The news cycle grinds on after the recent shock of  a “Mucker” attack at the Virginia Tech campus. For those unfamiliar with the term, it was a moniker created by science fiction writer John Brunner in his landmark novel Stand On Zanzibar. Brunner merged the words murder and amok for a convenient handle used to describe someone who runs amok in  a killing spree, an event so common in the hyper stressed future world he painted that it was reported daily on the news as the “Mucker Report.” Newscasters would tick off the numbers of dead and wounded, city by city, like temperature readings: 28 killed, 18 injured in Philadelphia, 32 killed 48 wounded in Los Angeles, etc. Through it all, characters Brunner refers to as “Mr. and Mrs. Everywhere” go blithely about their daily business, goaded by constant advertising. While tragic incidents like the VA Tech shootings are the exception in our nation, rare aberrant events, in other places like Iraq, where our national interests are in the crucible of conflict, the daily Mucker report is a very real phenomena.

   The numbers of car bombs and civilian deaths are reported on the web as routinely and impassively as the newscasters in Brunner’s world. Over here, we go about our daily lives unmoved by the news, yet when a crazy man with a rifle goes berserk in our neighborhood we get treated to a small taste of what Iraqi citizens experience every day.  Thursday: 90 Iraqis killed 158 wounded… You can read the whole Mucker report here: http://antiwar.com/updates/?articleid=10876  and browse through the archives of the daily carnage in Iraq, each day a shock much more severe than the killings at Virginia Tech.

   Can you imagine these things happening here, day after day? Can you imagine CNN and FOX piling on the team coverage as the body counts rise? One of the strangest things to come out of the recent Mucker attack here is that, as the news broke and the death toll mounted throughout the day, our stock market continued its wonderful speculation, with prices bid up and up to a new all time high above 13,000 for the Dow. Its enough to make you feel like the wicked witch of the west just after being dowsed with a bucket of water: “Oh, what a world, what a world…”

    I have long argued that the poor citizens of Iraq are paying for our comfort here with this daily, life-rending violence, (as pictured here). How would we ever survive as a nation with such violence? How will they survive it to try and build that “free and independent Iraq” that Bush and his staunch Republican supporters think we are busy engineering over in Baghdad? As the Democratic controlled congress feebly attempts to put the brakes on in Iraq with provisions attached to war spending bills that will mandate US troop withdrawal, President Bush threatens his veto of any such measure. (And he followed through on the threat, forcing the Dems to back down, as was predictable). The grim reality of all this is the fact that the US will have increasing need for military deployments to the Middle East in the years ahead. CENTCOM is the new heart and soul of the US military, responsible for all operations from the horn of Africa to Afghanistan. Gone are the days of the long watch on Soviet Russia, with massively armored US divisions stationed in West Germany to face down the old “Warsaw Pact” armies.

    The army is in the Middle East to exert US influence and control over the oil and gas vital to our economy. This is a no-brainer, though I recently received a message from a marine in Iraq who disagreed. You can ask a man to fight and die for a cause like “freedom,” or for the other men in the Hummer he’s riding in, but you can’t very well ask him to fight and die for oil and gas. The emotional sludge of that notion is impossible for him to swallow, no matter how unarguably true it may be. So the marine who wrote to me preferred to think of his daily struggle with the Muckers of Iraq as some sort of noble cause, an effort to bring that illusory peace and stability to the people of Iraq. On a human level, that will be the only thing that would make the war in Iraq seem in any way sane, just or right. Yet nothing the Bush administration has engineered in Iraq has ever really been about that. It’s what they tell the soldiers and marines to boost morale and give them a reason to do the insane things we ask of them. The bottom line remains that the war in Iraq is a war to secure influence and control over the important energy sectors of the world. If we wanted a moral war to free oppressed peoples we would be in the Sudan, where the Islamic Janjaweed militias have been butchering hundreds of thousands over the last two years. The death toll there dwarfs the Iraqi citizen deaths during the same period. The Janjaweed are the world’s consummate terrorists, bringing their machete wielding violence to village after village. But since their particular brand of terror does not aim itself at American “interests” we pretty much ignore them. Our soldiers and marines will not fight there, and CNN and FOX will not be sending us daily coverage.

