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The stakes for America

There has been a lot of back and forth over President Elect Barack Obama’s choices for this position or that. Or whether we should support him or criticize him at an early date.

I have pledged my unqualified support, and I will tell you why. Barack Obama is the only possible hope for America to survive in any form resembling a civilization. I think many people elected Barack Obama in the hope of restoring a fading lifestyle.

Well that is impossible. What we are looking at is whether or not the nation can survive at all. Despite the comments of some, there is no more usable oil. Any new fields found are small, we will use them up too quickly. And they cost too much to reach, the energy cost to get the oil is nearly equal to the usable energy we withdraw. You cannot run society on that.

The Bushies knew this, and they invaded Iraq to dominate Middle Eastern oil and put off this problem for a generation. It would have made the rest of the world crash earlier by the way, but they did not care. To my thinking, this deception is the greatest crime of the Bushies. And they failed to get the oil.

Americans still do not understand the magnitude of the dilemma. Without oil, food production will collapse, and what food is produced, it will become impossible to deliver to the cities. The cities will have to depopulate, people will be searching for food. The only work available will be manual farm labor. Now think of all those overweight bond traders. How well will they work out on the farm? Many will die. In fact most will. But eventually things will settle out to a supportable population.

If you live in the US southwest, forget it. The entire region will see a mass die off. There are way too many people for the water available. And thanks to climate change, water supplies are decreasing. The reality we all have been ignoring the fact that the region is natural desert. When the White man first came to the Los Angeles basin, it supported a natural human population of about 3,000 Indians. Now it is 10 million. Think of that. L.A. has depleted water source after water source in a march eastward, now they have their eye on the Great Lakes. Well they can forget that.

By my calculations, Atlanta will run out of drinking water for it’s population in about three years. Atlanta has created an urban heat island that is drying out the Southeast. Atlanta has 5 million people. Imagine if they suddenly realized that they are in trouble and all tried to go somewhere at once. They would be cloud of locusts, depleting every gas station and grocery store on their route. And they will run out. The effective travel distance for an American family in this circumstance will be a tankfull of gasoline, no more. Then you walk, because in such a situation there will be no more gas deliveries.

This is the situation we are facing, and soon. On Japanese television news, we have commentators saying the world’s oil supply will run out in 37 years. But that means we can run society as it is for a much shorter time. But Japan has electric trains that we can run on nuclear power, Japan is building fishing boats that are hybrid diesel electric. And a fishing boat will always have wind, and you can generate electricity with wind.

Too many Americans believe that a magical technical fix will preserve the present US society. No. No matter how many hybrid cars or electric cars we build, there is not enough time to replace every vehicle in the US. It would take ten years to replace every vehicle. But that would be with factories turning them out full blast, at the moment they are still a novelty. Think 3 to 5 years to retool factories. And that is too long.

We are out of time. The only solution is a massive electric train system. Yet there is not really enough time to save all of America. We are going to have to change. People in the US Southwest will have to learn to live like Australians. No swimming pools, lawns, or car washing. Bathing may even become restricted. Electricity may be rationed so air conditioning might be out.

There are some nifty inventions in Japan that reduce heat. What I see on TV I pass on to the US embassy. WE just MIGHT be able to reduce the Atlanta heat island and save the US Southeast from turning to desert. But we only have a year or two. Once the forests there burn, it is over, it will become desert.

Some Americans do understand the seriousness of the problem. The Pentagon does. Why has the US Army invented a heat ray weapon for crowd control? It will be used in Chicago, not Karachi. In Karachi we would use machine guns for crowd control. Why has the US Army taken an active duty Brigade, 1st Brigade, 3rd Infantry Division, and assigned it to the US for domestic duty in urban crowd control? They know what is coming.

So I am not going to yell and scream about Barack Obama putting Hillary in his cabinet, even though she lost my respect in the campaign, and I not going to yell about Democrats forgiving Joe Lieberman.

Barack Obama is our last and only hope, and he has an incredibly tough job ahead of him. I will give him all my support. And you know what, from what I have seen, he is making some incredibly smart choices. We just might make it as a planet, and as the Human race.

