It may have been inconceivable in decades past that the end of Pax Americana would come so soon. Oh, there were movies, of course. Little tongue-in-cheek nods to what we smuggly, privately “knew”: that our age was different. The world had reached a new epoch of development. This time around we would stave off the pitfalls that have dampened economic “progress” in the past. The new, everexpanding network of producers and consumers would expand, without bound, providing jobs to all of the disenfranchised third world and bringing developed nations more wealth than had ever been accrued before. Faux-pastoral suburban sprawl dominated the landscape and quickly became the default environment for Americans. Credit was abundant, terms were good and everyone was happy.

As the media has noted extensively, this was not the case. The plan backfired for its shortsightedness. The long trend of false pastoralism in the suburbs has been met with a snapback effect, which threatens to further bury the Rust Belt and decimate the American Southwest. Detroit, for example, has been on a downward trend for 50 years. Large portions of city blocks have been turned over to the prairies they came from.

In the Southwest, sprawl and cheap credit have been the law of the land. Las Vegas and Phoenix, two prime examples of sprawl with no urban center, are also critically dependent on an allocation of resources. Lake Meade–the man-made reservoir that is the lifeblood of Greater Las Vegas– is at roughly 30 percent of its total capacity. Catching a glimpse of a single desert-bound, irrigated golf course is enough to know why. The western states draw their water predominantly from the Colorado River; the headwaters of which fall under the jurisdiction of the eponymous state. Water is becoming an issue with substantial political hay in the West, as the Coloradoans feel threatened by ever-expanding allocations of their water from those downstream. Some speculate that Arizona’s John McCain may have lost Colorado solely due to the perception that he would forcefully renegotiate the Water Compact if elected president.

Many of the long-standing initiatives of the environmental movement have become mainstream. Americans realize that we are on the downward slope of an epoch that will be physically impossible in the future. There seems to be great confusion and denial about the severity of our outlook. If I would allow myself to speak some meta-truth for a moment, it seems that for every job lost, there are about ten worthless Op-Ed pieces reporting through the looking glass. All the snarky, post-modern analysis of the status quo, however, won’t change the physical reality that we have been depleting our resources at an alarming rate. The people know the truth: that under the veneer of material progress there’s a tissue-thin barrier between humans and catastrophic change. That’s an objective truth that is larger than any credit default swap or federal policy. It seems now that Americans are suffering from a massive onset of ALH – Acute Lovecraftian Hysteria. Like a character in any number of that author’s horror stories, the revelation of a lurking, unknowable truth with universal application precipitates the onset of a catatonic withdrawal from reality. America has met its Lurking Horror. For some reason, out of all of the painful truths in the world, the fact that we can’t keep our ornate manmade oasis is coming crashing down whether we like it or not.

There is a bright side, of course, in the realization that the end of traditional home ownership will ultimately lead to a much more mobile, well-adept workforce. It’s impossible for one to quantify the human damage which could have been avoided if residents were forced to move away from Michigan, Indiana or any other number of Rust Belt states that have been in a small-scale successive recessions for decades. A measured dose of mobility within the country crossed with a destruction of ideal homeownership would likely be good for Americans in the long run. It would ensure, among other things, that people not be held down by 30-year mortgages in regions that are already being turned over to desert. The idea of a nation of perpetual renters may seem like a recipe for solidification of our everexpanding class gap, but if renting is perpetual serfdom, I honestly can’t see a difference from modern notions of “idyllic” American living arrangements. Americans today are far less mobile between states than in previous generations. Whether this is tied to an apparent resurgence of regional identification is unknown. Maybe Lovecraft hit us with the unknowable truth, “Wisconsin sucks” as well.

In our postmodern society, it will be particularly interesting to see how the media covers the idea of widespread homelessness and poverty. Whether the “economic crisis” has been exacerbated or introduced by the media is a topic for a billion other self-righteous college opinion columns. However, there should be serious concerns about whether the current generations can even process the idea of real scarcity. In addition, media coverage will likely reach a new equilibrium in substituting bread and circuses for substantive discourse. After all, there are only so many dodgy euphemisms and simplistic graphic work one can endure before the reality of resource destitution comes crashing down.

We live in a closed system. Las Vegas, Phoenix and the Sun Belt may go down in history as reminders of the delicate and finite nature of our closed system on Earth. It may be possible to provide a comfortable way of life for the billions that will inherit the planet, but lifestyles will appear very dissimilar to those of the Western Hemisphere today. The abundance of cheap land translated into cheap resources, cheap credit, and so on until the system became so taxed that it went beyond its natural buffering capacity. American suburbs and improbable cities will exist as an analogue to Percy Shelley’s fictional statue of Ramses II, proclaiming
unequivocal greatness while overlooking desolation. Whether current trends fall within the realm of long-dead romantic poetry is irrelevant. What matters is that we are sitting in the middle of a transitional period that would have sounded laughable just ten years ago. Whether Fox News hems and haws about it, or distracts its viewers, the truth is spelled out in every overwrought business park and chintzy, consumer packaging you’ve ever seen. Fortunately, humans have shown a marked talent for creating one-way systems of rapid resource change. We will certainly be tested to see if we can rein it in to something rational. Whether we approve or not, it’s going to happen; we may as well get in on the ground floor.