OK, so I’m a typical guy who finds that when there’s a problem, I’m not interested in sharing, I’m interested in a solution. After some consideration, this is my solution to the present crisis in the USA:

1. Nationalise the banks, forthwith. They will no longer be “for profit” institutions. Since they don’t need fancy investment instrument designs, they don’t need hotdog CEOs etc. Therefore: they keep their jobs with a top salary of $300k p.a. They can’t make a living on that? Fine. Leave. In this model, they’re little more than managers anyway. We don’t need geniuses running banks, we just need people who are honest, ethical, and competent.

2. By nationalising the banks the USgov repudiates the bank debt. Life continues on, the Chinese still own huge amounts of American Paper, and they will get paid. Over Time. Like everyone else. Because this is money eating debt, it has no velocity in the economy and will not result in inflation. Allowing for low interest rates to boot.

3. And the money? Next step: disband the Federal Reserve. The USgov will be responsible for its money supply. My, just like an adult would do.

4. Nationalise USA Health Care. Face facts: This whole nonsense about “your health care decisions should be between you and your doctor” is total freaking bullcrap. You know who makes your health care decisions? The insurance company. I would absorb the health care industry directly (on the one end) and I would get really pretty damn stiff with Americans on the other end. But a lot of that will fall out naturally.

5. Gas will be USD$5 gallon. If gas is cheaper than that due to over production or demand destruction, then the remainder goes directly into alternative energy systems. No ifs and or buts. If it is over $5, then it rises to what ever price that is.

6. Car makers will do chap 11, and restructure under strict supervision. The focus will be: the development of hybrid trucking to last 10 years to be replaced by electric vehicles and electric trains. The largest private vehicle will be the equivalent of a minivan. Gas will be rationed, viz WW2. The auto industry will focus on making superlightweight electric vehicles. Electric Bicycles (viz Stokemonkey or Crystalite systems) will be subsidised and encouraged, as well as enclosed electric tadpole trikes.

7. The USA will abandon Empire. The Pentagon will cut its budget by 50% a year until it is the size of the Chinese rate of spending. American Troops will be brought home, decomissioned, and retrained for the powerdown.

#7 is actually #1, but the banks need attention.

8. Crash Infrastructure improvements geared around livable homes and communities worth caring about. LOTS of insulation. Lots of geothermal. Lots of all that joy. Not so much in the massive giant office box development.

The above should result in a vastly improved economy.

Jeavons is correct if prices are stable or supply meets demand, on demand. When that ceases to happen, conservation is the only path to economic growth: if demand falls below production consistently year over year, then conservation will result in “economic growth”. Such a curve is not sustainble due to granularities in energy requirements – i.e., you can only drive down the energy curve so far before people die of starvation. These inelasticities can be seen as “granularities”: things that don’t divide.

But we are FAR from there (yet) and once we get a new energy / economic regime into common practice, then substitution can come to the fore and the machines can run, albeit fewer of them, and on a tiny fraction of the energy they once used – it will never get to granularity.

What I described above can happen and work. I would expect countries with more centralised govts (China, Russia, etc.) would do the above by decree. Nations filled with citizens may also find the political will to co-operate and bring the system down to reality. (Denmark, EU, etc.) but nations composed of TAXPAYERS, are screwed, as they have replaced their social contract with an economic one: they buy gov’t services as consumers. And consumers want one thing: SOMETHING FOR NOTHING. Hence, countries with taxpayer mentalities will fail.

That’s my opinion and I’m stickin’ to it… for now…

I wrote a response to Shaviro’s excellent analysis of a conference he attended that featured Zizek and Badiou.

It follows, with a few modifications:

Henry Warwick says:
March 15, 2009 at 10:47 pm

I would like to point out that capitalism has always operated at the expense of the commons. It is why the biosphere is as utterly screwed as it is.

From my research and perspective, contemporary capitalism is no more or less direct in its rapacious greed to ruin the world – to chew rocks and spit nails, computers, automobiles, plastic corn forks, and those stupid little cups you get to hold ketchup. God I hate those things.

Early capitalism took the most immediate and local “Commons”, and the result were the Enclosure Acts forcing land into the hands of the rich and the peasants into cities to work at factories. The Enclosures effectively removed the Commons from existence.

In North America in 1492 Europeans found 24,709,000 km^2 of “Commons”. Instead of peasants feeding and watering their livestock on it, they found several civilisations of Natives who had been using the land for tens of thousands of years. Like the peasants of the UK, they were quickly forced off their land to make way for European farmers, soon followed by Industrial machinery and shopping malls and the “beautiful new Trail Of Tears golf course”. Sometimes I wonder how much of the Enclosure Acts and their techniques were results of the North American colonial experiment.

So, Enclosures and Invasions provided land based capitalism the raw materials. Then, the metals and fossil fuels provided by the theft of the land, in turn provided the energy and resources to create much more complex social and technical organisations like the interweb thingie.

Frankly, I do not see the pollution in, say, China, as Chinese pollution, or, the exploitation of workers in China or Malaysia as Chinese or Malaysian exploitation. I see it as Western and American. This is my reasoning:

I own a factory here in Canada. We make Canadian Widgets for Canadians. Wages in Canada are not cheap and business taxes are tough here, so I relocate the factory to some banana republic, like, Oooh, Alabama where unions are weak. And set up factory there. And so the money flows from Canadian pockets to me and I send off a pile of it to Alabama to keep the Widgets flowing. Then I talk with a Chinese gentleman who tells me I can make Canadian Widgets in China for 1/10 the price, and he’ll help me set it up. Next thing you know, a bunch of Alabamians are unemployed and I have a factory going in China, stinkin’ the place up with pollution making my Canadian Widgets.

