The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment (2 page)
Read The Crash Course: The Unsustainable Future of Our Economy, Energy, and Environment Online
Authors: Chris Martenson
Tags: #General, #Economic Conditions, #Business & Economics, #Economics, #Development, #Forecasting, #Sustainable Development, #Economic Development, #Economic Forecasting - United States, #United States, #Sustainable Development - United States, #Economic Forecasting, #United States - Economic Conditions - 2009
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 orgy that could end in 20 years or less.
That’s the genius behind Chris Martenson’s
The Crash Course
—direct and straightforward talk about what the next 20 years could look like. But the reason you should pay attention to what Chris has to say is not simply what he writes. It’s what he’s done.
I thought it was a big deal when, with my wife and our first child, I moved to Paris to work with Bill Bonner, which led to my role in what grew into Agora Financial. Chris has gone one step further.
He realized in 2002 that something wasn’t right in the economy of the United States. The research he began—much of which is in this very book—overwhelmed him so much that he vacated his VP seat at a Fortune 300 company just to get to the bottom of it all.
Once he had, he moved to act.
Brave and ready to side with his gut, he picked up his entire family with his wife Becca and left behind their cozy six-bedroom, five-bath house in Mystic, Connecticut. They moved into a rented house in a western Massachusetts town where farmland thrived and there were about 8,400 people.
I have some experience with that side of New England myself. I know how hard that is at first. The 1973 oil shock forced my father to shut down his building supply company. And we tried out sustainable living—he was an early believer.
We moved into a farmhouse without any running water. We had to use an outhouse—try doing that in the middle of February! And we put living off the land into practice. We grew all our own food, raised chickens, and rented land to a local dairy farmer. Chris talks about all these kinds of moves in Chapter 27 (
What Should I Do?
).
In investing, solid stocks are often the ones where the heads of companies and high levels of staff have a lot of skin in the game. Not options, mind you, but actual stock. Again, Chris goes one step further—he classifies stock wealth as “tertiary wealth” and suggests hard assets: gold, silver, farmland.
Chris helps us realize that in just the short span of 150 years, we’ve spent our way through our greatest wealth—what he calls
primary wealth
and
secondary wealth
. These kinds of wealth are the ores that come out of the ground, phosphates that keep our soil fertile (in the hope of feeding 9.5 billion mouths by 2050), and the fish in our oceans.
If you stop to count, as Chris does here, it’s not only Peak Oil we should be worrying about, but Peak Everything—from phytoplankton to nutrient-rich black soil.
This book doesn’t make you feel guilty about the energy-dependent lives we lead right now. It’s about thinking how you might shift even one small thing—Chris calls this “Step Zero”—and going ahead with that one change until you can make another.
Some very small things, like turning off the faucet when you brush your teeth, might not amount to much. After all, only 10 percent of the world’s water usage comes from what we use in our homes. And that’s another thing about Chris. He doesn’t shy away from the hard facts of just what we’re up against.
Right now, we’d need 1.4 Earths to sustain our way of life at current levels. Of the 54 oil-producing nations out there, 40 are past peak production. That means 14 nations must shoulder our decline burden and the bigger burden: growth. When it comes to debt, my pet subject, Chris does it justice in Chapter 10 (
Debt
).
Total credit debt has doubled five times in the past four decades! That’s enabled a generation of bubbles, each more perilous than the last.
Working with documentary filmmakers is old hat to me now, after wrapping up the critically acclaimed documentary
I.O.U.S.A
. Chris is no stranger on this front, either. He produced a three-and-a-half-hour video presentation in five months called the
Crash Course
. In 2008, he did something truly startling: He gave out a downloadable version of the
Crash Course
—his life’s work so far—for free. When you do that and then 25,000 pay for the professional DVD anyway, you know you’re onto something.
And here’s where Chris is different: There are a lot of Peak Oil guys out there. Very few offer solutions on a personal level.
In Part VI (
Convergence
), Chris, like the good economic futurist he is, lays out three possible scenarios that cover a very short period of time: starting now (2011) and taking us clear into 2015 and beyond. He sketches out the impact debt, declining oil production, loss of faith in the U.S. dollar, and war will have. The more profound scenario divides our history into two eras: BO and AO.
Before Oil
and
After Oil
.
And then you realize by Part VII (
What Should I Do?
) that the end of the “1,800-mile Caesar salad” will actually be better than you might think.
Chapter 28 (
The Opportunities
), the most important chapter in the whole book, talks about the opportunities before you, before us. My personal favorite, as executive publisher of Agora Financial, is this:
Invest defensively
.
Like Chris, I have three children. And I care about the world they will inherit. It’s why I’ve made enemies in Congress, put sweat and tears into the book
Empire of Debt
, and took on the extra challenge of making the story of our credit-addicted government and economy into the documentary
I.O.U.S.A
. I salute Chris as a fellow fighter on the battlefield for our future.
One thought of his that you can take to the bank:
“The next 20 years will be completely unlike the last 20 years.”
As you read this book, I say to you, prepare to be surprised.
—Addison Wiggin
Author of
Demise of the Dollar, Empire of Debt
, and
Financial Reckoning Day;
Executive Producer,
I.O.U.S.A
.;
Publisher, Agora Financial, LLC