kublikhan wrote: So, you are saying it is impossible for 300 million people, living in a country the size of America, with all it's resources, to survive post-peak oil? I don't mean have their lifestyles survive, I mean they can't find the bare minimum amount of food, water, etc. to stay alive?
Nope.
Hunter/gatherer is not an option for Americans. Besides, the abundance of wild nature is gone.
No more buffler' on da range.
We don't find food, water, clothing, shelter, etc...we buy it.
With money from a job.
How are people going to access these needs?
Millions can barely find "the bare minimum amount of food, water, etc. to stay alive" right now...in the best of times with the most oil ever.
36.5 million Americans — roughly one in eight — live in poverty.[ii] Despite relatively strong economic growth since 2001, poverty has remained stubbornly high, and today’s poverty rate is higher than it was during the last recession. That the poverty rate is still above its recession level is especially distressing given that poverty usually declines during recoveries and rises during recessions. If the economy goes into a slowdown or recession in 2008, poverty likely will only increase further.
15.4 million Americans live in extreme poverty. In other words, their family’s cash income is less than half of the poverty line, or less than about $10,000 a year for a family of four.
Tens of millions of low-income Americans have serious difficulty paying for basic necessities like food, shelter, and medical care. Some of these problems have grown demonstrably worse in recent years. In the most recent year for which these figures are available:
Food: Some 12.6 million households, containing 35.5 million people, lacked access to adequate food at some point during the year because they didn’t have enough money for groceries.[iii] About 4.6 million of these households faced the most severe problems, with household members skipping meals or taking other steps to reduce the amount they ate because of a lack of resources.
Shelter: 16 million low-income households either paid more for rent and utilities than the federal government says is affordable or lived in overcrowded or substandard housing. Six million of these households were especially badly off: they paid more than half of their income for rent and utilities or lived in severely substandard housing. [iv]
Nearly 2 million poor households were unable to pay their full rent (or mortgage) at least once in the prior year. Nearly 3 million poor households fell behind on their gas, oil, or electric bill.[v]
By the end of 2007, an estimated 1.5 million homeowners will have received foreclosure notices, more than twice as many as in 2006. About half of them have “subprime” mortgages.[vi] Lower income and minority homeowners hold a disproportionate number of subprime mortgages. [vii]
Medical care: 47 million Americans — more than one in every seven — were uninsured. [viii] The number of uninsured Americans has risen for six straight years. Nearly 9 million children are uninsured, and the number of uninsured children has risen for two straight years.
More than 40 million adults — roughly one in five adults aged 19 and older — did not receive at least one type of needed health care (medical, dental, mental health, prescription drugs, etc.) in the previous year because they could not afford it.[ix]
Millions of Americans are having trouble surviving pre-peak.