So, is it Chinese pollution? If I hadn’t been able to move the factories out of Canada, the pollution never would have left Canada, so I would argue, no, it is Canadian pollution that has been exported to China. In this way, the entire planet is rendered a “Commons” that is then cut up and divided for the sake of capital and profit. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) doesn’t make it “more direct” than before. If you were a peasant in the Lake District in 1710, and some sheriff came by saying “Sorry lad – but you’ll have to give up the farm and move to Liverpool, and if you don’t it’s off to jail with you, and you haven’t but nowt to say about it, so go along quiet like.” that’s pretty direct, IMHO, and there isn’t much more direct than that.

The creation of Immaterial Production was only possible with the energetic and materials production that is presently available. This is prima facie correct. The real problem is the irreversible transition to lower energy states and degraded materials conditions that will avail in the not so distant future. Can such a civilisation exist?

Some argue, no: we are going to go blindly off a cliff like the Reindeer on St. Matthew Island, where when they were introduced in 1944, their numbers increased increased from 29 animals to 6,000 by 1963 but then underwent a die-off the following winter to less than 50 animals from a collapse of the food supply and within a few decades had completely died out.

Most of these theorists (Hardin, Duncan, Bartlett) figure it won’t be a one year collapse, but perhaps a one or two generation (20 – 40 year) collapse beginning with the collapse of oil exports sometime in the 2010s/2020s.

The destruction of the “Commons” for the vanity of the ruling class is also seen as a driving factory in the collapse of Easter Island. The Commons in that case was the forest. They cut down all the trees and within a few generations their population collapsed into constant warfare and cannibalism.

Others, such as myself, see a die off as well, but not over a period of 40 years – more likely 100 – 200 years, depending on how stupid people are.

From my perspective, the supposed qualitative differences between production from land capital and Immaterial Production from digital infrastructure are not of real significance, nor is one more immediate and direct than the other. You still have the freedom to starve.

Freedom, by Art Bears:

After this I saw multitudes
Forced from the land,
Cleared for the wool.
Dispossessed, refugees,
Who were told
To be free -
Free to starve,
Or to Slave;
free to choose
A or B, as we offered.
To labour or die!

I saw cities explode with
This freedom, and
Covered my eyes!

I would submit that present capitalism is faced with several big problems:

1. An imminent and permanent decline in total energy production. Work requires energy. No energy, no work. no work, no profit, no profit – bye bye capitalism… The top of the elite has been well aware of this problem for a number of years, but really starting with Laherrere and Campbell’s article in March 1998 Scientific American on the imminent loss of cheap petroleum resources. Note, Matthew Simmons, a leading figure in Energy depletion analysis, was a key energy advisor to the Cheney Administration.

2. The collapse of many basic materials. Many elements in groups 10, 11, and 12 of the periodic table are especially stressed. GeoDestinies by Walter Youngquist provides more than enough info on this. My understanding is he is going to republish it with updated info soon. It’s not for happy making.

3. The inversion of Jevon’s paradox, where rather than conservation only resulting in increased use of resources and economic growth, economic growth will only be predicated on the conservation of resources at a rate greater than the loss of energy from the system. I think I have a PhD waiting for me in there somewhere…unless….

4. Even though ICT exists at the highest energy and resource level, it will be maintained long beyond its sustainability inflection point as its effects in providing data and information and pacifying billions with entertainment is worth the loss of resources, as it helps inform and temper society as civilisation skitters into what is shaping up to be a trainwreck of a transition to a sustainable society. hmmmm… that sounds more interesting….

You wrote: But they seem to me to be overly opimistic when they suggest that this means that we are finally reaching the point where the “objective conditions” for communism finally exist, or that the property form has become a “fetter” on the technological means of production, a fetter that is ready to be burst asunder.

and I agree with you that their hopes are unfounded. The transition from feudalism to capitalism was only possible when the objective conditions existed such that the reproduction of labour in a (nascent) capitalist system was possible. HOW people worked and survived and how this work was financed (both in terms of dollars and resources) had to come prior to any actual “capitalist” formations. The Romans had factories to make bread. HUGE factories that ran off water wheels. We don’t talk about Rome as some ancient capitalist state. And even if a Roman said “hey – we have factories and we are creating a new class of people enslaved to our machines and we use huge sums of money to finance this factory – let’s call ourselves capitalists!!!” They’d say he was crazy and feed him to the lions.

Same with “communism”. you’re not going to get communism out of computer networks. Networks can be used for progressive ideas, gestures, and programs, (viz Rossiter and Organized Networks) but these machines are made by giant corporations and only exist from the insane destruction of our ecosystem. When we can figure out how to make computers out of sand and sea water (two things I don’t think we’re ever going to run out of) and assembled by people who do so voluntarily for the joy of building them – no – I don’t see this as any kind of a stage for communism. Quite the contrary….

Thursday, September 28, 2006
Klare on Gas Prices

I have read Prof. Michael Klare’s book, Resource Wars, and found it to be a brilliant examination of exactly why we see the kinds of wars and conflicts today. If you haven’t read it, you can order it most anywhere.

The following article was written by Klare – it was emailed to me on a list to which I subscribe, so I am uncertain of its original sourcing. This article describes why we are seeing the low gasoline prices and the landscape of the immediate future of petroleum production. I agree with most of what is in the article. I disagree with his final point, “it will never get truly better until we develop an entirely new energy system based on petroleum alternatives and renewable fuels.” I don’t know what he means by “better”, so I am uncertain as to whether I can agree with that statement. but otherwise this is a smart and incisive article. enjoy.

What Do Falling Oil Prices Tell Us about War with Iran, the Elections, and Peak-Oil Theory

By Michael T. Klare

What the hell is going on here? Just six weeks ago, gasoline prices at the pump were hovering at the $3 per gallon mark; today, they’re inching down toward $2 — and some analysts predict even lower numbers before the November elections. The sharp drop in gas prices has been good news for consumers, who now have more money in their pockets to spend on food and other necessities — and for President Bush, who has witnessed a sudden lift in his approval ratings.