    This basic truth about the Iraq war, that it sets a watch on the fuel our society runs on, is directly tied to the life styles we live here, a way of life we inherited from our parents. When they were young, starting their families in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, the world was awash in cheap oil. When I graduated from Loyola University in the early 1970s the price of gasoline was between .38  and .42 cents a gallon. Adjusted for inflation that would be about $1.70 to $1.80 in today’s dollars. Folks in California, for example,  pay twice that inflation adjusted price today, with pump prices at $3.60 in some cities. And even this is a very low price compared to Europe or the UK where the price runs between $4.80 and $5.60 a gallon. Gasoline prices in the US, the world’s largest consumer of refined petroleum products, have been historically very reasonable, in fact quite low. That cheap fuel cost has been the fire that lights our economy, filling our cities with SUVs, pickup trucks, and suburban moms driving vans. And although we certainly have the engineering know-how to build an engine that would routinely get 50-60 miles per gallon, we settle for fuel efficiency in the range of 18-28 MPG instead.  This is part of the psychology of plenty that has always accompanied the American mindset. We have seldom gone without in this country. We have lived lives where the assumption was inherent that things would always get better, cheaper, more convenient.

    The baby boom generation, hippies turned yuppies, have filled their expensive homes with appliances, put two or three cars in the driveway, and then refinanced to remodel that kitchen or bathroom, or to just go on a spending spree—like muckers set loose on our ubiquitous shopping malls. Nobody dies when we let our economy run amok with a flow of easy credit and equity cash to make us feel better about shelling out that $3.00 per gallon on our gasoline. Nobody dies here, that is. They die in other places, like Afghanistan , Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, the Sudan. If you can make that connection in your soul, that your life style here is predicated upon our obtaining a never ending flow of cheap oil over there, you will have a start on re -aligning your moral compass. Yet even those of us who implicitly know and accept this premise are still stuck in this same economy, with all its built-in costs of living that require us to drive a car, have insurance, shop for this or that, feed on the never ending entertainment from TV, Netflix, Blockbuster videos. The enlightened few recycle religiously, and some restrict their driving or use of energy to a bare minimum. Others may try to grow their own vegetable garden, but beyond that, they still live a fairly recognizable “American lifestyle,” with a huge energy usage footprint relative to most other people on this earth.

     I woke up this morning, showered, used a hair dryer, boiled hot water for coffee, then settled in in front of the TV to take in the morning weather and news cycles. After that I re-warmed my coffee in the microwave and cooked a modest breakfast of 2 eggs, 2 bacon strips and two pieces of wheat toast with a glass of OJ and a banana. (I splurged this morning, usually having just a bowl of cereal and that banana.) As I headed for the office to write, I realized I had probably just used more energy with that hot shower, hair dryer, electric range, microwave and TV than an entire village of 500 needy souls in Chad! I may have even consumed more calories than all those villagers combined that morning! The thought was troubling, but what should I have done differently? This was the morning ritual shared by tens of millions of my fellow citizens. Should I air dry my hair, stop brewing that coffee or using my microwave to heat it up? The weather man promised record high temperatures in my area that morning, and I knew that, as I turned on the computer systems in my offices, I would probably be using both the ceiling fan and air conditioner that afternoon at the heat of the day. While my livelihood depends on those computers running each day, should I swelter in the heat like those 500 people in Chad? This is the life I had, complete with appliances that routinely use a disproportionate share of the energy available to the 7 plus billion souls on earth today. I felt bound up by this life style, bewildered as to how it could change to become more equitable.

