The party's over

So Bush laid out his bold plan to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic today, desperately trying to rein in gas prices that not only threaten to punch another hole in the GOP's rapidly sinking electoral prospects (his primary motivation), but also, quite coincidentally, threaten to send already financially strapped citizens over the edge.

Let's be honest. The band-aid measures proposed by the president today won't amount to a pile of horseshit in terms of ameliorating energy prices. And while oil companies are certainly raking in money hand-over-fist, I'd be surprised if there was any actual price-gouging occurring (as there was in the Katrina aftermath). In fact, accusations of price-gouging deflect from what's really going on here - Peak Oil. The United States' oil binge is quickly coming to a grinding halt, and the DTs are going to be particularly nasty as we dry out. Or as mateosf puts it:

For those of you who studied party economics in college, an analogy: if you have 12 beers, and your friend has only one, and then your friend drinks his beer, how much are your 12 beers worth?

The answer: whatever your friend is willing to pay for them.

America has drunk its beer. In fact, America drank its beer way back in the 1970's - that's when domestic oil production peaked, and has been in gradual decline ever since. So all those domestic oil fields that Big Oil gets for cheap from Uncle Sam don't add up to much anymore.

We should have been preparing for Peak Oil decades ago, investing in public transit systems, alternative energy sources, and conserving technologies, but the one national leader who brought it up, Jimmy Carter, got roundly shunned for his "pessimism" about our future. Now, we have some bumbling idiot trying to bail water out of our sinking boat with a collander.

The days of $100 barrels of oil are upon us (my bet is by August we'll be seeing these prices), and rather than being prepared to meet the challenge with leadership and calls for sacrifice, Bushco continues to pretend that if we can just ride out this temporary bump and discipline those avaricious oil execs, everything will be hunky-dory.

It won't be.