Is this the result of some hidden conspiracy between the White House and Big Oil to help the Republican cause in the elections, as some are already suggesting? How does a possible war with Iran fit into the gas-price equation? And what do falling gasoline prices tell us about “peak-oil” theory, which predicts that we have reached our energy limits on the planet?

Since gasoline prices began their sharp decline in mid-August, many pundits have attempted to account for the drop, but none have offered a completely convincing explanation, lending some plausibility to claims that the Bush administration and its long-term allies in the oil industry are manipulating prices behind the scenes. In my view, however, the most significant factor in the downturn in prices has simply been a sharp easing of the “fear factor” — the worry that crude oil prices would rise to $100 or more a barrel due to spreading war in the Middle East, a Bush administration strike at Iranian nuclear facilities, and possible Katrina-scale hurricanes blowing through the Gulf of Mexico, severely damaging offshore oil rigs.

As the summer commenced and oil prices began a steep upward climb, many industry analysts were predicting a late summer or early fall clash between the United States and Iran (roughly coinciding with a predicted intense hurricane season). This led oil merchants and refiners to fill their storage facilities to capacity with $70-80 per barrel oil. They expected to have a considerable backlog to sell at a substantial profit if supplies from the Middle East were cut off and/or storms wracked the Gulf of Mexico.

Then came the war in Lebanon. At first, the fighting seemed to confirm such predictions, only increasing fears of a region-wide conflict, possibly involving Iran. The price of crude oil approached record heights. In the early days of the war, the Bush administration tacitly seconded Israeli actions in Lebanon, which, it was widely assumed, would lay the groundwork for a similar campaign against military targets in Iran. But Hezbollah’s success in holding off the Israeli military combined with horrific television images of civilian casualties forced leaders in the United States and Europe to intercede and bring the fighting to a halt.

We may never know exactly what led the White House to shift course on Lebanon, but high oil prices — and expectations of worse to come — were surely a factor in administration calculations. When it became clear that the Israelis were facing far stiffer resistance than expected, and that the Iranians were capable of fomenting all manner of mischief (including, potentially, total havoc in the global oil market), wiser heads in the corporate wing of the Republican Party undoubtedly concluded that any further escalation or regionalization of the war would immediately push crude prices over $100 per barrel. Prices at the gas pump would then have been driven into the $4-5 per gallon range, virtually ensuring a Republican defeat in the mid-term elections. This was still early in the summer, of course, well before peak hurricane season; mix just one Katrina-strength storm in the Gulf of Mexico into this already unfolding nightmare scenario and the fate of the Republicans would have been sealed.

In any case, President Bush did allow Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to work with the Europeans to stop the Lebanon fighting and has since refrained from any overt talk about a possible assault on Iran. Careful never explicitly to rule out the military option when it comes to Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities, since June he has nonetheless steadfastly insisted that diplomacy must be given a chance to work. Meanwhile, we have made it most of the way through this year’s hurricane season without a single catastrophic storm hitting the U.S.

For all these reasons, immediate fears about a clash with Iran, a possible spreading of war to other oil regions in the Middle East, and Gulf of Mexico hurricanes have dissipated, and the price of crude has plummeted. On top of this, there appears to be a perceptible slowing of the world economy — precipitated, in part, by the rising prices of raw materials — leading to a drop in oil demand. The result? Retailers have abundant supplies of gasoline on hand and the laws of supply and demand dictate a decline in prices.

Finding Energy in Difficult Places

How long will this combination of factors prevail?

Best guess: The slowdown in global economic growth will continue for a time, further lowering prices at the pump. This is likely to help retailers in time for the Christmas shopping season, projected to be marginally better this year than last precisely because of those lower gas prices.

Once the election season is past, however, President Bush will have less incentive to muzzle his rhetoric on Iran and we may experience a sharp increase in Ahmadinejad- bashing. If no progress has been made by year’s end on the diplomatic front, expect an acceleration of the preparations for war already underway in the Persian Gulf area (similar to the military buildup witnessed in late 2002 and early 2003 prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq). This will naturally lead to an intensification of fears and a reversal of the downward spiral of gas prices, though from a level that, by then, may be well below $2 per gallon.

Now that we’ve come this far, does the recent drop in gasoline prices and the seemingly sudden abundance of petroleum reveal a flaw in the argument for this as a peak-oil moment? Peak-oil theory, which had been getting ever more attention until the price at the pump began to fall, contends that the amount of oil in the world is finite; that once we’ve used up about half of the original global supply, production will attain a maximum or “peak” level, after which daily output will fall, no matter how much more is spent on exploration and enhanced extraction technology.

Most industry analysts now agree that global oil output will eventually reach a peak level, but there is considerable debate as to exactly when that moment will arise. Recently, a growing number of specialists — many joined under the banner of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil — are claiming that we have already consumed approximately half the world’s original inheritance of 2 trillion barrels of conventional (i.e., liquid) petroleum, and so are at, or very near, the peak-oil moment and can expect an imminent contraction in supplies.

In the fall of 2005, as if in confirmation of this assessment, the CEO of Chevron, David O’Reilly, blanketed U.S. newspapers and magazines with an advertisement stating, “One thing is clear: the era of easy oil is over… Demand is soaring like never before… At the same time, many of the world’s oil and gas fields are maturing. And new energy discoveries are mainly occurring in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically. When growing demand meets tighter supplies, the result is more competition for the same resources.”

