The Crash Course - Chris Martenson [1]
Resource Management and Materials Efficiency
Food
Energy
Financial Services
Government Employment
Money
Change Management
The Greatest Opportunity of Them All
Appendix
Notes
Index
Copyright © 2011 by Chris Martenson. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Martenson, Chris, 1962-
The crash course: the unsustainable future of our economy, energy, and environment/Chris Martenson.
p. cm.
Includes Index.
ISBN 978-0-470-92764-9 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-118-01310-6 (ebk)
ISBN 978-1-118-01311-3 (ebk)
ISBN 978-1-118-01312-0 (ebk)
1. Sustainable development—United States. 2. Economic forecasting—United States. 3. United States—Economic conditions—2009- I. Title.
HC110.E5M375 2011
338.973′07—dc22
2010039914
Foreword
“If you glance up from this book and scan your surroundings, you’d be challenged to spy a single object that did not somehow, in some way, get there because of oil,” Chris opens Chapter 16 (Peak Oil) of this book you are now reading.
Sure enough, I was reading this chapter on a train bound for Washington, DC, and we’d just pulled up to the BWI airport rail station. Diesel . . . jet fuel . . . and all the large McMansions packed full of plastic, petroleum-based products . . . that we’d just shot past at 64 miles per hour. Thinking about our economy in this simple way, for just one second, leads to one conclusion: Right now we live like kings of old, but on borrowed money and borrowed time.
According to Chris, a gallon of gasoline performs the equivalent energy of 350 and 500 hours’ worth of work. If that’s the case, a gallon of gas isn’t expensive at $3.09—which is what I paid to fill up the family car today. If I were paying that gas a $15 wage (like I do the babysitter), I’d pay anywhere from $5,250 on up to $7,500. Really, we’re reaping what may be a once-in-a-species energy