2012 Doomsday Prophecy: $10 Milk

All these 2012 doomsday prophecies I’ve been inundating myself with online and on The History Channel for the past week have put me in a funk.

Pangs of anger, depression, and worry are crowding into my more typical emotions of hunger for tacos, thirst for beer, and hankering for cigarettes.

It’s not that I buy into every doomsday prediction, although all are certainly possible. Which would you prefer?

A. Major cataclysms such as earthquakes or volcanic eruptions set off a chain of lethal events;
B. Global warming prompts floods, disease, and starvation;
C. Social chaos and war lead to nuclear self-destruction;
D. An asteroid will hit Earth and the resulting dust cloud will block out the sun and kill us all.

Hmmm…I prefer D.

What worries me most after watching all these shows is a fate less extravagant but more likely — peak oil is approaching, meaning we are about to reach the time when the oil available under the ground worldwide is less than what’s already been removed.

At that point the horde mentality sets in, the price skyrockets, and the days of $4 a gallon gasoline will be looked back upon with fondness. Remember how the price of everything soared when gas doubled in price? Milk, now selling for $2 a gallon, was $4 a pop when gas prices spiked not long ago. Imagine what will happen when gas starts selling for $10 a gallon. The economy will prove to be a house of cards.

“House of Cards” by the way is my favorite Radiohead song:

But what was I talking about? Oh yeah, we’re all going to die. Or, if not die, then pay $10 for a gallon of moo-juice — or learn to like powdered milk. Life with nothing but powdered milk is not worth living.

We should focus more on alternative energy sources — we should have been doing this long before now. But the energy industry is so rich, and the lobbyists so smarmy and eager to spreading the money to lawmakers, and the politicians so greedy and self-absorbed, that we are slow to change.

So, what should we do?

A. Bury our heads in the sand and just let things work out the way they will;
B. Banish lobbyists;
C. Banish politicians;
D. Banish lobbyists and politicians and take back America.

Again I choose D.