    For all my verbal acuity in these regular articles aimed at raising awareness on these important issues, I had to admit that I’m still a yuppie at heart. I live in a comfortable home, though I share only one car with my partner. Still, we have a big TV set, a nice stereo and surround sound system, two computers, Verizion cell phone service, high speed cable from Time Warner for that all important Internet connection. We have food when we want it, whenever we want it. Yes, we recycle, and drive very little. No, I have no vegetable garden, but I have switched out expensive incandescent light bulbs for more energy efficient fluorescent fare. I support politicians who think more progressively about renewable energy, green society, alternative ways of living. I oppose the corporate hegemony, the misguided energy policies, the dominant centralization of energy power in a few trans-national giants…but I can’t afford a solar array, or my own private wind farm. So beyond the simple things I do each day to be mindful of my relatively gluttonous energy footprint on the world, what else is there to be done? I feel as stuck in the American way of life as the next guy, whether he is enlightened about energy adversity and the need to restructure our lives here or not…whether he agrees with my assessment of the war in Iraq or not.

     And I suppose that the nation, taken together, is as much perplexed as I was about how we might change the way we live now. America is bound up in a life style that is the product of decades of investment. The model we built was predicated upon that steady supply of cheap oil. We live in sprawling suburbs zoned “residential,” relying on cars to take us to commercial districts to work and shop. Our simplest activity consumes a disproportionate share of energy in fuel or electricity.

    And this massive economy just continues on, carried forward by its own ponderous and often uselessly silly momentum. We devote hours of news coverage  to verbal slips by Don Imus, the private angst of Alec Baldwin as he works through his relationship with an alienated teen, the funeral and fate of some blonde celebrity icon. This morning it was “Spider Man Day” in New York City, with elaborate publicity events moderated by the mayor to help launch the first of the season’s blockbuster action movies.

The financial news even sported with a story about an Internet computer game called “Second Life” where Americans tired of their real life can log on and create a virtual golem or “avatar” (a 3D computer character) to interact with millions of other folks doing the same! Nearly six million Americans now live this second life, and in the last 24 hours they spent over $1.6 million real US dollars in their play time world, where the exchange rate is currently $1 real  US dollar for $300 imaginary Linden dollars for your pseudo self to play with. And just like real life, most folks in the game squander their money. The company hosting the adventure reports that only 31,929 players out of nearly 6 million have a positive cash flow. (You can do anything in that imaginary world that you can in the real one--buy, sell, own a home, start a business, get a job, etc.) Our own real wasteful and frivolous lives are not enough it seems. Here is a whimsical fantasy life layered on top,  but played out over six million real computers, all humming away with those very real 300-watt power packs! We spend more dollars and energy on silly fantasies like this than whole districts of the Sudan, where millions of weary, hungry people struggle to survive each day. People dying in Iraq? Who cares?

The war goes on over there because the show goes on over here, catalyzed by each successive holiday sales promotion, from New Year’s to Valentines Day, President’s Day, St. Patty’s, Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. The wires of our economy are strung along those holiday poles, and we never seem to lack an excuse to go shopping, oblivious of the real cost our lifestyle imposes on the world. As one writer put it: “America shops until Chinese workers drop.”

   Through it all some of us meditate, pursuing our own inner journey to Mecca where we hope to find peace, enlightenment, or some sense of inner bliss. We look for a modicum of sanity and meaning in our lives that does not involve this constant consumerism—yet we still consume, reflexively. How many times do you eat out at a restaurant each month? A single meal in a relatively nice restaurant would cost the average Afghan his entire annual wages. How much money do you spend on things for your home, on new clothes, or electronic gizmos each year? Enlightened or not, we consume. Liberals may fret and oppose the vast squandering of treasure and lives in Iraq, but they will still grill up those burgers on the fourth of July, take that summer vacation during “peak driving season,” refinance to fund that kitchen remodel, and spend 130% of the money they earn each year, sloughing the extra 30% off to the credit cards at 29% interest. Many play their own game of “Second Life” in the stock market, hoping to trade their way to wealth and security in later years. They look at the illusory climb of the Dow and they buy stocks to secure some equally illusory future for their rapidly approaching “Golden Years.”

