Those who expect we will all just crank along as we adapt to 30% less oil are not taking into account the impact on state coffers and what a breakdown of safety nets will mean to our inner cities. We have an entire society that exists on the largess of state and federal "programs" If we can't fund WIC and Head Start and food stamps and medicaid and fuel assistance and food stamps and AFDC and welfare and SSI (this is a huge one) then we will have an enormous group of angry, hungry people in a tight mass. Talk about a long, hot summer. Is it doomer to chose to live in a place that keeps one well away from large cities, in an area with reliable rainfall and good soil? I think it's nuts to be in a place without a strong social fabric and a way to provide food to it's citizens. I am still hoping that riots and civil unrest are confined to the big population centers but they may not be. I don't call myself a doomer. I call myself a realist.
I must admit that I was not fully considering the issues facing our inner cities in a budget/currency/funding crisis. Please keep in mind that I have no training in social work or policy - but the point cannot be overstated: Our cities are have all of the ingredients for a Katrina like disaster, only played out in 50 cities at once. If my vision of a 30% decline in total petroleum products in the 2006-2014 time period is correct, I think Kathy's vision is probable enough to be avoided like the plague. And no, Kathy, I would not call you a doomer. Your ability to calculate the probabilities is self evident.
The problem is that 50 million people living in and around Newark/Camden/Trenton/New York/Philidelphia/D.C./Baltimore... cannot do much about the circumstance they find themselves in.
Life will go on, even if major unrest breaks out. Just take a look at the suicide bombings that seem to occur daily over at the Middle East Nut House. Car bombs go off killing 50 here, 13 there, another 123 over there and the locals still have to go food shopping, kids gotta go to school, people gotta use the facilities... life goes on. People must accept the consequences of their actions and inactions alike. If I were an Iraqi I wouldn't keep my family in Baghdad under any circumstance, even if I had to live on a Camel Caravan or join up with the Bedouin tribes and wander the desert. Living with the real possibility that one of my kids would be killed by a suicide bomber would be enough motivation for me - but obviously not for everyone living in Baghdad. "Kathy" has made her decision, and "Bureaucrat" has made his decision. The outcomes of the myriad decisions we make in our lives casts the die as to whether you make old bones, leave descendants, live well or scrape by, etc...
In life, timing is everything. Are we 2.5 years into the 10+ year slide to zero Oil imports? Or is this just a head fake?
That, my friends, is the $64,000 question.