'Advanced' Civilization: The Long Party is Over

by Edger

Sat Feb 05, 2011 at 04:28:32 AM PST

"Our current way of life is unsustainable. We are the first species that will have to self-consciously impose limits on ourselves if we are to survive." -- Robert Jensen

In 2010 we watched, aghast, as British Petroleum' s Macondo Well in the Gulf of Mexico blew it's top and leaked umpteen millions of gallons of raw crude oil into the Gulf, poisoning and killing much of the sealife, ruining gulf coast ecosystems, and destroying a way of life for millions of south coast people.

We watched, as business and political leaders and mainstream media went into paroxysms of delusional denial to cover up the sheer unabashed criminality of the event, and tried to create a reality built of smoke and mirrors in which something approaching "normalcy" would once again reign and we could all just jump into our cars and drive off into the sunset as if nothing important or even noteworthy had happened, while those business and political "leaders" operate in the delusion that military might, invasions and occupations, and wholesale oppression and killing of millions of people in "other" parts of the world - as if there is more than "one" world - all done using a military that paradoxically is the single largest consumer of energy in the world - will somehow secure a never ending supply of the energy required to keep our "advanced civilization" operating forever.