Glad that my words evoked a laugh!
We have hit a lot of major points this century, many of which were damaging.
We seem not to learn our lessons and just want to remain happy and not confront the real world. The citizenry are way out of shape and could not build a garden when a food crisis occurs. I'm finding that my "Peak Oil Garden" would take five years to build and it has taken ten. I have no problem with this time-frame, but I hear people stupidly say they will live off the land in time of a serious crisis. People seem to think what they see on TV can be done in reality.
I put my feelings about the American direction since 1945. It includes mostly my observations and experiences.
DIRECTION OF THE U.S.
“It has been a slow burn since 1945, when most of our food was grown on small farms and gardens [and I can vividly remember those gardens.]
Over the ensuing 10 years, the older gardeners began dying off and/or discontinued gardening because of the convenience of big box grocery stores and the movement of food by plane from California, Texas, and Florida.
Then in 1956 the Federal Aid Highway Act was passed thus adding new highways and widening existing highways; consequently more trucks began moving food to big box grocery stores.
Farms, large and small near large cities, began disappearing replaced by housing developments for a huge post World War II population expansion plus a flight from cities to the suburbs. Earliest was the first Levittown in 1947 on 1200 acres of potato fields on Long Island.
With many of these housing developments, the pesticides market no longer needed on disappearing farms was switched to the crazy notion that every new house needed a green lawn. Some kept making gardens, but it was my experience that the children did not often follow suit; growing food was no longer the “in thing.”
Also, along came the big box consumer stores located in large malls to be accessed with more roads and more cars. More farms succumbed to the “urgent need” to supply Americans a place to fulfill their consumerism supported by higher wages.
I recall the late 1950s and 1960s the period of when "Progress Began Regress" for the U.S. as it developed its foundation for further regress through excessive consumerism.
The 1970s included: Peak Oil on the continental U.S. 1970; abandoning the Gold Exchanged Standard in 1971 [due to costly guns and butter policies of the 1960s]; in 1973 Secretary of Agriculture, Earl Butz, advised farmers to "get big or get out … adapt or die," believing that bigger farms were more productive; plus Petrol Dollar recycling went into action in 1974 allowing the U.S. to expand its debt capacity aided by all oil contracts being made in U.S. dollars.
We now look back at a large societal destructive mess. Four percent of Americans now feed the other ninety-six percent, a dangerous situation. The U.S. nation debt exceeds $22 trillion and there is massive debt on all other fronts for unfunded liabilities, plus local, municipal, and state debts in most governmental units. PLUS our high and once mighty industrial system has been greatly transferred outside our borders, a national disgrace.
We on converging on many fronts of a collapse: we will again reach Peak Oil after the fracking fields dwindle out; we have Peak Water; Peak Soil; Colony Collapse Bee Disorder; Peak Infrastructure; and more. “
On the surface, all seems fine, but the next financial collapse will be shock us and the world. It will be bad, real bad!
I will update this essay to include the great rains that hit the Midwest this spring and will eliminate our ability to have a normal growing season.
Cheers, if that's possible.
sumisu
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