I'm way to pre-occupied by the end of the age of oil these days. I just finished an amazingly detailed book by Michael Ruppert called "Crossing the Rubicon" about the end of the age of oil. He makes a firm case that we are about at that time when total potential oil extraction will peak and the world begins the slide toward a world we will not recognize. What happens when the trucks stop arriving at Wal-Mart and our super grocery chains with food? And to the hospitals with medication? When there is no longer enough oil with which to harvest crops? Is it in fact too late to develop alternative energy sources?

They say there is enough coal for electricity generation for 300 years. A process that turns coal into liquid coal looks promising and the liquid could be delivered by existing pipelines (which is good because delivery trucks won't have enought gas to transport the fuel). But coal, too, is a finite
resource. What kind of world will our children grow up to.

I have a full time job and so does my husband but somehow I'd feel more secure with a piece of land, some cows, chickens and non-genetically-altered seed so that we could actually sustain ourselves should all the lights go out and the streets become silent again except for the clip, clip of horse-drawn carriages.