    But those years will not be so golden for the Boomers. As this enormous generation starts to enter retirement soon, they will slowly grow gray during a period of increasing energy adversity, and all the subsequent stresses it will place on our way of life. While a few will have amassed the wealth to provide for their security, the greater mass of the Boomers will have a relatively meager retirement nest egg. If anything serious happens in the financial markets they could see that nest egg wither away in a few short weeks. Some may be lucky to land jobs as greeters at Wal-Mart to keep themselves fed.

    In the meantime, it will get more and more expensive to drive a car, heat or cool your home, not to mention the increasing costs of living for things like food and health care. And people are not using real earned dollars to support their spending. Consumer use of revolving credit rose a brisk 9.6% in March of 2007.  That may sound like good news to retailers, but when April figures came in, retail sails tool a sharp decline across a wide range of typical mall chain stores. What are people using all that credit for? The answer is that they are swiping the card more for necessities now: food, gas, medical needs, and less for frivolous retail items. Could this mean the party is over here without easy access to all that home equity money?

    Most people are really quite oblivious of the real scope of the problem now facing this nation. This enormous economy, this non-stop flow of automobiles, Big Macs, service jobs, and super sized sale events is now gulping down over a quarter of the world’s total energy output. (While a full 50% of the world’s population still does not have access to electricity!)  But that energy production has apparently peaked, and is wobbling in a plateau that will start edging ever lower in the years ahead. The world we built on cheap oil will now have to run on very expensive oil. Oil industry analyst Matthew Simmons argues that the true value of the oil being sold today is actually much higher, worth at least $150/barrel or more. The world has already discovered 95% of all the oil that exists, with no major finds in the last decade. Beyond that, all the world’s major oil fields are now in decline, Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, Cantarell in Mexico, Burgan in Kuwait, the North Slope, even the coveted oil of Iraq and Iran is in decline. To put this in perspective, if Ghawar failed, and we decided to drill ANWR (with 10 billion recoverable barrels) non-stop to cover the deficit, the Alaskan field would only last 5 to 7 years. The will ‘o the wisp of the Canadian tar sands require more energy to extract them than they end up yielding. This is the twisted grin on the face of our oil crisis, and the reason why the oil men (Bush and Cheney) sent our military into the Middle East over these last 7 years.

    Look at this recent prediction concerning Saudi Arabia, a nation that provides about 15% of the world’s daily production: Aramco depletion is predicted to be 82% by 2020, a scant 13 years hence. In fact, one Oil Drum analyst recently placed an elaborate analysis on line to prove that Saudi “proven reserves” were about half of what they presently claim. Kuwait recently broke ranks and publicly admitted their reserves were only about 48 billion barrels, and not 100 billion barrels they had previously reported. Mum’s the word. Don’t let the folks back home get a clue to the fact that gasoline will soon be a luxury item, and that driving a car, that all American pastime, will soon be one of the most expensive things you do. And the sad fact of all this is that the clock has already run out.

    There’s a lot of talk about finding new ways to run our autos: hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, electric cars, bio-diesel or ethanol. A conservative friend recently excoriated me for what he perceived as pessimism, claiming the rising price of oil will spur innovation and alternative fuels to replace our oil and gas. Sorry, not in the next 20 years or so. None of them will scale out in time to prevent a major dislocation in the way we live here, and beyond that, all these methods assume one enormously erroneous thing, as sociologist James Kunstler might put it: that we can keep the cars running “by some other means.” We cannot, and we will finally have to face the fact that the American way of life as we have known it is simply not sustainable. Bio-diesel has a fuel efficiency ROI rating that is only 10% of that for Gasoline. So imagine how much more of it we will have to produce to replace the work presently done by gasoline in this country! One analyst calculated that you would have to plant out most of Africa to get the crops required to create enough bio-diesel or ethanol fuel to run our economy. It’s a nice idea, but it just can’t be scaled up fast enough to avert a major crisis here, and trying to do this will increase the cost of corn and begin a massive food price escalation.

     The short term effect of this energy truth will see a steady decline in the standard of living here in the US, unending conflict for the remaining oil and gas, and there will be a lot of very angry people in this country should the lights ever go off …perhaps on one of those hot muggy days in the reddest of red states in the South…where everyone owns a shotgun, or one of those assault rifles the Republicans put back on the streets by failing to renew the ban on these weapons in 2005. Then will we have our very own daily Mucker reports, the rule instead of the exception, 32 dead in Dallas, 72 wounded?

