Food, fuel, and foolishness

NYMEX Oil just broke $115 a barrel today and that means $5-$6 a gallon gas in the US this Summer. The folks I mention this to in the USA give me the "glassy stare" or the look-at-the-ceiling treatment and wait for the subject to change. Doesn't change the fact that gas prices are spiraling out of control. If European gas prices are any indication the demand-destruction price for gasoline is somewhere above $12 per gallon. Europeans happily pay this price and keep on driving so it's not a stretch to think Americans will do the same. If I were a betting fellow I'd guess that $15 a gallon is the upper limit folks in the Western world can handle. The RoW is shit outta luck even at today's prices.

The Peak Oil folks have been waiting for this for years and are jumping up and down with glee that their doomer dreams are finally coming to the fore. Hubbard et. al laid down the timeline back in the '50's but some folks still think this is news.

And Peak Oil is just a blip in the road to ruin we're all traveling along. Food stocks of all kinds are collapsing. We've simply outstripped the planet's capacity to provide for 6.5 billion human beings and the roll back is in its very early stages. The honey bee, Pacific Salmon, bats, crops of all kinds, and even the plankton are all in various stages of population crash. None of these is any more critical than the others - and these are only the first of a global pandemic of plant and animal resets to much lower populations - except for the Plankton. Plankton just happen to be the critters that absorb more CO2 than any other single thing on the planet. As their numbers dwindle due to...whoops...global warming it'll add to the momentum of the vicious feedback loop we're entering.