Rainless winters of bitter cold, rivers and lakes shriveled to muddy traces by ceaseless wind; once rich topsoil now a permanent atmospheric haze; and still the wars go on, year after year, to load the oil ships half a world away — in Arabia and Venezuela — to keep them coming despite oil field attacks, the sabotage of pipelines crossing jungles and deserts, and the pirate raids on the high seas. Our people are shivering and thirsty, chasing the heat. Here, our Navy pushes back the pathetic invasions and massive refugee streams from Caribbean islands washed into featureless mud by relentless hurricanes, and our Army pushes into northern Mexico to secure the rights of millions of our citizens living there, so we say, but in truth to capture warmer, well-watered territory into which so much of our nation has fled. Power, people and land have all become disconnected from each other in this new world of dry cold, and all pretense has evaporated as all empathy has chilled; starving masses overrun once powerful nations, like tides of Army Ants; and no one ever takes prisoners. Dramatic fantasy or reasonable possibility?
In the full article Manuel García, Jr. considers the interaction between climate change and oil peak and how “US citizens have two choices on accommodating the demographic shift and the end of easy oil: organize the nation as either a “Green” eco-welfare, alternative energy, UN-multi-lateralist state; or as a “Red” corporate-militarist, resource imperialist, unilateralist power.”
Full article here:
www.swans.com/library/art10/mgarci18.html
