Consumption Has Finally Caught Up With Us

By Michael T. Klare, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted December 7, 2006.

We're closer than we think to an age when gasoline becomes a luxury and restaurant meals become unattainable.

Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, foreign policy analysts have struggled to find a term to characterize the epoch we now inhabit. Although the "Post-Cold War Era" has been the reigning expression, this label now sounds dated and no longer does justice to the particular characteristics of the current period. Others have spoken of the "Post-9/11 Era," as if the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were defining moments for the entire world. But this image no longer possesses the power it once wielded -- even in the United States.

I propose instead another term that better captures the defining characteristics of the current period: the Post-Abundance Era.