[TheForge] OT--Gas prices, gas shortages, price gouging?

[Andrew Vida]

Peter Fels & Phoebe Palmer wrote:

> I have a very low opinion of offshore drilling......pf

	From an environmental POV it is difficult to argue with you.  I 
seriously doubt that environments that were vibrant for millions of 
years and which suddenly die out just as drilling operations get started 
is a coincidence.  But we have painted ourselves into a pretty serious 
corner in terms of how we live and what is required to go on, even for 
the short term.  If we stopped now, billions (and I mean Billions) of 
people will die within no more than a year's time.  We no longer know 
how to live without some very serious augmentation.  We have taken the 
planet well beyond its non-augmented carrying capacities in terms of, 
e.g., food production.  Oil underpins our agriculture as a central 
pillar of its foundation.  Remove it and bye bye fertilizers, and 
therefore bye bye food and life shortly after we finish eating each 
other and everything else remotely edible.  We probably would not become 
extinct, but the culling would be tremendous.

	So this sort of begs the question of how do we avoid such an inevitability?