Michael Ruppert's Collapse

I had the link to the film Collapse bookmarked for some months now. You know those un-categorized loose bookmarks that populate the bottom of your bookmarks list before you eventually slot them in somewhere or get rid of them. The film is based on the work of Michael Ruppert and with Michael himself as the sole interviewee sitting in a chair in an empty room, a basement or warehouse or something similar to the location that the film The Prophets of Doom, in which he also participated, was set.

I've viewed a number of similar documentary films such as The End of Suburbia, A Crude Awakening, and the slide show Crash Course by Chris Martenson. While a little self-serving, but perhaps deservedly so, Ruppert's Collapse is a no nonsense grab you by your lapels noticed served that our way of life is grinding to a halt as we speak. Ruppert describes the concept of peak oil and peak everything as many of our industrial commodities are becoming rapidly depleted and our industrial economy can no longer rely on an endless supply to manufacture the trappings of our lifestyle nor the machinery and equipment that makes the trappings.

What Ruppert does so well is boils down concepts such as the two laws of thermodynamics in such a way that a layperson can understand them, for example:

1. First Law of Thermodynamics:  Energy cannot be either created or destroyed.
2. Second Law of Thermodynamics:  Energy only converts in one direction, from useable to un-useable, which is otherwise known as the Law of Entropy.  In an energy transaction, some energy is always lost.

Therefore, this implies that our economy always needs ever larger energy inputs in order to keep growing. But peak oil is the game changer that will, and some argue already has, put an end to this ponzi scheme, which is how Ruppert refers to our economy. He says, "So you have finite energy and you have a financial paradigm which requires endless growth."

Ruppert touches on key concepts such as demand destruction which means that when the price of a commodity like oil rises to a level high enough to impact economic growth (e.g. people can't go to work anymore because they can't afford to buy gasoline), then the commodity price declines since demand drops.  He also discusses net energy or energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) which is at the crux of peak oil since we will never actually run out of oil but only that oil which is economically recoverable.  Therefore, net energy is energy that pays for itself rather than costing more to recover, transport, refine, etc. that the energy is worth.

I realize that most readers are aware of these concepts and I've written about them extensively as have many others. Yet I was impressed how simple Ruppert made the concepts sound and also how passionate he was that we humans see the obvious and save ourselves.

Collapse, (2009) Documentary, Writer: Michael Ruppert; Director: Chris Smith
IMDB Site:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1503769/