always open

always open,
originally uploaded by viewfinder.

Tony's Pizza in Ventura... like America, always open. For how much longer, I have to wonder? Worldwide petroleum production is playing out (depending on who you believe, it has either already peaked or will do so by 2010, give or take), after which we enter a new era...

a post-petroleum era that suggests a few problems in maintaining the lifestyle we've so enjoyed...
(list far from completely inclusive:)

1. The worldwide industrial food machine, the one that supports our rising billions, sadly, is powered by petroleum... without it, Malthus and Ricardo finally have their day in the sun.

2. Our global village... airline travel becomes untenable in a post-petroleum age; likewise the internal-combustion-powered automobile. I guess Nevada or some place like it will have to become the largest parking lot in history, after there's no more fuel for all those hummers and suburbans. On the bright side, imagine the low-rent modular housing communities we could populate in all those derelict vehicles... homelessness a thing of the past in the post-petroleum age.

3. No more plastic? Don't know how we'll get along without the stuff... at some point we better stop disposing of it.

The times, as the song goes, they are a changin' If only we could get some of those red states to believe it.