The Editor Blackout
Will the rapture come before the lights go
out?
Rains last Saturday liquefied the ground. Utility
poles fell over, arcing and sparking, cutting power, casting towns in
starlight. It was a lovely fireside evening, the whole family in cushioned
repose, mainlining fire, sipping New Year’s Eve libations, enjoying
a secular Sabbath without the phone, the fax, the internet and television.
Commerce stopped, registers closed, the push and pull of negotiation
went slack, except at Smiley’s Saloon, whose generator kept beer
and money swapping.
Power was intermittent, but mostly off for several
days. And as time drew on, so too did the discomforts–the chilly
home, rotten food, and dirty laundry, the closed stores and roads and
gas stations. Then I saw why the Sabbath was one day out of seven and
pined for bourgeois reliability, for trains that run on time and refrigerators
that keep food cold. Power returned as a well-received gift on the last
day of Hanukah.
But what if the power never came back on? Petroleum
reserves will soon run dry now that India and China have stuck their
massive straws in, like dewy-eyed lovers over a rapidly diminishing
milkshake. Unless the United States transitions rapidly to alternate
fuel sources, the day will come when our whole petroleum economy shudders
to a halt, totally spent, incapable of revival. And then we will burn
through our abundant coal, filling the skies with smogulous smoke, raining
acid and mercury upon the land. And when the coal runs out, we will
go nuclear, because radiation is better than darkness.
I like living in the most powerful country in world
history. There is no army that can take our mainland, and our economic
reach is magisterial. Let’s keep it that way. Empires of stone
gave way to empires of bronze, and then from bronze to iron, and iron
to explosive. Managing the transition from oil to alternative energies
will be just as important.
After the OPEC oil embargo of the 1970s, President
Carter channeled tax dollars into researching alternative energy. Then
President Reagan appointed James Watt as secretary of the interior.
James Watt is a Dominion Theologist, an evangelical Christian who believes
that god has commanded man to extract as much as possible from the earth
while awaiting an imminent, rapturous bloodbath. Dominion Theologists
quote Genesis 1:26, "And God said, Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the
sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
Dominion Theologists believe that the end will
come soon, so why worry about oil running out. James Watt had a disciple,
Gayle Norton, who now rules over our extractive resources as secretary
of the interior. She is not thinking about managing the transition from
oil. Nor is anyone else in the Bush White House. Electing another administration
is the first step toward alternative energy and keeping the lights on.
Editor’s Note:
Without help from the community this special storm
issue would have been skimpier. The extravagant spreads of photography
were only possible because numerous photographers volunteered their
work to the Light. Without their contributions, history would have been
the poorer.