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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (4499)	7/30/2006 10:20:19 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24210

A Tank of Gas, A World of Trouble What does it take to quench America’s mighty thirst for gasoline? Pulitzer-winning correspondent Paul Salopek traced gas pumped at a suburban Chicago station to the fuel’s sources around the globe. In doing so, he reveals how our oil addiction binds us to some of the most hostile corners of the planet—and to a petroleum economy edging toward crisis. STORY BY PAUL SALOPEK, TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT RESEARCH BY BRENDA KILIANSKI, TRIBUNE RESEARCHER PHOTOS BY KUNI TAKAHASHI, TRIBUNE PHOTOGRAPHER About the project Paul Salopek (left) and photographer Kuni Takahashi traveled to the distant sources of the South Elgin Marathon's gas. Read the story Chapter 1: The pay zone A Marathon station in South Elgin, Ill., serves as an ideal prism to examine the coming end of the oil age. Read the story Chapter 2: The frontier Americans have hitched their 210 million autos to Africa, forcing the planet’s last superpower to rattle its half-empty oilcan at the world's poorest continent. Read the story Chapter 3: The war The hidden costs of our oil addiction include everything from U.S. job losses to the medical bills of American troops wounded in Iraq. Read the story Chapter 4: Last call An energy cold war over oil threatens to become the defining struggle of the 21st Century. An early flash point: the United States and Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Read the story chicagotribune.com ====================== Is the world running out of oil? The prospect seems unthinkable--mostly because the consequences, if true, would be unimaginable. Permanent fuel shortages would tip the world into a generations-long economic depression. Millions would lose their jobs as industry implodes. Farm tractors would be idled for lack of fuel, triggering massive famines. Energy wars would flare. And car-less suburbanites would trudge to their nearest big-box stores--not to buy Chinese-made clothing transported cheaply across the globe, but to scavenge glass and copper wire from abandoned buildings. ================= Another excerpt from the Tribune special report: Vargo drives to work in a car she can't afford. It is a white Chevrolet Suburban that churns out a ruinous 10 miles to a gallon and rides so high off the street she has to boost herself into the driver's seat as if jumping into a saddle. Her two-hour daily commute, about 40 miles each way from Lockport, roughly double the national average. Still, there are times when the extravagant vehicle seems the only reliable part of her unsettled life. "I don't feel safe in small cars," Vargo said defensively, refueling one day at the pump. She seemed worn and jittery. It was the end of an 11-hour shift. She was headed home to a house shared with two teen daughters and a 4-foot iguana--a place she would soon vacate because she couldn't make the rent.