     The message in this article that my conservative friend, with all his wishful thinking, failed to perceive is this: we can’t continue with business as usual. We have to change the way we live. We can no longer spend 30% more than we earn each year by using easy credit. We must down-scale our lives, restructure our transportation and energy distribution models, and that quickly. The longer we cling to the belief that we can run all the cars on ethanol, bio-diesel, hydrogen or electric batteries, the more severe will be the shock when it finally comes. All those technologies combined, even if massively invested now, would yield perhaps the equivalent of 3.5 billion barrels of oil per year...the world uses over 30 billion barrels a year now, and we use over 7.5 billion in this country alone, about twice as much as all those alternatives could deliver, even if they were all scaled out and in service now. They are not scaled out, and will not be able to deliver the required energy for 10-15 years, if ever. These are facts, not a pessimistic attitude. I’m not preaching doom and gloom- -I’m just talking about reality. The sooner such inconvenient and uncomfortable facts dispel wishful thinking, and false optimism, the better for us all.

    So how do we change?  Is there any hope that my fluorescent light bulbs and methodical recycling can save the day? The fact of the matter is this: until the message gets through to the big corporations like Exxon, Wal-Mart and the other giants, the hard work of rebuilding a new society here that is sustainable will never get done. But these companies are so invested in their current model of operations that they do not yet begin to perceive their extinction is nigh at hand. I can bet you a rapidly declining dollar that the folks in Wal-Mart’s corporate HQ aren’t devoting much time to the issue of sustainable life in the US in 2020. They remain preoccupied with worries over their margins for the next selling season. Perhaps the message will arrive like that cute little yellow face ball--only this time announcing falling profits. The world’s largest retailer recently posted its worst monthly sales figures since records began in 1980. It appears Mr. & Mrs Everywhere are starting to feel the pinch, which will translate into slumping sales and eventual recession. All the better, because the world cannot afford Wal-Mart, and the whole model of big box retail, any longer.

.

Years ago someone over here in the US had to give up a job to someone over there in China so the buyers at Wal-Mart could shave a few bucks off their orders. The Chinese packed all those lovely tops, T-shirts, trousers, other trinkets into a shipping container and sailed them thousands of miles across the Pacific, where the empty containers stack up in huge piles due to the trade imbalance. And the order of the day in Bentonville is for some new widget that is about to roll out to 170 stores on the retail-link system. All the cases are fresh off the boat  and ready to hit the diesel trucks for an expensive freeway ride before they eventually reach the greedy hands of consumers—where they will linger but for a moment before entering the trash bin for one more truck ride to the landfill, and take a few hundred years to decompose. If you used a maxed-out credit card to buy them, you’ll actually be paying about $150 or more for a typical $29.95 item, and take about 20 years to pay off the debt. This is the true cost of those falling prices you covet so dearly at Wal-Mart, of the whole structure of our throw away consumer society on wheels, where Bush recently had the audacity to reclassify flipping Burgers at MacDonalds as a “manufacturing” job to try and improve numbers in that sagging category.

   Meanwhile, a truck carrying 8600 gallons of gasoline overturned in an important freeway interchange of the Bay Area the other day, and the resultant fire caused a portion of the 580 to collapse onto the 880. This is the equivalent of a heart attack in that traffic congested region. The Caltrans road engineers don’t really know how long it will take to repair the damage. In fact, they say they are having trouble finding the required steel, and it may be six weeks for it to arrive on a proverbial “slow boat from China.” This is the state we find ourselves in now--a road system that must never stop, with no alternative in place, and no steel in the barn to build one if we put our minds to it. It’s a frightening thing to ponder. In the meantime, good luck finding a seat on BART, but thank God it’s there. We should have a similar rail system in every city and town of the US. When will we get started?

John Schettler: May 2007

Contact Us Here