BioPhysical Political Econ — a Rough Draft

As we sit in the dias nefastos between Christmas and New Year’s, I’ve been mulling over the 50th anniversary of 1968.

1968 was the most important year of the post WWII era.

From the Biophysical Economic perspective, WWII was the driver of all change in the Twentieth Century. The United States burned 6,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil during the conflict. The larger strategic decisions of the war were almost wholly determined by fossil fuels.

The Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor? A consequence of the American embargo on the Japanese and the Japanese high command’s realization that they had to secure the oil in the Dutch East Indies.

The German quagmire in Russia? A consequence of a failed Nazi push to acquire the Romanian oil fields and to then surge into the Caucasus to hold the Baku oil fields.

After the War, the US was the only country not destroyed by the War. This allowed the US to dictate that the post war economic system would be favorable to the US. The US became an exceptional nation when the British realized Bretton-Woods would be the order of the day. An exceptional nation writes the law around itself, like a star around which all other nations revolve as planets. But the American star did not shine because of an internal fusion reaction. The American Star shone on burned oil.

By 1968, the star was beginning to dim. US Domestic production was beginning to decline. By 1970, US Domestic production peaked and began its long decline (until the advent of tight oil production. However, fracking has a lower EROI than previous methods of production in plays like East Texas and the Permian Basin.)

From a Biophysical Economics perspective, at exactly the same time that cheap fossil fuels and the ignorance of the consequence of CO2 came to an end, Minority communities — African-Americans, women, LGBTQ, and Chicanos — began their demand for equal treatment, not just under the law, but under the noon sun of everyday life.

No wonder ignorant white folks who flew to Forney think that minorities are the devil. Whitey is too stupid to know about Biophysical Econ and blames the Colored folk for the world’s problems.