ecoyear

I've been wanting to write about Chris Martenson, his "Crash Course", and his visit to Denver and Boulder later this month.  I wasn't quite sure how to tie him in to my usual themes of local food and the industrial food system.

But here's a perfect segueway:  It turns out that the economic downturn has hit Chicago so hard, that the only place money can be found for basic services is the fast food industry.  Specifically, KFC (which used to have the word "fried" in its name), has offered to patch Chicago potholes for free, as long as they are allowed to put their logo on the patches.  I am not kidding you, this is in the Chicago Tribune.

Of course I found this link on The Oil Drum.  This is why I spend so much of my precious free time reading the Oil Drum - endless revelations that have brought to me an understanding of the world that has been changing radically these past few months.

It was on The Oil Drum that I first read good recommendations of Martenson's Crash Course. The Course is a series of free online videos, many of them very short, which begin with simple concepts, and slowly weave a story leading to a very clear understanding of our economic situation. This is really hard to summarize, but I have found it essential to the way I see the world now.

The financial crisis is both a result and a cause of oil depletion. It is a result because as the price of energy increases, it becomes more difficult to make a profit from any enterprise. It is s cause simply because we need a healthy financial sector to invest in further energy sources, be they research into alternatives, or mining of increasingly harder-to-get oil, coal or uranium.

Similarly, the economic crisis has the potential to enhance the ways we as a society lose control of what is most important. We'll have KFC pave our streets, McDonald's fund our hospitals and then we'll put the fox in charge of the henhouse.

Why this is happening is well explained by Chris Martenson's videos at his website. He will be live in Boulder Thursday July 16th, or in Denver (July 18th and 19th) for a more extensive immersion in the issues.