But this is not, of course, what we are now seeing. Petroleum supplies are more abundant than they were six months ago. There have even been some promising discoveries of new oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico, while — modestly adding to global stockpiles — several foreign fields and pipelines have come on line in the last few months, including the $4 billion Baku-Tbilisi- Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline from the Caspian Sea to Turkey’s Mediterranean coast, which will bring new supplies to world markets. Does this indicate that peak-oil theory is headed for the dustbin of history or, at least, that the peak moment is still safely in our future?

As it happens, nothing in the current situation should lead us to conclude that peak-oil theory is wrong. Far from it. As suggested by Chevron’s O’Reilly, remaining energy supplies on the planet are mainly to be found “in places where resources are difficult to extract, physically, economically, and even politically.” This is exactly what we are seeing today.

For example, the much-heralded new discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, Chevron’s Jack No. 2 Well, lies beneath five miles of water and rock some 175 miles south of New Orleans in an area where, in recent years, hurricanes Ivan, Katrina, and Rita have attained their maximum strength and inflicted their greatest damage on offshore oil facilities. It is naive to assume that, however promising Jack No. 2 may seem in oil-industry publicity releases, it will not be exposed to Category 5 hurricanes in the years ahead, especially as global warming heats the Gulf and generates ever more potent storms. Obviously, Chevron would not be investing billions of dollars in costly technology to develop such a precarious energy resource if there were better opportunities on land or closer to shore — but so many of those easy-to-get- at places have now been exhausted, leaving the company little choice in the matter.

Or take the equally ballyhooed BTC pipeline, which shipped its first oil in July, with top U.S. officials in attendance. This conduit stretches 1,040 miles from Baku in Azerbaijan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan, passing no less than six active or potential war zones along the way: the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan; Chechnya and Dagestan in Russia; the Muslim separatist enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia; and the Kurdish regions of Turkey. Is this where anyone in their right mind would build a pipeline? Not unless you were desperate for oil, and safer locations had already been used up.

In fact, virtually all of the other new fields being developed or considered by U.S. and foreign energy firms — ANWR in Alaska, the jungles of Colombia, northern Siberia, Uganda, Chad, Sakhalin Island in Russia’s Far East — are located in areas that are hard to reach, environmentally sensitive, or just plain dangerous. Most of these fields will be developed, and they will yield additional supplies of oil, but the fact that we are being forced to rely on them suggests that the peak-oil moment has indeed arrived and that the general direction of the price of oil, despite period drops, will tend to be upwards as the cost of production in these out-of-the-way and dangerous places continues to climb.

Living on the Peak-Oil Plateau

Some peak-oil theorists have, however, done us all a disservice by suggesting, for rhetorical purposes, that the peak-oil moment is… well, a sharp peak. They paint a picture of a simple, steep, upward production slope leading to a pinnacle, followed by a similarly neat and steep decline. Perhaps looking back from 500 years hence, this moment will have that appearance on global oil production charts. But for those of us living now, the “peak” is more likely to feel like a plateau — lasting for perhaps a decade or more — in which global oil production will experience occasional ups and downs without rising substantially (as predicted by those who dismiss peak-oil theory), nor falling precipitously (as predicted by its most ardent proponents).

During this interim period, particular events — a hurricane, an outbreak of conflict in an oil region — will temporarily tighten supplies, raising gasoline prices, while the opening of a new field or pipeline, or simply (as now) the alleviation of immediate fears and a temporary boost in supplies will lower prices. Eventually, of course, we will reach the plateau’s end and the decline predicted by the theory will commence in earnest.

In the meantime, for better or worse, we live on that plateau today. If this year’s hurricane season ends with no major storms, and we get through the next few months without a major blowup in the Middle East, we are likely to start 2007 with lower gasoline prices than we’ve seen in a while. This is not, however, evidence of a major trend. Because global oil supplies are never likely to be truly abundant again, it would only take one major storm or one major crisis in the Middle East to push crude prices back up near or over $80 a barrel. This is the world we now inhabit, and it will never get truly better until we develop an entirely new energy system based on petroleum alternatives and renewable fuels.

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts and the author of “Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America’s Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum”, and “Resource Wars, The New Landscape of Global Conflict”.

Copyright 2006 Michael T. Klare

Thursday, July 13, 2006
The Middle East Muddle

Obviously the most valuable thing in the Middle East is the Oil, and I think it is fair to say that we are now in the Age of Resource Wars (per Prof. Klare). So: the second largest exporter of oil is Iran, Saudi Arabia is #1. Most Saudi Oil goes through the narrow Straights of Hormuz, which is nearly surrounded by Iran. Iran’s Supreme Poobah Khamenei has said that if we fuck with Iran, they’ll close down the straights of Hormuz. which would effectively cut off about 60% of the world’s oil, striaght up.

That’s why the USA et al are so freaked – it’s like the Pusher Man saying “no dope for YOU mofo!” Keep an eye on the G8 meeting this weekend. Dollars for donuts, the diuscussion will NOT be:

America’s insane trade deficit
China’s insane trade surplus
china’s wildly undervalued currency
America’s insane budget deficit
The impending global oil peak

It will be Iran.

The neocons are desperate to keep the foot to the floor on American overconsumption of oil, and that foot will increasingly rest on the neck of Iran.

Note: The USA basically intimated “bad things” would happen on July 12 if Iran didn’t come to the table with something the USA considers worthwhile.

What happened on July 12?

Israel invaded Lebanon.

What does that do? It takes ALL THE HEAT AND LIGHT off of Iran. Iran is STILL the big target – if people keep their hats on and chill, Israel will eventually leave Lebanon and things there will be a mess, but a suitable distraction from the real target: Iran.

