Globalisation is an anomaly and its time is running out

The HUGE LIE of this false doctrine infects every aspect of the dopamine distraction theatre {politics} by which we alleviate the excruciating boredom of lives essentially devoid of interior psychological value or meaning. Boredom is merely the seeing of how empty I am...dependent on exterior stimuli to validate my existence. What do I look forward to upon awakening in the morning? Newspaper, FOXNEWS on TV, email, input from co-workers, an exchange with my current companion...all of which cover-up an incipient state of anxiety...a desire to avoid being-here-now with how I am - with my avidity, fears, aversions and dreams of how my life should be.

J.H. Kunstler writes with typical flair in the Guardian about how cheap energy and relative peace have helped create a false doctrine, to which I only add that sooner than we expect or can even imagine, the unsustainable bubble of our dopaminergic consensus hallucination will be most rudely popped by a sharp prick from the thermodynamic real world.

The big yammer these days in the United States is to the effect that globalisation is here to stay: it's wonderful, get used to it. The chief cheerleader for this point of view is Thomas Friedman, columnist for the New York Times and author of The World Is Flat. The seemingly unanimous embrace of this idea in the power circles of America is a marvellous illustration of the madness of crowds, for nothing could be further from the truth than the idea that globalisation is now a permanent fixture of the human condition.

Today's transient global economic relations are a product of very special transient circumstances, namely relative world peace and absolutely reliable supplies of cheap energy. Subtract either of these elements from the equation and you will see globalisation evaporate so quickly it will suck the air out of your lungs. It is significant that none of the cheerleaders for globalisation takes this equation into account. In fact, the American power elite is sleepwalking into a crisis so severe that the blowback may put both major political parties out of business.

The world saw an earlier phase of robust global trade run from the 1870s to a dead stop in 1914. This was the boom period of railroad construction and the advent of the ocean-going steamship. The great powers had existed in relative peace since Napoleon's last stand. The Crimean war was a minor episode that took place in backwaters of Eurasia, and the Franco-Prussian war was a comic opera that lasted less than a year - most of it the static siege of Paris. The American civil war hardly affected the rest of the world.

This first phase of globalisation then took off under coal-and-steam power. There was no shortage of fuel, the colonial boundaries were stable, and the pipeline of raw materials from them to the factories of western Europe ran smoothly. The rise of a middle class running the many stages of the production process provided markets for all the new production. Innovations in finance gave legitimacy to all kinds of tradable paper. Life was very good for Europe and America, notwithstanding a few sharp cyclical depressions and recoveries. Trade boomed between the great powers. The belle époque represented the high tide of hopeful expectations. In America, it was called the progressive era. The 20th century looked golden.

It all fell apart in 1914. Historians are still baffled about what really brought on the first world war. What did France or Britain really care about Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of a country already in deep eclipse? There were no active contests over territory at the time, not even in the Asian or African colonies. And yet the diplomatic failures of that fateful summer led to the great slaughter of the trenches, the death of a substantial portion of the younger generation, and a virtual nervous breakdown of authority in politics and culture. It would take a depression, fascism, and a second world war to resolve these issues and a new round of globalisation did not ramp up again until the mid-1960s.

It may be significant that the first collapse of globalisation occurred as the coal economy was transitioning into an oil economy, with deep geo-political implications for who had oil (America) and those who might seek to control the other major region closest to Europe that possessed it (then the Caspian, since Arabian oil was as yet undiscovered). The first world war was settled by those nations (Britain and France) that were friendly with the greatest producer of oil most readily accessed. Germany was the loser and again in the reprise for its poor access to oil. Japan suffered similarly.

We are now due for another folding up of the periodic global trade fair as the industrial nations enter the tumultuous era beyond the global oil production peak, which I have named the long emergency. The economic distortions and perversities that have built up in the current era are not hard to see, though our leaders dread to acknowledge them. The dirty secret of the US economy for at least a decade now is that it has come to be based on the ceaseless elaboration of a car-dependent suburban infrastructure - McHousing estates, eight-lane highways, big-box chain stores, hamburger stands - that has no future as a living arrangement in an oil-short future.

The American suburban juggernaut can be described succinctly as the greatest misallocation of resources in the history of the world. The mortgages, bonds, real estate investment trusts and derivative financial instruments associated with this tragic enterprise must make the judicious goggle with wonder and nausea.

Add to this grim economic picture a far-flung military contest, already under way, really, for control of the world's remaining oil, and the scene grows darker. Two-thirds of that oil is in the possession of people who resent the west (America in particular), many of whom have vowed to destroy it. Both America and Britain have felt the sting of freelance asymmetrical war-makers not associated with a particular state but with a transnational religious cause that uses potent small arms and explosives to unravel western societies and confound their defences.

