"September 11," the mainstream-media consensus seems to be, "changed everything." But did it? The millennial world was already at a crisis point between a sustainable rebirth and the final sale of its assets. The global economy was on track to use up our resources sooner rather than later. The tragic events of two months ago just sharpened our appreciation of how tenuous and potentially catastrophic is a voracious First World's dependence on foreign oil, networked international money markets, and the utterly uncompassionate survival instincts of multinational corporations. "