clock" as it were. If anyone is going to build the Universe's biggest Custom Chopper, it ain't gonna be us. Its going to be some race of beigns that grew like a seed inside the belly of the Earth, some race that lived with nature instead of fighting with it.

Perhaps you are one of these beings, and perhaps not. It depends utterly on the blind spots in your own perception. It depends to what extent you can feel several hundred million years in your bones.

Can you strategize past next week, year, or decade? What meaning does life have? How are you going to align yourself, with or against a collective effort? Can you turn away from the selfishness, the greed, the insatiability of modernism in all its exhaustive facets?

Every moment in time is a blink of an eye. But none of these has to be meaningless. We came from the Earth, and were formed by the pattern of the universe unfolding. There is meaning in this. All else is dust.

For my part, I think that the answer is simple. The answer is unequivocal. You know it in your heart and bones when you see it or hear it. You know it in legends, myth, and religion.

It is called Eden, the Garden, or Gaia. It is within the word called, "Home". One author talks about the Words "Earth", "Heart", and "Hearth". It is a place of respite, continuity, communion, growth, shelter, harmony. From there, we live in peace for several million years. From there we come to understand enough to be able to make good choices.

I think, but it does not matter, that we can reverse everything we have done to the Earth. Ways of life can be changed! Lifestyles are nothing but brief fashions. We have been and will be sold lifestyle instead of a way of life, but a new way of life is still possible.

The configuration wants us to do what is right. Preserve the niche. We cannot simply evolve out of it unless we change way of life.

Times change, virtue does not.

[willjones4]

OK, so am I really supposed to give two skips about what will happen in half a billion years?

[BlisteredWhippet]

In writing this, a word came to mind. In English, from the phrase "Way of life", another word, a chinese word, wei.

My mind often finds words that are relevant and offers them up to me even though most of the time I have to go searching for the meaning of the word. It never fails, for some reason, to present the right word, in the right way.

For example, Wu Wei is a Taoist principle, or right action, or, taking the right action at the right time as a principle. This is what I mean: this is what we have to do.

For now, there is a lot of knee-jerk reactionary thinking. What will I do? I will do this, I will do that. Oftentimes it seems to fight the flow of nature and life. We do things even though we know they are negative, or bad for the environment, or our own health or mental welfare. We feel propelled, compelled, jerked about. We are in control but not in control.

For many useless extertions, as many trials and preparations are for Peak Oil or even any daily, routine, or mundane thing, did it not occur to us to simply not do it? Perhaps that feeling of regret, ruefulness, futility is simply the awareness that we initially had that what we are doing is pointless.

I have a feeling that this is the daily reality for most people. wei is this? If we only knew the right thing to do at the right time, I would guess we would not feel this dissonance.

Wu Wei is a good way of life, I would think.

Wu Wei would say, hey- maybe I don't need this, or I don't need that. I don't need to say this, agree to this, be a part of this.

Wu Wei will say "no" as easily and satisfactorily as it will say, "yes".

Wu Wei involves a lot of quiet thinking, reflection, inward mediation. It lets go by slipping out of the grip of thinking that things "must", "are", "or else". It asks questions but is comfortable without knowing an answer. It avoids wrong actions by not doing.

And if it was difficult, I would guess it really wasn't wu wei. Maybe on the path toward understanding it, but not part of its mature embodiment. It is in itself just a reflection of power in simplicity.

[BlisteredWhippet]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'b')listered whippet that was some kind of wonderful? heh?

I know what you are saying. If we all come together and trust in each other then the world would be our oyster. This is the place where we can be free and open our sardine can. Inside is this stinking, wretched piece of fish with scales and guts and little spiney fingerlings on the outside. Yeah! That makes me salivate. How about you?

All kidding aside. The world began and ended on the same plate of spagetiiehei. all wiggley and worm-juiced out on the compost of history until the Klingons found out our secret which is that the peak moment is the last. almost good night

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('willjones4', 'O')K, so am I really supposed to give two skips about what will happen in half a billion years?