Remember all the worse-than-1929 stock market crashes we were supposed to have had by now, according to the authors of highly hyped paperback books? How about the civilization-destroying calamity that was supposed to have been Y2K?

Guess what! You can experience that kind of unproductive fear all over again!

Matt Savinar, an obscure northern California lawyer, has composed a new fearmongering book, Peak Oil: Life After the Oil Crash. (Found via Curry.com.)

The basic thesis: Oil supplies aren’t running out, but they’re running down. With a bigger world population, and more industrialization in places such as China, the effect’s the same as if supplies were running out. Nothing can be done; we’re all doomed.

Our author’s prescription, unimaginatively, is exactly the same as that of the Y2K doom prophets:

“Get off the grid, out of debt, out of the city, learn to grow as much of your own food as you can, and get ready for some very interesting times.”

In other words, become a mountain-militia nut.

Thanks but no thanks. I’d rather stay in town, among people who take care of one another, than in some brutal macho dystopia fantasy.

And besides: Global civilization built itself around cheap oil in just a few decades, slightly longer than my own lifetime. It can rebuild itself, or more likely adapt. If you’re hoping for hopelessness, you’re as misguided as the “millennial” conservatives.