[Globalism's] demise will coincide with the end of the cheap-oil age. For better or worse, many of the circumstances we associate with globalism will… - James Howard Kunstler

The lucky suburbanites will be the ones with the forethought to trade in their suburban McHouses for property in the towns and small cities and prepare for a vocational life doing something useful and practical on the small scale.

Did Americans sell out their towns, their neighbors, the memory of their ancestors, and the future of their grandchildren because they were helplessly in thrall to the blandishments of a cheap-oil economy? I honestly don’t know, though I tend to view the outcome as the result of many collective bad choices made by the public and its leaders. But were those choices inescapable? Certainly, the process was insidious and played out over several generations.

Because the oil peak phenomenon… cancels out further industrial growth of the kind we are used to, its implications lie radically outside… [the] economic paradigm. So, the oil peak phenomenon has been discounted to about zero among conventional economists, who assume that “market signals” about oil supplies will inevitably trigger innovation, which, in turn, will cause [something] new… to materialize and enable further growth. If the market signals are not triggering innovation, then the problem must be overstated and growth under the oil regime will resume—after, say, a normal periodic downcycle. This is obvious casuistry, but casuistry can be a great comfort when a problem has no real solution. […] Our investment in an oil-addicted way of life… is now so inordinately large that it is too late to salvage all the national wealth wasted on building it, or to continue that way of life more than a decade or so into the future. What’s more, as we have outsourced manufacturing to other countries, the entire U.S. economy has become more… dependent on continued misinvestment in… suburbia and its accessories. No politician wants to tell voters that the American Dream has been canceled for a lack of… resources. The U.S. economy would disintegrate. So, whichever party is in power has tended to ignore the issue, change the subject, or spin it into the realm of delusion.