Back in 1997 I came back to the US from Russia, newly married and, having just observed post-collapse USSR firsthand, an obvious question occurred to me: When are the various States going to follow the example of the USSR and declare their independence from the hopelessly corrupt and nonfunctional federal government? Whereas the main cause behind the Soviet collapse was ennui — the people were living well but were bored and wanted to live even better — it would take something more to collapse the USA. What could that be?
After a bit of research, I started zooming in on something that came to be known as Peak Oil: the fact that oil production in the US had peaked in 1970 and was peaking in country after country around the world. At the same time the US, with its non-negotiable lifestyle, was the most oil-addicted country in the world, and it would be futile to try to pry the car keys out of Americans’ cold, dead fingers — until the rigor mortis lets go. Indeed, Americans opted to offshore virtually all of their industry to China (which was at the time extremely rich in coal) just in order to continue driving around aimlessly in ever-larger SUVs. That led to US federal debt to grow by leaps and bounds and couldn’t possibly end well.
After a while a somewhat popular Peak Oil movement formed in the US and I got tangentially involved in it, giving talks at a couple of conferences and mentioning Peak Oil here in there in my books and articles. For a while things went according to plan: global conventional oil production peaked in 2005-6, oil prices skyrocketed to close to $150/barrel and, sure enough, a little while later in 2008 the US financial sector became extremely unwell and needed to be resuscitated through major infusions of free money and thereafter kept on life support using interest rates close to zero.
But then a strange thing happened: out of sheer desperation, US oil and gas companies resorted to an old Soviet technology called hydrofracturing to extract oil trapped in shale rock — and a minor miracle happaned. This technology, given the catchy name “fracking” and incrementally improved over time, allowed the US to set new all-time records in oil and gas production, once again becoming a major exporter of both, allowing it to continue driving around aimlessly while going deeper and deeper into debt and importing just about everything it needed.
As a result of this, the Peak Oil movement pretty much went away. A few people continued to pay attention, pointing out that “fracking” never made any money, actually losing investors around a trillion dollars, would never have really taken off if it weren’t for interest rates close to zero (which are now over) and absolutely horrible for the environment, poisoning the groundwater and causing earthquakes. But the once lively movement to get Americans out of their energy-squandering single-family houses and individual cars and into energy-efficient buses, trams and apartment buildings went pretty much nowhere. In any case, over time it got infested with old hippies from pothead communes, ayahuasca visionaries, permaculture peddlers, druids elves and goblins, catastrophic climate change enthusiasts and the rest of the environmentalist three-ring circus.
Fast forward to June 2023, and…
ClubOrlov 