How? The Hezbollah are trained and supported by the Iranian Military, and (IIRC) specifically a weird bunch of Green Beret Types called Al Qud. So, what we have in Lebanon is a Proxy War between the USA and Iran:

USA -> Israel -> (LEBANON) <- Hezbollah <- Iran

Which JUST HAPPENED to erupt the very DAY when the USA was about to do something against Iran. The USA will continue to do that, but the war in Lebanon has sucked all the air out of the room, and now the G8 can sit and plan out “what is to be done with Iran” without the spotlight being “what is the G8 going to do with Iran”.

This is NOT to say that the invasion of Lebanon was timed, conspiracy theory is boring – as the evidence indicates that everyone’s shooting in the dark, however: it came at a VERY convenient time, and on a *very convenient day*.

So, my guess is this:

Israel’s invasion Lebanon is one of those fortuitous terrible events and will provide suitable cover for the major powers to convene and deal with notions of Iran while the rest of the planet freaks out over Lebanon. The Bush Junta will push for military force against Iran, or something that will lead to force. After their total fuck up in Iraq, they’re scraping the barrel on international support, but Iran has everyone (except Russia) by the short and curlies with one crucial ingredient: Oil.

Thus, it makes it easier to get the rest of the G8 (sans Russia) exercised over Iran. China’s not in the G8, and is not big on action against Iran, because a big chunk of Iranian oil goes to China, and while action against Iran would screw everyone up, it would mostly screw China.

I would figure the G8 would fracture along those lines. Russia has europe by the short hairs (natural gas) so the europeans can’t pull too far from orbit, but there is a lot of room for movement on side issues that appease the 900lb gorilla (USA), like IRAN.

Hence, Europe will tend to fall against Iran, Russia doesn’t care (oil at $100 a barrel works for them!) so China would be the most agrieved. Hence: Bush making nice nice with Putin lately so grinding the Chinese won’t seem so bad.

These aren’t the end times, by a long stretch, but for the first time in 80 years, we’re really looking down the throat of True Disaster. Which wouldn’t be so bad if True Disaster would bother brushing a little more often.

Friday, April 21, 2006
Karsner’s Speech

Assistant Secretary of Energy A. Karsner gave a speech that, in my humble estimation, shows just how lost the Bush Administration is – they’re talking out both sides of their mouths and have no credibility. This fellow was sent to talk to Powergen about renewable energy, something (with the exception of wind power) the Bush Admin has repeated cut funding for.

Arghh.

So, I respond to his speech point by point.

Keynote Address by Hon. Alexander Karsner, Asst. Secretary of Energy to Powergen Renewables

[snip quip and warm fuzzies]

It’s wonderful to be here with you in Las Vegas. My wife and I love Las Vegas, which is actually somewhat strange, because neither of us actually gamble, nor do we drink much. Still, it is unique in so many ways and uniquely American by birthright. Carved out of the waterless desert, it has evolved to become a neon, energy-intensive oasis tailored to leisure and whimsy and on-call, 24-7.

And it is one of the single least sustainable cities in the world. Las Vegas is a blight upon the planet.

(snip description of Death Valley and Las Vegas)

We are fortunate to have a very diverse group of friends who enjoy both environs. Yet, from time to time, we hear folks speak disdainfully of those who prefer the great outdoors to the urban nightlife or vice versa. Our view is that we cherish the very coexistence and diversity that this spectacular city and region represent–where some of the most creative works of man are married together with some of the grandest work of creation, because it is emblematic of Enjoying Life, thriving upon Liberty, and the opportunity to Pursue Happiness as one sees fit.

The problem is, Mr Karsner, the friends you know who enjoy the great outdoors and a night under the Milky Way aren’t squandering the resources of the greater southwest region. I do not see replicas of New York and Paris as spectacular or as one of the most creative works of man except in the most depraved way imaginable such a vision of
Las Vegas As Public Art makes the charlatanism of Jeff Koons look like the genius of Leonardo Da Vinci.

I have only held this post for a couple of weeks, and so mercifully, I am happy to report that I have yet to become a bureaucrat!

You can’t become what you already are.

Many of you know me and you know my background and my ambitions; it is similar to your own. My purpose today is to give voice to our mutual aspirations, to share some early perspective on the task ahead, and to explore how we might together make an impact on preserving for future generations those things we hold dearest; those things that are our birthright as Americans: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Sorry – that’s not in the constitution. The Constitution lists Life, Liberty, and Property. I learned that in 8th grade Civics. The pursuit of happiness is in the Declaration of Independence, which is not a legally binding document.

Perhaps we take these things for granted, perhaps we do not reflect on them enough.

I think about them daily, and I find them under assault NOT from without, but from within by the Bush Administration itself.

But as I parse the magnitude of our challenge, I am motivated by these principles and the bigger picture.

We are a nation at war.

The war on terror is, by definition, bogus. It’s like a war on Daylight Strategic Bombing. Terror is a method of practicing
aggression. You can’t win a war on terror any more than you can win a war on kindergartners “hitting” each other, and, that said, the war on terror is one the Bush Administration has pretty much given up on prosecuting some time ago, Bush himself has said that he doesn’t put that much energy into trying to find and bring to justice Osama Bin Laden. So, your entire angle on “security” rings false and has no credibility.

We ARE at war, but it is in Iraq, and it was a war of choice – the Bush Administration, of which you are a part, LIED to everyone about the reasons for going to war, and then had the unmitigated temerity to bungle the whole job. Therefore, no quarter is granted to the Bush Administration for this. And for you, as a representative of this administration, to bleat “We’re at War”, is inadmissable, and doesn’t really carry any water any more. At all.

Our earth is warming.