China, a supposed beneficiary of globalisation, will be as desperate for oil as all the other players, and perhaps more ruthless in seeking control of the supplies, some of which they can walk to. Of course, it is hard to imagine the continuation of American chain stores' manufacturing supply lines with China, given the potential for friction. Even on its own terms, China faces issues of environmental havoc, population overshoot, and political turmoil - orders of magnitude greater than anything known in Europe or America.

Viewed through this lens, the sunset of the current phase of globalisation seems dreadfully close to the horizon. The American public has enjoyed the fiesta, but the blue-light special orgy of easy motoring, limitless air-conditioning, and super-cheap products made by factory slaves far far away is about to close down. Globalisation is finished. The world is about to become a larger place again.

· James Howard Kunstler is the author of The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century

kunstler@aol.com

Comments

[Cobb]

In 1991 or thereabouts, just prior to the burning down of (bits of) Los Angeles, and again just prior to Y2K, I too was plagued by a sense of doom. In the end, both of those cataclysms failed to materialize. Sure there were riots and maybe 200 people died in the first case and maybe fewer in the second case, but neither fundamentally changed what America was.

In the first instance, it took me a long time to really accept the lack of change although I was cynically certain that the rage was just rage and wouldn't last long at all. I think I was probably ready for the OJ Simpson verdict by the time that rolled around. But just before Y2K, certain a great deal was going to fall apart, I looked very seriously at my career as a programmer and thought of an alternative. I was looking for a way out.

I was also, in 91, looking for some skills that I thought would be in demand if the whole of American civilization collapsed. Before I moved to NYC and ever made a solid 50K I was quite content with the idea that I could make a good living as an EMT. If I hadn't been offered the opportunity, I almost certainly would have enrolled in the certification and ditched the software profession before it really got rolling.

I was telling Ambra the other night how I actually followed cops around in Los Angeles with my videocamera. I got more props from brothers on the street saying "go get 'em" than I ever got actual footage of evil deeds being done. What I saw was cops at car wrecks. Cops giving regular old tickets. In two months of filming every weekend I saw no blacks cuffed on the curb. Once when I thought I had a breakthrough with 8 or 9 squad cars parked near a high school, it turned out to be a celebrity basketball tournament fundraiser.

Things didn't fall apart.

The mood of America is good. We are making and watching movies like 'Must Love Dogs', 'Wedding Crashers' and 'Hitch'. It's not like the late 70s before Morning in America when we were watching movies like 'The Warriors', 'Planet of the Apes' and 'Escape from New York'. It's going to take a lot of pain and a lot of suffering before we again suffer that level of malaise.

[cnulan]

We are making and watching movies like 'Must Love Dogs', 'Wedding Crashers' and 'Hitch'. It's not like the late 70s before Morning in America when we were watching movies like 'The Warriors', 'Planet of the Apes' and 'Escape from New York'. It's going to take a lot of pain and a lot of suffering before we again suffer that level of malaise.

"We ain't makin jack shit...,

They made insane dopamine distractions throughout the entirety of the Great Depression. Matter of fact, that's in part how they made their bones and came up as integral programmers in the hegemony. 60-70 years later, and nothing has changed except the underlying thermodynamic basis of the entire ritual habitual.

Ready or not, cold turkey time is close at hand.

[Temple3]

i move beyond my areas of expertise with questions...how would you respond to this article...note the reference to oil prices at $40/barrel and the economic viability of shale...

http://www.detnews.com/2002/editorial/0205/29/a11-500860.htm

[Temple3]

or this one...

http://www.horncreek.com/blog/2005/04/running-out-of-oil-not.html

[Temple3]

never mind...i found some interesting stuff. i think i may pick up this book by matthew simmons on the saudi oil situation..."twilight in the desert"

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/047173876X/nationbooks08/002-4595067-2084845

sounds like the stuff will be hitting the fan any minute now.

[cnulan]

never mind...i found some interesting stuff.

I wouldn't do you like that man...,

In this order;

Energy Bulletin

ASPO

The Dieoff

Foundation

Life After the Oil Crash

and there are others, of course including Kunstler's speculative near future blog....,

Plenty, plenty, plenty to study here before you consider enriching Matt Simmons any further by buying his book on Saudi Arabia.

Formerly, I used to wish that T. Gold's theory of abiotic oil held water, but simply look all around at the way things are shaping up on a massive scale and decide whether or not you believe things would have their present special momentum if that theory were true. Also, as far as the shale and tar sands, fuggedaboudit.., there isn't enough water to drive that extraction process without rendering Canada a toxic wasteland.

[cnulan]

About the frozen methane, that's actually correct. Those are clathrates and if you google, you'll likely find a fair amount of information about clathrates. Now, aside from the fact that the state of the art is EXTREMELY far removed from being able to get at the methane frozen in that slush, it's intensely dangerous and nobody knows how to do it, there is also the fact that the clathrate membrane probably subserves a macrobiological purpose of which contemporary science fails to comprehend its incomprehension -i.e., you start tapping the clathrate membrane and something huge is liable to go SNAP!!!

Methane Hydrate