Since I started the blog, I’ve spoken off and on about the oil situation, peak oil, and James Howard Kunstlers great book on this topic “The Long Emergency”

With Oil now in the $100 / Barrel range, I thought it might be interesting to look at the current state of things.

First, an interesting article in the BBC talks about the economic disaster happening in Detroit right now.  I think this one sentence pretty much sums it up…

“At a truck stop on Interstate 94, we found Michael Hatfield, the owner and operator of a huge purple rig. Every time the cost of fuel rises, he says, the cost of the vegetables he is hauling goes up, and his profit goes down.”

Kunstler has said from the very beginning that our entire economy is based upon incredibly cheap oil, like his famous example of eating a $1.50 salad at Mc.Donalds that was shipped 1,000 miles, this is just not economically feasible without cheap oil.

So you would think with more evidence showing that the world is at Peak Oil, our leaders would be scrambling to invest in alternative energy sources, right?

Unfortunately as this graph shows, our fiscal priorities are elsewhere.  Apparently the current administration sees more value in invading countries, and blowing people up to preserve the future oil flow, than weaning ourselves from the oil spigot.

And of course,  Opec isn’t too thrilled with ANY money being spent on these mumbo jumbo alternative fuel ideas.