Correct, for once. And that is a fact the Bush Administration has resisted coming around to facing FOR YEARS, wasting precious time. The Bush Administration continues to try to muzzle voices in the government who are trying to warn the public about this looming crisis. And it is also a fact that to end the human contribution to global warming, global agreements and co-ordination will be required, and it is precisely JUST SUCH agreements the Bush Junta has cheerfully ignored, defied, and circumvented since its installation by the Supreme Court in 2001. Again, the President and his circle of lackies, incompetents, cronies, and neocon fascists, have Zero Credibility in this regard, and you, as a representative of said Administration will have to do a LOT more than simply state the obvious to even hope to have a prayer of a chance of acquiring any credibility on the subject.

Carbon emissions and greenhouse gases are impacting air quality and the environment.

And AGAIN, the Bush Administration has continually resisted any legislation to up the mileage requirements on vehicles or reduce pollution at source. Again, you and the Administration you work for, have Zero Credibility.

America is addicted to oil.

And it is an addiction that the Bush Administration has continually exacerbated with idiotic regulations like subsidies for gas guzzling Hummers, and a continued antipathy toward extending and intensifying the CAFE standards.

And so, ironically, even as we find ourselves at the dawn of a new millennium, with numerous indicators of extraordinary economic growth,

Which is part of the problem, not the solution.

record low unemployment,

but with reduced income and wages for those Americans that are not part of the uppermost income brackets.

record home ownership,

combined with record debt and record low savings.

and record rates of productivity,

in a nation with no national health care, and with the least amount of vacation time in the industrialized world.

there remains a seething sense of anxiety in the land.

Geeee, I wonder WHY?

Personally, the unusually heightened sense of concern I felt when I watched those towers fall on that balmy day nearly five years ago has never fully gone away, and I see no sense in suppressing it now.

WTF does 9/11 have to do with any of this?

We are at war.

No, “We” are not. The Bush Administration invaded a comparatively defenceless dictatorship. This was a “war” of choice. The Bush Administration gave up hunting down Osama Bin Laden years ago, and he was the one who attacked us. There should have been a “war” against Al Qaeda, similar to the “war” against the Barbary Coast pirates. Instead, Bush et al invaded Afghanistan but failed to get bin Laden and then committed the USA to a bungled war in Iraq.

Fortunate though we are to live in a nation that can protect and insulate itself from the harshest realities of the battle,
it is not possible for me to grow up in a military family and not be constantly cognizant of our countrymen in harm’s way.

The Moroccan and Pakistani and Muslim people I have known from all parts of the world are amongst the kindest and most hospitable people on earth. They too dream of peace and happiness for their families. But they live daily in apprehension and fear from well-funded, militant, and ignorant fundamentalism that dwells like a cancer in their midst.

WHAT? The Pakistani people labour under a fake republic that is run by a network of strongmen propped up by the government and security apparatus of the United States of America. Pakistan is the nation most responsible for the distribution of nuclear technology to countries least interested in using it in a responsible manner. In fact, A. Khan, the man RESPONSIBLE for selling nuclear technology was PARDONED by the very strongmen that the Bush Administration is backing.

Morroco? Morocco is a de jure constitutional monarchy, with a popularly-elected parliament. The King of Morocco, with vast executive powers, can dissolve government and deploy the military at will, among other amusing responsibilities. Opposition political parties are legal and several have arisen in recent years, but are largely ineffective against the rule of an autocratic KING. Illiteracy sits at 50% and among women it is closer to 90%. I hardly see Morocco as some paragon of democratic virtue or enlightened culture.

No one lives with these realities daily nor understands them more intimately than the President of the United States.

I sincerely doubt George Bush could find Morocco on a MAP with both hands, a flashlight, and a page full of hints and brightly coloured circles in North Africa, much less understand the realities of life as an illiterate testosterone poisoned meatheaded thug. On second thought, maybe he could…

It is of course a great personal honor for me and my family that he chose to select a renewable energy developer for this post, but have no doubt – it is a tribute to this great community of risk-takers, doers and dreamers, of which I am proud to be a member.

DUDE: face facts – you are window-dressing. You’re a distraction – you’re the waving hand of the prestidigitator keeping the air occupied while the other hand of the administration continues its insane and criminal behaviour of imperialism and kleptocracy.

Both the President and Secretary Bodman recognize that we cannot afford to divorce science from commerce; innovation from entrepreneurship.

But he has proven time and time again that he IS willing to divorce science from public policy, education, and common sense if it wins him political points with the delusional morons that constitute his base as “the religious right”.

Neither carefully crafted mandates, regulatory inducements, nor research alone can deliver to us the goals for which the Department of Energy was originally established.

But carefully crafted mandates, regulatory inducements, AND research CAN deliver the following:

1. An automobile fleet that gets, AT A MINIMUM, 60 miles per gallon, with existing technology.
2. Vast subsidies for the adoption of solar panels on private homes and wind turbines on farms.
3. Decentralization of energy production (see #2)
4. Develop an American designed/based/manufactured sustainable energy industry
5. Deincentivise reproduction – i.e., make it expensive to have children
6. Develop IFR nuclear reactors to rid the planet of nuclear power and nuclear fuel while generating electricity.
7. Make it illegal to drive a gas guzzling tank as a private passenger vehicle – there is no excuse for the Hummer.
8. Subsidise the hyperinsulation of homes.
9. Incentivise local organic agriculture and permaculture.

The list of what carefully crafted mandates, regulatory inducements, and research can deliver is long and intense. This kind of “Government Can’t Work” Attitude is typical of the Bush Administration who have done their very best to prove their point that government can’t work, by making sure it doesn’t. The depressing madness and disaster that surrounded the response to Hurricane Katrina and the ongoing fiasco in Iraq are just two of the more obvious proofs of my point.

As the legacy of great American energy pioneers like Franklin and Edison and Einstein would dictate, “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.” Combining scientific inquiry with commercial creativity remains the most powerful force for transformational change available to address the substantial needs with which we are confronted.

Ummmm, Einstein did all his important work in Germany. Otherwise, the point is a Cliché, followed by a recognition of the obvious.

