Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World
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- Category: Environment
Confronting Collapse: The Crisis of Energy and Money in a Post Peak Oil World
The book that inspired the movie Collapse.
The world is running short of energy-especially cheap, easy-to-find oil. Shortages, along with resulting price increases, threaten industrialized civilization, the global economy, and our entire way of life.
In Confronting Collapse, author Michael C. Ruppert, a former LAPD narcotics officer turned investigative journalist, details the intricate connections between money and energy, including the ways in which oil shortages and price spikes triggered the economic crash that began in September 2008. Given the 96 percent correlation between economic growth and greenhouse gas emissions and the unlikelihood of economic growth without a spike in energy use, Ruppert argues that we are not, in fact, on the verge of economic recovery, but on the verge of complete collapse.
Ruppert’s truth is not merely inconvenient. It is utterly devastating.
But there is still hope. Ruppert outlines a 25-point plan of action, including the creation of a second strategic petroleum reserve for the use of state and local governments, the immediate implementation of a national Feed-in Tariff mandating that electric utilities pay 3 percent above market rates for all surplus electricity generated from renewable sources, a thorough assessment of soil conditions nationwide, and an emergency action plan for soil restoration and sustainable agriculture.
List Price: $ 15.00
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Customer Reviews
 How to escape perpetual financial crises and wars for oil, December 26, 2009 By Mr. William J. Kennedy (Australia) – See all my reviews  For years Mike Ruppert has been accurately and relentlessly forecasting that unless we changed our understanding of energy and the way money works, the financial collapse we have now been witnessing would take place. His only objective has been to advise any who would listen about the paradigm shifting changes under way, and therefore how to prepare themselves in order to best survive, and even to prosper during and after the crisis. With that in mind, in this book he explains the current crisis clearly and succinctly before setting out a policy agenda which offers a path forward – not just for shadowy multi-billionaire and multi-trillionaire bankers and their friends but for all citizens of the United States and in fact of the world. The contents of the book cover oil depletion (peak oil), electricity infrastructure, alternative energies, food, localization, money, foreign policy, and of course a twenty five point plan for addressing the most urgent issues. To date the elected officials of the United States, whichever party they represent, seem to believe that lining the pockets of the financial elites with untold trillions worth of dollars of taxpayers money is the only policy response worth pursuing (Cynthia McKinney and Ron Paul being honourable exceptions). Yet there is always the possibility that a courageous leader will decide to represent the citizens he or she has been elected to represent, rather than unelected vested interests. By following the advice of ‘A Presidential Energy Policy’, such a leader has the opportunity at this critical turning point in world history, to reap a rich harvest of gratitude and praise for his or her actions that far outweighs the morally destitute rewards of money and power. In summary, ‘A Presidential Energy Policy’ is a book which every person who cares about the future of the United States and the planet we live on should read and pass on to everyone they know. The crisis is well advanced, but perhaps with enough Mike Rupperts in the world sufficient elements of civilization can be salvaged to make life worth living, not just for the elite members of the financial-energy-military-industrial complex, but for all citizens of the world. As it stands, Mike Ruppert himself stands at a minimum to personally reap a harvest of good karma for selflessly seeking to expose the way financial and energy elites exercise control over government and for explaining it to everyday people. Were the policy agenda he sets out here to be followed, however, he would also stand to achieve fitting recognition for his life’s work. May it happen. Was this review helpful to you? A Manifesto of Dealing With Reality, April 5, 2010 By Justin Ritchie (Vancouver, BC) – See all my reviews I first learned of Mike Ruppert through a chilling trailer for his then upcoming movie, Collapse. Ruppert has a long history as an investigative journalist that began when he broke away from the mainstream after his excellence in the LA police led him to be actively recruited by the CIA for running cocaine through South-Central LA. Ruppert realized this wasn’t the world he’d pledged to serve and tried to break the story only to find that the systems he was working to support were quite different from how we perceive them in the mainstream. I went to the Vancouver International Film Centre with a few friends for a screening of Collapse only to have my tentative notions of civilizational instability confirmed in a tour de force of face melting facts. I