What I find fascinating is that what we are going thru now -- which are only the first tremors of what will inevitably become a global crisis in both manufacturing and agriculture -- has been so predictable, but so todgeschwiegen or taboo in public discourse (except on the Web -- and Slate, of course).

Kunstler's Long Emergency (and the novel that followed) make entertaining reading, but, unfortunately he is dismissed as a crank. As with Swift, when you make fun of a serious subject no one knows what to think.

For many of us it can be fun to play with what bizarre developments may come from all this: religious nuts taking over the airwaves (oops! this has already happened), gun nuts and vigilantes taking control of rural regions, the seat of government abandoning an untenable east coast and moving to middle America, a return to subsistence farming and self-reliance (very American), etc.

But of serious interest should be the real existential dangers we face in the next few years:

- pandering politicians promising unsustainable "energy independence" gimmicks, and no real plan. This will be reinforced by an unwillingness of the public to accept the new harsh realities, ending with a total cynicism about collective social action;

- a faltering economy that cannot even capitalize the development of or transition to new forms of energy, and thus a steady economic downward spiral;

- resource wars on a global scale, and nuclear proliferation;

- the breakdown in the production and wide distribution of agricultural products - and massive starvation on an unprecedented scale;

- the discovery that humanity and democracy are a luxury of "cheap" oil, and the acceptance of a more brutal policy enforcing order going forward;

- etc.

I know - this is terrible Doom and Gloom - not the type of thing we want to contemplate.

Unfortunately it's also real and true, and if we continue to put our head in the sand, we will be as unprepared for the next, very predictable problems as we are today for the end of the 40-mile commute to and from our MacMansion in the ex-urbs.

Let's start the challenging but interesting discussion now of the macro or meta-trends emerging from the end-of-the-era of cheap energy. What are the major problems we face for the next decades, and what can be done to mitigate them???