The brilliant people with whom I am privileged to work beside at the Department of Energy know these urgent needs inspire my rallying cry to unite folks inside Washington and around the country; inside America, and around the world.

More flag waving balderdash.

We must take our clean energy technologies and replicate, proliferate, and accelerate. There is no time to waste and no time for small thinking. We know where these train tracks are heading and we know the destination we must reach. The only question is the rate of speed we are moving and what will be the ultimate cost of the ticket?

No, the question is MONEY. Who’s getting it, and how much.

According to here:

http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=23074

The FY06 budget request for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE) programs envisions reductions totaling nearly $50 million – an overall cut of roughly 4 percent. This includes a 6 percent cut in Distributed Energy programs ($60,416 to $56,629); an 8 percent cut in the Geothermal Energy program ($25,270 to $23,299); an 18 percent cut in the Biomass/Biofuels program ($88,099 to $72,164); and a 90 percent cut in the Hydropower program ($4,862 to $500).

In fact, the Bush budget proposes to phase out DOE’s hydropower program altogether and all support for the Advanced Hydropower Turbine, a joint program between DOE and the hydropower industry exploring fish-friendlier turbines, just at the time when full scale testing is about to begin at multiple locales.

Adding insult to injury for at least some of these programs, the cuts come on top of earlier reductions. The geothermal program, for example, had been funded at $28.4 million in FY03 and steadily reduced since then.

Less severely impacted is DOE’s solar R&D budget which faces a reduction of only 1.3 percent, from $85.07 million in FY 05 to $83.95 million in FY 06. The solar industry has sought to put a positive spin on its reduction calling the budget request “essentially status quo funding” while applauding a “promising new initiative to advance the development of crystalline silicon solar power.”

Overall, among DOE’s core renewable energy programs, only wind energy is proposed for an increase – 3.4 million (from $40.8 million to $44.2 million), a relatively large expansion of nearly 9 percent.

Which only goes to prove that in point of fact, the only renewable sector that saw improved funding was Wind, and this only serves to further demonstrate just how antipathic and hostile the Bush Junta is to Renewable Energy.

The way I see it, the people in this Hall are the locomotives of change and the role of government is to clear the way, get the rocks off the rails, and ensure maximum velocity. We have an obligation to steward both hardware AND policy.

And you’re NOT going to even be able to do THAT if you

A: continue to cut funding to renewable energy
B: spend hundreds of billions of dollars a year on a pointless war in Iraq
C: spend even more hundreds of billions of dollars propping up a global empire of military bases, CIA gulags, and client thug governments.
D: consistently and continuously reduce the tax burden of the wealthy.

Policy with predictability, transparency, longevity; policy conducive to capital formation that continuously cultivates market expansion of clean, green, domestic sources of power generation and fuels for transportation. All the while we must be relentless in attacking inefficiency and waste for its insidious and undermining impact on our national aspirations.

Inefficiency and WASTE? Coming from an administration that VOLUTARILY invaded Iraq and is now pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars on a nonsensical imperialist occupation? The Bush Administration is a complete disaster, and it has no credibility whatsoever. For the administration (and the Republican Party it runs) to prattle on about ineffiency and waste, all while building multimillion dollar bridges to nowhere and wasting billions of dollars a day on a foolish and horrible war in Iraq is the epitome of duplicitous double-dealing and hypocrisy.

We must do these things and more, at the fastest possible rate of market penetration, and government must be both realistic and relevant in it role. In short, we owe it to you, the leaders in the private markets, to update and redefine ourselves. We cannot perpetuate the delusion that government is leading the markets; nor should we distract ourselves with the unrealistic and ineffective ambitions of a command and control economy.

Government MUST lead the markets, because the markets are not structured to do the job. And while I am not a fan of Command/Control economy, during WW2 it DID propel the USA and the Soviet Unions into being the most powerful military nations ever seen. The USA abandoned direct command and control after WW2, and replaced it with a rapacious imperialist military/industrial complex, which was clearly such a vast improvement…

(snip rhetorical question)

It is our objective at the Department of Energy that we should increasingly become more agile, more attuned, more iterative and catalytic. In doing so, we can exert leadership that clearly seeks achievable goals, is unafraid to enter the fray, and continuously “moves the scrum” down the field.

Fine, then legalise and subsidise abortion everywhere for everyone. Subsidise birth control. Tax families with more than 2 children. Reduce or even ration consumption of energy and resources. Energy is’t “just Energy”. Energy consumption is part of the broader problem of overpopulation.

That is why I am proud to embrace Phase II, not merely as a milestone, but as a battle plan by which we can achieve great things together.

Again, not as long as the Bush Junta remains in power.

Maximizing energy efficiency and renewable energy IS the domestic epicenter in the War on Terror and it is imperative that we maximize the partnerships between the public and private sectors in new and creative ways with a sense of seriousness, national purpose and the urgency the situation merits.

Which means MONEY. Spending MONEY on the RIGHT STUFF. Spending money on an idiotic war in the middle east is spending money on the WRONG STUFF. Spending money on subsidizing rooftop solar panels and farm fields of wind turbines is spending money on the RIGHT STUFF.

The president and his cronies would rather line their pockets, and the pockets of their shareholders, by pissing away billions of borrowed dollars in Iraq. Your entire budget is a tiny fraction of what this war costs. In this world, importance is measured by dollars. Where the money goes is what is important. Your programs are not important to the Bush Administration. They do not feel you urgency, and never will.

(snip something not directed to me)

That is why last week, when I was in Detroit with the Secretary, he told the auto industry in no uncertain terms, “More needs to be done.” We need to have more flex fuel vehicles on the market of ALL vehicle types and classes and we need to have them available from all manufacturers who serve the US market. “We must continue to encourage the exponential expansion in the supply of ethanol available.”

