Here is a story about the present and the future. It is a story about energy. Now, it is a story about fracking. And, not to repeat myself, it is a tale about unbridled madness. Later, the story could be about something else.
For now, there are plenty of deep and scarring errors in this saga, but no redemption -- maybe in time, but not right now. Right now, there is only an equally deep, dank, and abiding feeling the world is no longer under any obligation to make sense, that some elemental bargain has been voided, that some vital bank of dead man's switches has been locked out and they no longer work.
To quote the band Jethro Tull, from Locomotive Breath:
In the shuffling madness
Of the locomotive breath...
the train won't stop going
No way to slow down.
Our era is shuffling madness. Our locomotive breath is the unending hunger for energy, for fossil fuel. Imagine this era and its impossible hungers, and then imagine them slowing down. The train won't stop going -- no way to slow down.
Of course, that train has been barrel-assing along for some time. The world -- its people and systems -- has been straining for a long time, trying to gain, and retain, even a micron of credibility and sense. This old world hasn't made sense for a while and it may not make sense ever again. Or...
On Monday, August 6, 1945, after six months of intense firebombing of 67 other Japanese cities,...
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