Double Flee A

If you didn't read this: Peak Oil? Include Me Out, you missed a good article.

Excerpt:
Let's suppose you are president of the United States, you're well aware of Peak Oil, and you're responsible for the national security of the country, and the well being of its people. Oh, and for the well being of the boards of directors of its major corporations.

For democratic purposes—that is, to ensure that people keep re-electing you and your friends and colleagues—you need to make sure that American citizens—at least those that vote, who tend to be older, whiter and better off financially—can continue to enjoy their current lifestyle, excesses and all.

Basically, you have two options. Both lead to maintaining the current lifestyle of the voter—as long as possible.

1. You appear in a televised talk before the country and inform its citizens about Peak Oil. You announce a dramatic new project to create not only a sustainable country, but sustainable cities, neighborhoods and homes. Crash programs are to be initiated with massive funding and tax-incentives to provide all homes, offices and factories with alternative, sustainable sources of energy. Automobile production will be stopped, and not allowed to proceed until vehicles meet stringent gas economy standards. Energy conservation will be mandated and all possible efforts will be made to reduce the oil, natural gas and electricity requirements of the country. You announce also that energy is a worldwide problem, not just an American one, and that you will work closely with all governments of the world to ensure that all peoples of the world have sufficient energy resources. While you're at it, you throw in programs for clean air and water as well.

OR

2. You use your military forces to attack countries with large oil reserves, under whichever pretext seems to work at the moment, in order to gain and maintain control of those reserves to ensure that their priority customer is the United States. This includes using false threats (Weapons of mass destruction, Al Qaeda connection, nuclear weapons) as an initial cover. (When those later don't work, you can switch to the "cover within a cover", i.e., bringing The Magic of Democracy, Freedom and Free Enterprise to the Downtrodden [fill in the blank] People. This is helped by the efforts of neo-conservatives, who know nothing about Peak Oil, but think they're using you for their purposes but are in fact being used by you as cover for your own oily purposes).

posted by dale @ 11:55 PM