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The sky is falling!
That's the general idea expressed in a new documentary called Collapse.
Collapse is centred around Michael Ruppert, a guy who predicted the current economic crisis some years ago.
Whether you consider Ruppert prophetic or paranoid, hearing his sobering thoughts on the collapse of industrialized civilization is a thought-provoking experience. Thought-provoking and scary.
Chris Smith, who made this film, describes Collapse as a character study of the apocalyptic imagination. And then some.
Michael Ruppert talking to the camera is the long and short of Collapse, and though there's also plenty of archival footage involved, this movie is all about one man and his ideas.
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The flavour is pure Errol Morris.
So who is Michael Ruppert? Thirty years ago, Ruppert was a cop in Los Angeles; he got embroiled in trying to expose CIA-sanctioned drug smuggling in America and ended up discredited and forced out of the LAPD.
He became an investigative journalist, publishing a popular newsletter called From the Wilderness. He's an author, former guest lecturer at universities in North America and internationally recognized naysayer.
Ruppert says in Collapse that he was born into a U.S. intelligence type family, what with his mom's past as a cryptologist and his dad's work in the Air Force and consequent connections to the CIA.
According to Ruppert, the one theory that connects all the dots in his doomsday scenario is peak oil, the idea that we have already passed the high point of maximum oil extraction from the earth and are now on the downward slope.
That's what the Iraq invasion is all about, says Ruppert. That's why a melting polar ice cap is okay by some of the big powers -- no ice cap will make extracting oil from the arctic so much easier.
And so forth.
Over the course of about 85 minutes, Ruppert talks about solar and wind power, the inevitable collapse of just about everything that comes with oil shortages, mysterious deaths in the military, how currency works, why the whole global economy is just a pyramid scheme and what all those tent cities in so many places around the world really mean.
Yikes.
Our particular fave visual is Ruppert's only chart: A graph of human population.
It all goes very steadily until around 1900, when oil and its many uses changes the future and population numbers explode.
The beginning of the end, Ruppert explains, comes when nobody can afford to buy oil.
A global economic collapse follows.
Articulate, emotional and never without a cigarette in his hand, Ruppert is a riveting combination of intelligence and paranoia.
The filmmaker leaves in one or two outbursts that offer an 'out' for the squeamish -- you can write this guy off if you like, because he's obviously eccentric, if not barking mad.
On the other hand, most of what Ruppert talks about has already come to pass, so it's not quite so easy to dismiss him as part of the lunatic fringe.
His predictions about the state of the global economy came true. His comments about global fuel, money and infrastructure will keep you awake at night.
He emphasizes the need for working together, local food growing, balancing our lives, respecting the planet.
He says, "Love of money is the root of all evil."
You can't argue with that.