quickly got a hold of Ruppert’s latest book, A Presidential Energy Policy, which had been re-printed as, Confronting Collapse to draw more attention to the work which had been largely ignored. Explaining bad news is not a route to popular success, as witnessed by the rapid end to careers of any American politician over the last 20 years that tried to curb deficits by cutting spending or raising taxes. Confronting Collapse is a far better introduction to the topic of Collapse for the lay person than the corresponding movie is. And I say that because it is possibly too easy to write off Ruppert as a crank and a lunatic on-screen when he’s talking about governments breaking down and a global population that might face a huge die-off. This is so far outside the mainstream narrative that most people who aren’t receptive to it will completely block it out. It is much harder to ignore the case Ruppert makes for industrial civilization’s collapse when it is nicely footnoted and indexed. Ruppert’s writing style is absolutely clear and accessible to someone that isn’t a technically adept reader but might come across as “arrogant” for someone unwilling to look at the evidence. Modern economists counter the claims of the Peak Oil/Collapse theorists by saying that market corrections will solve the problem, Ruppert clearly explains that the only market corrections available will be in the form of tremendous suffering and loss of human life. In the book, Dr. Colin Campell sets the stage by discussing the short time humanity has had access to energy dense petroleum reserves (only about 150 years). Ruppert uses the first chapter to make the case on why the US Federal government might keep the severity of the energy supply situation confidential and why we might question the status quo on this issue, “if we were lied to about mortgages, 401(k)s, stock portfolios, hedge funds, derivatives, insider trading… the invasion of Iraq and torture… why do so many accept on faith everything we have been sold about energy?” Ruppert is clear that he views the entire American political and economic system as broken and corrupt and subservient to corporate/financial interests. This is something that neither Barack Obama or John McCain were willing to confront in their naive energy policies and political solutions. Thus the reason no real leadership exists and America/The World might be headed off a very steep and disturbing cliff in the near future. This assumption might lose some readers right away but if you read further, you can see why Ruppert has reached these conclusions. The case for collapse is made by Ruppert in his connection between the financial system and oil supplies/energy flows. Growth of this economic system is impossible because recent oil reserve discoveries (they are all in hard to reach places like 6 miles under the ocean) do little more than confirm the fact that extraction rates of oil supplies will continue to rapidly decline, leading to a quick and painful dissolution of the mechanisms of modern society. If our infrastructure was able to handle such a decentralization, America would be in better shape, but Ruppert destroys that myth by dissecting and reporting facts regarding global oil and gas infrastructure ( trillion in investment needed by 2030 to support the global energy-supply infrastructure), the electric distribution grid (coal supplies need oil for extraction), roads and bridges (a .6 trillion investment needed to avoid bridges collapsing), an over-reliance of commuting (asphalt prices and their tie to oil, impact of driving on economic growth in America) and the alternative energy infrastructure (which does not and will not exist). For Ruppert, Iraq is confirmation that the US government knows what is about to happen to global energy supplies, if we are fighting over the scraps of the remaining global oil fields that isn’t good news. Since Obama hasn’t even begun to withdraw from Iraq or Afghanistan supports this notion. By the time Mike Ruppert ties together the dependence of our food system on cheap petroleum (10 calories of petroleum for every calorie of food, not counting for transport),… Was this review helpful to you? A must for any serious politician AND citizen, February 12, 2010 By J. Niesing (Netherlands) – See all my reviews Michael Ruppert has an eloquent way of writing, harsh as the subject may be. He is also very much to the point, so no long and tedious chapters to work through to get to the important stuff. Anybody with any sense is able to grasp this. i first got ‘into’ Michael Ruppert in a documentary on 9/11, where he turned up in clips of presentations with old fashioned plastic slides. It immediately struck mne that this person was not in it for his own gain, or his own good, probably. But he had his heart in it. That feeling is conveyed all through this book. So, to end this short review, to get a quick yet pretty thorough overview of the current state of the world, the greatest challenge ahead for mankind, and maybe some hope, because it’s never too late for all of us, I highky recommend this book. For more info (that is, facts) on 9/11, I also recommend his crossing the rubicon, and all the dvd’s by this great human being. Was this review helpful to you? |
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