Preterition

In follow-up to my piece on Hillary's gripe with OPEC and in reference to Necessary Roughness, I was going to throw in my own two cents on the subject of peak oil. But after reading numerous websites declaring that civilization will collapse as a result of, well, commodity speculation, I just lost interest. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've long held that while I don't expect to see civilization collapse in my lifetime, I wouldn't be all that surprised. So I'm sympathetic to the homesteader's mindset of living self-sufficiently, just in case. But there's a big difference in mindset between living a simple country lifestyle and filling your basement with astronaut food. And of all the things I can imagine bringing down civilization, a shock in the petroleum market isn't one of them. So there, Peak Oilers, I think you're wrong, but I just don't care enough to bother explaining why in any detail. More vacuum-packed survival rations for you, I guess.