"Is a Dream a Lie If It Don't Come True?"

I first became vaguely aware of the concept of "Peak Oil" in my teens, when reading an old interview with Joe Strummer from the Clash's heyday. He informed the interviewer that there was only 70 years of oil left. So, the interview mused, 70 years to find an alternative energy source? No, said Joe, 70 years to rock and roll.

Sadly, Strummer never lived to see whether he was on the money or not but his (perhaps semi-serious) attitude seems to have been taken on wholesale by many major world governments. By all estimates I've ever seen, we've hit the peak production of oil. Much as it pains me to say, as a lover of 80s sports cars, but we're never going to be paying less than £1 for a litre of petrol ever again (non-British readers may wish to use a currency converter to compare - last time I checked it's around £1.33 per litre).

The comedian and novelist Robert Newman made an excellent stand up show The History of Oil that also worked as a documentary about our relationship with that particular fossil fuel, including an interesting angle that World War One was fought, in part, over oil supplies.

More recently, I've been reading up on a blog entitled The Downward Spiral, by some American guy who isn't Bill Hicks. Though he doesn't have the wisecracking humour of the dead comedian he isn't, he does have the same line of indignant anger at those running his country.

His blog is subtitled "A Requiem for the American Dream", which is interesting in itself, as that concept is one that often appears something of a cliche to us left behind in the old world. Being British and brought up in a land where the class structure still means something, it appeared to me that the States had just replaced that with a new breed of ruling class. Instead of essentially telling people to know their place and shut up, Americans got fed the idea that they too could one day rise to the top.

With economic hardships continuing to tighten their grip, this hack wonders whether our friends across the pond will start to raise their heads above the parapets more to question just what the fuck is going on. It may be a long road, but the man behind The Downward Spiral shows that there are voices out there. I recommend taking a read.