From Culture Change:

With the IEA’s [International Energy Agency] World Energy Outlook’s assessment of depletion (including other factors such as sabotage) at 9.1% of the “natural rate,” and given the economic downturn’s momentum, we are looking into the gaping maw of collapse. This is the end of the industrial revolution and the agricultural revolution. Why am I choosing to sound so dramatic, and not call today’s “recession” a retreat from growth that we can recover from? The reason is we will be going all the way down in the trough after our rise to the top of consumption. It is the Category 5 storm we have unleashed. Now lash yourself to the mast or be swept overboard by the monster wave.

As Culture Change readers learned, agriculture is not sustainable for large populations. [Peter Salonius, author and soil scientist] And what gave us the industrial revolution? Answer: the easy coal and gushing, cheap petroleum.