President Obama is out of the gate sprinting.  As he unveils critical policy decisions on a daily basis, it's like watching one of those "I Love the..." specials on VH1, only this version is called "I Hate the Bush Years."  With each Obama reversal, we get that little nostalgic spark, like being reminded of our HR Puff n Stuff lunch box.   Gitmo, Global Gag Rule, fuel efficiency standards -- as the list of overturned Bush debacles gets longer, we can take that walk down memory lane, realizing the epic scope of Dubya wreckage that has to be repaired.  The new administration is like that poor schmuck who has to walk behind the parade route and scoop up the elephant and horse crap -- only the country is also expecting that guy to save the world at the same time.  It's a tough gig: shit-shoveling and messiah, simultaneously.

But the new President is off to a pretty impressive start.  The currently vital piece of legislation is the proposed $825 billion stimulus package. This spending and tax cut proposal should make it through Congress, despite the breathtakingly hypocritical warnings of some fringe Republicans (these jokers are posturing as protectors of fiscal discipline, after their party has essentially driven the country off a cliff over the last eight years).  His other early actions will have positive effects on world opinion (closing Gitmo and lifting the Global Gag Rule) and the federal budget (crafting an exit from Iraq).  Obama is making overtures towards the Muslim world, and has also just sent George Mitchell to talk with the Israelis about achieving some kind of progress in the Palestinian situation.  So overall, the new administration's efforts are broad and deep, which should be expected considering the seriousness of our economic situation and the damage done by the outgoing junta.

But beneath the hopefulness of the American people, and the obvious competence of the new President, some deep currents are swirling around, and they do not bode well.  I just finished reading two fairly new Peak Oil books, The Long Descent, by John Michael Greer, and Reinventing Collapse, by Dmitry Orlov.  I highly recommend both volumes.  Greer asserts that we essentially blew our opportunity for a sustainable future after the oil shocks of the 1970s.  That was the period when we had the opportunity and breathing room to craft a lower-consumption, decentralized-energy lifestyle.  We could have worked on building compact, walkable communities, and launched a national project to create green energy sources.  We did not do so.  In an effort to preserve the easy-motoring suburban life, we did everything possible to insure that cheap oil would be available forever.  Unfortunately, this mainly involved turning our national government into a militaristic corporation, rattling our sabres and building our bases all over the planet, to remind people that they should keep the spigots open and not threaten the Arab-American petro-alliance.  Now that this project has helped bankrupt the United States, both morally and financially, it is too late to go back.  Greer calmly insists that collapse is unavoidable now, and the best we can do is prepare ourselves for the slow unraveling, by developing real skills at the most basic levels: feeding ourselves, warming our dwellings, and crafting durable, appropriate technology from the detritus of the industrial age.  His view is long, and ultimately hopeful, much like the bitter sweet life portrayed by James Howard Kunstler in World Made by Hand, another book that I recommend.

Dmitry Orlov's offering is an acerbic, witty, and sweeping comparison of the collapse of the Soviet Union as it relates to the impending collapse of the American system.  As a native Russian who relocated to the United States in the 70s, and then made numerous visits back to the USSR throughout its implosion, Orlov has a unique perspective on the two superpowers.  What is most surprising is how much better the oppressive Soviet structure actually prepared the Russian people for ultimate collapse.  Much of the no-frills Soviet infrastructure proved to be very durable, since it was unhindered by wasteful market features like planned obsolescence or seasonal fashion changes.  Many Soviet artifacts thus proved quite serviceable for long periods of time.  Also, at the basic level of food production, almost all Russians maintained hearty kitchen gardens, virtually identical to the organic gardening that is gaining popularity in America.  So there was no widespread famine or starvation after the USSR fell.  Orlov discusses other factors, some of which tilt favorably to the United States.  But overall, this is a very interesting and entertaining volume.  Check it out.

But back to Obama.  The new administration will likely get some very positive things done over the next few years, and I would anticipate a growing sense that America has turned the corner.  You can sense the desperation in the experts for a return to normal.  On a news program last night, three guys were talking about the function of the Fed, and whether it was good for the Fed to expand its influence in the wider economy.  And this one professor was saying that it was important to put some modernized rules in place, so that when the next crisis hits, we'll know better how to fix it, and faster.  "The next crisis?"  Again, there is this pathological refusal among the "experts" to acknowledge the breadth of our predicament.  It is assumed that everything will turn around at some point, and housing values will rise again, lending will ramp up, people will get rehired at great jobs again, and economic growth will return.  It's all cyclical, don't worry. 

Well, worry.  These are the realities in the United States of Collapse:

• The economic growth of the entire industrial age has been built on cheap oil
• Global oil production appears to have peaked in 2005
• On the downslope of oil production (Post-peak), petroleum will be harder to get and lower quality, and will thus be increasingly expensive
• Oil is an utterly unique commodity, due to its very nature -- it is essentially the condensed form of billions of years of solar energy.  No other energy source has the portability, fungibility, compactness, and flexibility of oil. 
• Because oil is so unique, all of our current industrial infrastructures are also unique.  There will prove to be no equivalent substitutes for oil in the areas of power generation, agriculture, manufacturing, heavy construction, and a myriad of other processes.  All substitutes will prove to be either substantially dirtier, vastly more decentralized, or monumentally more limited in scope and output
• Cheap oil is also the only factor that has allowed the sprawling, wasteful, suburban lifestyle to be maintained.  And this lifestyle, with all its accoutrements, has been the bulk of our overall civilizational activity in America for the last 30 years.  On the downslope of Peak Oil, entire sectors of the economy will thus wither up and blow away, never to return
• The American Algorithm is thus dead.  We will never return to a full-employment, easy-credit, over-consumptive, hyper-individualist lifestyle.  This model is in its death throes, and the future will demand more cooperation, less travel, and a radically different ideology of labor and production

In all likelihood, Obama's presidency will be a major turning point.  After coming in on the wings of triumph and history, he will find himself presiding over the twitching body of a dying civilization.  And like a Chinese finger trap, if he struggles to revive the unrevivable system that is passing away, he will remain stuck.  He, and we, must learn to relax and let go of the old straitjacket social form.  It is not worth saving anyway.