Re-inventing America Addendum: Michael Ruppert talks about Peak Oil and the collapse of industrial society

Michael Craig Ruppert is an interesting man. He transformed from a LAPD narcotics officer to whistle-blower to social activist, and, in the process, has suffered health problems and poverty. Ruppert famously revealed the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking during the Reagan administration, and confronted CIA director John Mark Deutch in 1996 at a televised meeting in Los Angeles. His involvement with the so-called 9-11 truth movement cost him some respectability in the progressive community. From 1996-2006 Ruppert published the blog/newsletter From The Wilderness, which can still be accessed, though it is no longer active. His current activities are chronicled on the From the Wilderness' Peak Oil Blog.

Ruppert is the author of Crossing The Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil, published in September 2004, and Confronting Collapse, published in 2009.

The documentary film, Collapse, released in 2009, chronciles Ruppert's history and his transformation into one of the founders (or at least the patron saint) of the Lifeboat movement, which seeks to develop a sane, sound, and sustainable network of communities prepared to endure what they say is the coming cataclysmic collapse of industrial society. Critic Roger Ebert gave the film 4 stars.

Michael Ruppert has paid a substantial price for his steadfast activism, and whether one agrees with him on every point or not, we turn a deaf ear at our own peril. I view Michael and the late Chalmers Johnson as prophets of a dire future that we seem to be hurtling towards.

Mike Ruppert has an unblemished track record for saying things that are incendiary, outrageous, shocking—and true. Our new president needs desperately to hear the uncomfortable message of this book about energy and the economy, and so do the rest of us.

—Richard Heinberg, PhD, author of The Party's Over, Peak Everything, The Oil Depletion Protocol and senior fellow, Post Carbon Institute

The following eight videos are of a talk Ruppert gave in Vermont in 2010.

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



Part 4



Part 5



Part 6



Part 7



Part 8