production—the agricultural equipment, the fertilizers, preservation, and, of course, distribution of food—is completely dependent on petroleum. It’s no puzzle to biologists what happens to any population when its food supply is radically reduced. When it happens to animals it’s called a die-off. But the implications of this equation in human terms are so unimaginably ghastly that most people would prefer to believe it’s impossible rather than think about it at all. I keep remembering something the novelist Cormac McCarthy said in an interview: “If you were to take thoughtful people on, say,
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