I stopped reading about 1/4 of the way into this. How brain-dead can you get?! Looming energy crunch! Inevitable oil shortages on Peak Oil's down-and-out ramp! This would point a rational thinker to one very obvious conclusion: the end of globalism!!!

Globalism is based 100% on being able to subtract out distance due to ultra-cheap transportation costs. There would be no globalist captialism without this funny topology of "everything comes from somewhere else but don't worry because the shipping is dirt cheap." Well, that will end, and it will end when it ends, and that will be too soon for dreamers who can't face that it will end. So when it ends, we will once again be back to the 1920s when a very small percentage of edibles came from anywhere outside of a 20 mile radius. Back then A&P was just getting into the market. Even into the '50s, the grocer (in his Main St. store) knew a large percentage of his suppliers by name. When did Newfoundland cod stop being salted and transported by ships and trains?

Using some perceived slack in global ag to grow bio-fuels is ludicrous! Get this: That would be ag growing stuff just so it can be shipped afar--literally!!! (This is actually even more absurd than bio-fuels displacing food production just so SUVs in the USA can keep rolling.) Believe me, no more cheap oil means no more globalism. It means a huge and very desperate scramble to reinvent very many wheels locally. As the oil dwindles, a global triage will be set up to cut the fat out of globalism's obese body. The only problem is all the denial of the minions of growth-only globalist capitalism. People who can't/won't face reality (AND who control power in the world) might make for a messy situation....

If you go to France, you still see a vestige of the family farm, the paysant (sp?). You still see a setup that might actually survive a serious energy crunch and, thus, economic crash. It's hanging on by a thread due to those big, bad subsidies. Viva la France!