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* My point since we started this project has been that "peak oil" changes the rules of the domestic and geopolitical games. There is no more immediate supply of cheap oil to call upon than what we already extract daily: refining more-sour crude, exploration and retrieval only becomes more and more costly from here on in, and ergo, behaviors and lives will have to change to adapt.
Because of our crippling dependence on petroleum (which will become more obvious each day that passes in the coming weeks), one terrorist attack, one malevolent world leader with oil, or, unfortunately one event like Katrina that disrupts "the Spice" (Frank Herbert's Dune reference) can bring a country, especially one that uses a quarter of the world's daily supply of oil, to its knees.
Don't get me wrong. Ceteris paribus, Katrina would have desperately hurt the US had it happened 10 years ago. However, in the era of peak oil (when there's just no wiggle room to find cheap supply to put into the system), the turmoil that Katrina hath wrought may hurt us in ways we haven't even fathomed yet because of the way our lifestyles will have to change in order to adjust to less available energy.
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