Thursday, October 26, 2006  Politics: Imperial Sunset  The
coming of peak oil is driven by geological factors, not
political ones, but the cascade of consequences that will follow
the peaking and decline of world petroleum production can’t be
understood outside the context of politics, on global, local,
and personal scales. As a religious leader who believes devoutly
in the separation of church and state, it’s been my practice to
keep politics out of these commentaries, in the probably vain
hope that other clergypersons will notice one of these days that
the barrier between religion and politics is there as much to
protect them from politicians as it is to keep them from abusing
their own positions. Still, it’s impossible to make sense of
peak oil outside of its political context, and so a few words on
the subject can’t be avoided here. This is especially true on
the global level, the subject of this week’s Archdruid Report,
where the preeminent political fact of the age of peak oil is
the impending decline –