The Future: Running on empty

Humanity is screwed. I'll elaborate.

For the past fifty years, it has been predicted that the resources that enable first-world countries to maintain their lifestyles are running out. Primarily, fossil fuels are disappearing. Fast. When these resources run out, people will panic. They will overreact. They will lash out at the forces that be, and fight to maintain the lifestyle they feel they are entitled to.

Of course, this knowledge is not new. It has rested in the subconsciousness of humanity for some time. The reason there is panic NOW is because this knowledge has been brought into the conscious; Humanity now knows that we rested on our laurels for too long, and the transition from waste to conservation is going to be painful. Maybe more than painful; excruciating perhaps? I think so.

Right now there is a resource war in the Middle East. The Iraqi war is a farce of epic proportions. The Americans, and the World, were lied to. This is no war to “spread freedom,” as certain politicians, and hawks, put it. Every country that has some resemblance to a democracy has fought for those ideals on its own. There was no greater power that swooped in from the rafters to bolster the fledgling democracies of those countries. If Iraq wanted a democracy, it would have started that transition on its own. This is no war to disarm a dangerous person. The leader of Iraq was dangerous – to his own people, but not to his neighbors. This is no war stabilize that region of the world. The Middle East was more stable before the war than it is now. This war is nothing more than to secure America’s access to the dwindling resource that is oil.

Of course, this “war on terror” has cost this country more than we could ever imagine. It has cost us our friendship with our allies; it has cost us lives in the form of military personnel and in the form of collateral damage of the Iraqi people; it has – and will – cost is an unbelievable amount of money. Those facts don’t matter. We just needed that oil so we can drive our gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, to the mall to go on shopping sprees, with reckless abandon.

Ok, so what does this mean for us now, and what does this mean for us in the future? Since we are in a five-year war over oil now, will similar wars will emerge as time goes by? When oil runs out in the Middle East, will the USA cook-up an other reason to invade another sovereign country? Will we invade Venezuela next? Will we invade Iran? Will Americans care? Probably not. I’ll elaborate some more.

During the past five years, this country has been in a resource war. During this time, Americans sacrificed absolutely nothing. We didn’t spend less. We didn’t drive less. We didn’t eat less. We didn’t conserving anything. I guess when there is no draft, people aren’t going to think of the repercussions of their actions in the grand scheme of the world. If there was a draft, then there would be real outrage over this war. There would be outrage because there would be the chance of everyone’s child fighting in a fruitless war. Besides, the only people who should enlist should only be poor people. If people were forced to sacrifice their children in this war, the war would have ended almost as soon as it started. We wouldn’t be in Iraq right now. Forcing the public to think about a war through the use of a draft would force people to consider what the war is really about. Since only poor people enlist in the armed forces, everyone else won’t think of these things. Why would a middle-class person think about a war if their child was not actually fighting in it? Out of sight, out of mind.

The only time the people decided it would be a good idea to drive less was only very recently, and that was because gas simply is too expensive for the bottom 80% of people to afford. Now there is panic. Now people are actually thinking about how they consume natural resources. Spending on public transportation is up all across this country by a surprising amount. That is a good thing. Will people do more? Will people relocate to homes that are closer to urban centers? Will people insist on traveling less? Overall, will people consume less? I don’t think so.

Here is the real crux of this resource situation: People will fight for what they believe they are entitled to. Right now, people are driving less. Unfortunately, that is not enough to allay the stress of dwindling oil. For there to be real change, people are going to have to change their lifestyles drastically. Americans were completely content to let poor people fight in a quagmire just so they could continue to consume fossil fuels without recourse. There was no change in lifestyle until recently. So, that says to me that people still don’t care about the world around them. They only care about themselves and their wallets. That way of thinking will destroy this world. Why? That way of thinking is what caused this war for oil, and it will cause other resource wars as well.

If Americans can continue to live they way they have lived for five years while a war is going on, what will happen with other resources become more difficult to find? Wars will spring up all over the globe. The wars will be over metals, arable land, and clean water. The future does not look bright. The future is a wasteland of wars and disfigured bodies and scorched landscapes and broken regimes and death and destruction.

I think I will start stocking up on non-perishables today.

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