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Comments

Comment from Max
Time: November 20, 2008, 8:08 pm

Here is an official link to the new Army mission:

http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/

Note the talk about non lethal crowd control. They are training for the future of America.

And forget the terrorism BS. An infantry brigade is useless against terrorists, the FBI does that.

Comment from John McCreery
Time: November 20, 2008, 8:38 pm

Beautiful, Max.

Comment from Sasha
Time: November 20, 2008, 8:52 pm

I couldn’t agree more Max. Wonderful post. I’m not sure I agree with your solution, but I’m not smart enough to know what the choices are. And I’m glad you added the problem of water which is rarely recognized except by those immediately affected.

Comment from bdr
Time: November 20, 2008, 9:15 pm

Thnx Max.

Comment from JerryA
Time: November 21, 2008, 12:01 am

Well said Max. It makes me grateful that I am not there. Since just returning to my Central Philippine exile, I can appreciate the abuility to grow our own food, with our own springfed waters. We have a couple of tractors, but we also have and use our own Caribao to plow the fields. Carbon footprint just about Zip. Maybe we could introduce the use of Caribao to US farmers. We also trade rice and mangoes, to the fishermen for fish. A novel idea huh? Just plain old subsistance farming and no need for a Corporate Jet to fly to the capital and beg for a handout. The balls of those guys, ” Please reward my imcompetance or I will shut the plants and put 3 million Mericans out in the street.” Kinda sounds like a bit of a terrorist threat to me.
I wish nothing but the best for Obama and the country. What a fucking mess, I don’t envy him a bit.
Thanx again Max. I was going to return for a visit after regime change, but maybe I’ll put that on hold.

Comment from Pat
Time: November 21, 2008, 9:19 am

Max, Well written. These are some of the problems, I’ve been worried about for quite some time, Thank you.

I live about one mile south of Lake Erie, and in my opinion, taking water from here and sending it to areas that have proven they cannot manage their own resources is about as idiotic as taking OUR tax dollars and giving it companies that have shown time and again that they can not manage their own money.

I don’t envy Obama, but if there is one person in this country that can fix a lot of these problems, I believe it is him. He is surrounding himself with people who are smart and capable, and not afraid to disagree with him. Unlike a certain other Pres. who surrounded himself with buddies and yes-men.

Comment from Nosebetter
Time: November 21, 2008, 11:13 am

Max, we can’t give up railroads for transportation. They are one of the cornerstones to free trade. We utilize them to transport cheap socks and underwear. :)

Comment from timr
Time: November 21, 2008, 11:55 am

Max, a bit apocalyptic don’t you think? I don’t deny that there are many problems, but as I noted in previous posts, the main fresh water problem will be coming from the India/China region of Asia because most of their water is glacier fed and the glacier she be melting. You have touched a sore spot with the water problem in the US. However, that problem is solvable by using desalinization techniques
Due to the Great Lakes treaties, wherein any one state(or country, leave us not forget Canada) can veto any use of Great Lakes water that is more than(I am not totally sure on this number, but think I am close)15 miles from the lake shore. This is why GL water will never be pumped to great plains or Texas, or anywhere else for that matter. There was a case a while back where Canada gave permission for ships to load up with water to sell in other countries. Once the US states found out about this it was nixed. This is a consortium of the US/Canada and all the great lakes states. While gwb has really fallen down on the US govt member, I expect better from the Obama team.

Max, I thought you might find this interesting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20081120/cm_huffpost/145323;_ylt=Aj22oIksXLUR5PL3n5RPTK79wxIF

Comment from Max
Time: November 21, 2008, 2:28 pm

Timr,

I agree with you, India and China have serious drought problems too. Particularly India.

That link is hilarious, talk about foot dragging. What don’t we just let the Iraqi’s have the ice cream machines. It is the least we could do.

And remember how much stuff we abandoned when we left Vietnam!

Comment from Brick
Time: November 22, 2008, 11:26 am

Perhaps the picture you paint is Mother Nature’s way of eliminating the blight that threatens the planet, i.e., the human race.

Comment from Max
Time: November 22, 2008, 5:46 pm

Brick,

There is a theory about that, called Gaia’s revenge.

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