On Food, Fuel, and the Going Price of a Barrel of Crude Oil

Today in Dakota Territory, gasoline is $3.60 / gallon, and #2 diesel is $4.20 / gallon, and a barrel of crude oil is $120. People are beginning to cry out about "the peril to the millions" who won't be able to afford food, fuel, and entertainment, or "their current lifestyle". My sympathy basket is about empty, takoszja.. Because I've been speaking about these things - as have hundreds, perhaps thousands of others, for decades.
And the rest of you have been ignoring us, and the facts we speak of. Now it appears the facts are speaking for themselves so loudly you cannot ignore them any longer. Well, we tried.
Let's do a bit of simple arithmetic and see where this is going. Let's pretend the price of a barrel of crude oil has already hit $200. Where will the costs of gasoline and #2 diesel fuel be then? Divide 200 by 120, you will get 5/3. Multiply that by $3.60 and $4.20, and you will get $6.00 and $7.00 respectively.
Now do that with food, heating fuels, and clothing, and you will see that: the current fad in having more than 2 children will go away quickly; the current fad in the U.S. of building huge houses (that require amazing amounts of fuel to heat) will come to a screeching halt; and as a result, you will see a huge sudden increase in the number of homeless, followed by a fast decrease in the number of homeless - as they starve and freeze to deat any place where winter temperatures drop below freezing at night - along with a concomittant rise in the buzzard population, since there isn't likely to be enough land to bury these individuals except in mass graves.
You will also see a huge rise in rustling of food animals, and of garden vegetables.
Doomsday predictions? Not at all. When the prices of food and fuel rise to the point where people must choose between feeding their close ones and altruism, they will feed their close ones and altruism will take a hike into history until costs and prices stabilize and the American public lives a more realistic lifestyle than it has for at least the past 50 years.
No more fast boats and huge motors to push them, jet skis, motorhomes, SUVs getting 9 mpg, snowmobiles, 4-wheelers, etc., etc. No more jetaway vacations, and maybe a huge decrease in airlines. Well, it will mean much shorter lines for those who can - or need to - travel....
We will see a big run to telecommuting, I expect.. and a much more environmentally-friendly perspective than we have seen for dona hey decades in the U.S. My company, Indian Maid Products, Inc., which makes passive solar heaters and coolers, will probably do well, if we can get enough fuel to send a crew to install our units. We'll certainly try - we've been trying for decades..
But you know what really 'gets' to me about this fuel thing? It has been planned-for for over 20 years by those silent, shadowy figures who run the U.S. economy. This is no conspiracy theory; it is fact. I know this because in the early 1980's, I spent considerable time working for and around high-ranking state and federal people in the D.C. area, and they were working on it then. Given my security clearance of the time and the fact that The Rule was, "if you tell the story, you cannot name names or places specifically", they openly discussed these things in front of me - and others, I am sure. Why did it do no good to tell you?
Because you were so taken with your own perspectives that you narcissistic people refused to believe the facts when they were set clearly in front of you. Just about a year ago, a speaker told people in Minot, ND that the price of a barrel of crude oil was going to hit $120, and the audience (of business 'leaders') laughed him off the stage. A few months ago, this same speaker told these same people that oil is likely to hit $200 a barrel, and this time, almost no one laughed.
Just the same, I don't expect to see any major change in the lifestyles of most U.S. folk until oil actually does hit $200 a barrel, because Disneyism and t.v. have taught the majority of people to believe in 20-minute solutions to huge problems and that "someone" will "save" us. It may be that someone will save you, but the facts of physics and the real world say it won't be in a short time, nor will you be able to live in the same old ways with the same old disregard and disrespect for the rest of the world, including the environment.
I think I'm going to enjoy watching that.. Given all the szit I've taken from so many of you for living "greenly" for all of my life.... Whod'a thunk an old woman could have so much fun watching the Wheel turn? Not me.
And isn't that a hoot..