Jackson Free Press

Thanks to Katrina, the power is out at my place, just like it probably was, or is, at yours. As I walked out of my electricity-bereft house Wednesday morning and parked my wheezing car in the nearest gas line in the hot Mississippi sun, I tried to imagine what gasoline means to me these days, and I came to realize that I fear it's soon going to mean the end of life as we know it.

What I worry about most is my kid, a sweet little boy naïve enough to think the world's actually looking out for him. My biggest fear is that his world isn't going to look a thing like the one I got to be a kid in.

My world was full of Saturday morning cartoons, ice cream and nice people who had enough of their needs met that they didn't have to act like vicious blood-thirsty predators. I fear for my son, because I fear the collapse of my benign, peaceful society. I picture a world of chaos and violence.

Sounds nasty and harsh, right? Too hard to envision, maybe? Well it all, basically, comes down to oil. Black flammable goop is taken for granted because of its ubiquity. It's everywhere because we've been assembling an efficient oil distribution infrastructure for decades. Our delivery system has proven so successful that the only time it's really been slapped was when there was a shortage.

Those of us from the 1970s will remember what the last real gas shortage did for us. It gave us the sloggy morass of stagflation and Jimmy Carter in a thick sweater telling us all to cut down the heater and "drive 55" on the highways.

America didn't take too well to the idea of conserving resources, however, and Carter got replaced "toot sweet" by Reagan. In the 1970s, the U.S. reached its peak in oil production, triggering the rotten economy of the late 1970s. Thankfully, we could turn to Saudi Arabia for the new "limitless source" of oil. But oil, if you haven't figured it out already, is getting scarce. True, these recent tirades at the gas pump have everything to do with the deadly indifference of a tropical storm, but a shortage is still a shortage, whether the economy has time to adjust to it or not, and right now, it's looking like today's screaming fights in the gas line are just a taste of what's to come.

Our oil reserves in Saudi Arabia may be reaching their own peak soon if some geologists are correct. Don't look to the Saudis to admit this, of course. Nobody's going to admit that their key to the world just broke off in the lock. But rest assured, just as sure as there is a finite supply of oil, there's a finite supply of the world as we know it.

Don't think for a second that gas doesn't decide everything. It makes suburbs possible. It makes our food affordable. When it's gone, the easy life goes with it. Want to see a $5 tomato? Charge the truck driver $6 a gallon to deliver it.

It doesn't stop there, of course. Petroleum makes the mass production of fertilizer possible. It also enables the massive farming techniques that have allowed our population to explode to an unnatural amount. When the oil is gone, there's a good chance, unless a substitute with the same amount of raw power is found, that population will stagger and fall back in upon itself, eventually preying upon itself.

It's not like it hasn't happened before.

Violence isn't too far beneath the surface already, even in 2005. The looting on the Coast, the shooting over a bag of ice and, right here in Jackson, what we saw this week at the gas pumps. I've spoken to gas attendants who had more than one pistol waved in their face because the pump ran out of petrol before some guy waiting in line an hour could get to it. It's the reason at least one cop car was parked at almost every working gas station this week.

I left a dark home this week that had no electricity, a very nervous wife and child, and lots of grumpy neighbors who were worrying about their pocketbooks. For some reason, as I looked at them, I found it easy to believe that very few of them would probably choose starvation over violently taking something from me or my family if it really, truly came down to it.

Hard to believe perhaps? Egad, I hope you're right.

Previous Comments

ID

70632

Comment

I am not much of a pessimist, but in this instance, I share the sentiments of the author.

Author

K RHODES

Date

2005-09-01T16:22:57-06:00