Ethanol? WTF? How about 60 mpg diesel cars? How about an outright ban on private passenger vehicles over 4000lbs? Electric commuter vehicles? Expansion of telecommuting? Increased funding for public transport? Ethanol isn’t going to save us, or the car industry. Eliminating the need to drive is more important than what you drive, and what you drive is more important (for now) than what fuel it uses.

When the President of the United States personally visits a solar manufacturing facility to announce millions of dollars in increased funding aimed at changing “the way we power homes and lead our lives” you can be assured he understands you.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! See the quote above which shows that he actually has REDUCED funding for critical research, and has only increased funding for wind power. If it wasn’t for the Danes and the Germans shaming him, he probably would have cut that too… And the energy that is produced in our petroleum society is being wasted on a pointless cycle of consumption – it’s Cheney’s “non-negotiable” American Lifestyle ITSELF that’s destroying the planet. And no amount of handwaving is going to change that.

When the President personally takes interest in the development cycle of battery storage for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, he clearly seeks to inspire a bigger picture.

Then why does he CUT THE FUNDING for alternative energy research? HMMMM?

When President Bush declares that wind power could provide up to 20% of our national generation capacity, you can be certain his vision is both exciting and real.

We need it to do better than 20%. WAY better than 20%.

(snip blather and flag waving nonsense)

All this speech demonstrated is the delusional state of mind that inhabits the powers that be. NOTHING will get done in the USA until the Bush Junta is removed from office. Period.

We’re in a scary holding pattern. Much of the rest of the world is far ahead of us on all of these points – from localized farming to high technology wind power. The Bush Administration continues to fund military adventures over everything else, and if continued unabated, will only serve to bankrupt the US Treasury and scuttle the hopes and dreams of a nation.

Friday, March 17, 2006
$9 trillion in debt

The USA.gov just voted itself te ability to go to $9 trillion dollars in debt.

The factoid as to how much this debt is per capita is pretty awful, but I have also read that $9 trillion dollars would build 28 Eiffel Towers made of solid gold. That could be cool.

For what it’s worth I figured something out that’s kind of interesting – how long it will take to pay back the debt, assuming the USA.gov is somehow suddenly able to turn $1 million a day “profit”. Now, the simple fact is that the Gov’t has RARELY been able to “turn a profit”, ever, but I won’t go there… So, let’s just pretend the USA.gov can actually pull a million dollars a day and use it to pay the debt.

First we take 9 trillion and we divide it by the million dollars.

that gives us 9 million days to pay it.

Then we divide the 9 million days by 365.25 (roughly the number of days in a year) and we get how many years it will take to pay back $9 trillion dollars in debt at the rate of $1 million dollars a day:

24,640.657 years.

Yes, 24,640.657 years.

Bascially, right around the next glaciation.

It ain’t gettin paid back. Ever. I think we need to get that point out loud and clear:

Hello! China? Japan? South Korea? Great Britain? Hello? Guess what you guys: we’re going to stiff you. You’re not going to see a DIME of that money. Not now, not ever.

Sorry.

Monday, February 13, 2006
Another conversation
Greetings -

After my last post, I got REALLY sick. Last week SUCKED. I was in bed for three days straight. Now, I’m down to a miserable cough, but that’s a dramatic improvement.

A few years ago, I was posting on the Forums at newspeakdictionary.com under the name “Winston Smith”. I quickly tired of the dominant ideology of the conversation which was often of a rightwing Libertarian bent, and of a pigheaded variety at that.

Every six months or so, I’d go back and check it out, and find nothing improved. Last week, I went and found someone had re-kindled the Peak Oil conversation there – something I had tried to do at least 6 months ago.

A recent exchange went down, where I thought some basic points were covered in a very polite and reasonable way, and I am re-posting that post here. I hope you find it useful. Feel free to comment.

Hi Gold Rust.

I’ll do my best to ’splain answers to your points and questions.

You asked:

I’m not an expert in this or anything, so tell me if I’m wrong – but whats wrong with using solar or geothermal energy to do all that stuff? And who says the ER/EI has to be positive?

OK – sure – this one’s easy.

Let’s say you get (x) units of energy from burning hydrogen (H). But: you need energy to MAKE the H, and that value (due to the laws of physics regarding hydrogen) is *always* greater than (x) units. So, if you are cracking petroleum to get the H (Petroleum is MUCH easier to crack than water, and provides a lot more H per kilo), you’re better off just burning the petroleum. If you’re cracking water, you need electricity. And the electricity you’re using to crack the water comes from somewhere. If it is coming from petroleum, again: you’re better off burning petroleum than using it to make H. However: if you’re using solar power to crack the water to make the H, then you’re technically getting most of the electricity for “Free”. At that point, the ER/EI ratio gets much more favourable, and H makes sense as a kind of chemical battery. The problem is, Solar / Geothermal / Wind / etc. only accounts for a microscopic portion of the planet’s energy production, and this doesn’t account for another monstrous problem: H is extremely low density. To get it to a useful density for transport, it has to be reduced to liquid. The problem with that is it takes enormous amounts of power to liquify H, so we’re back to the ER/EI problem. Also, H is reactive and tends to make containers very brittle, and due to is tiny molecular weight is prone to leak from ANY container. To fight these problems requires more energy, and you’re back to an ugly ugly ER/EI.

ER/EI *must* be positive. Otherwise it’s not a fuel. Think of it like food. If you have food that costs more energy to eat than you get from eating it, you’ll starve. It’s basic physics.

The way I see it happening is, as petro runs low, it will rise in price, forcing people to look into alternative methods, that may not be as effecient at first but will be better than what they are using. It probably won’t be hydrogen, or maybe it won’t be any of the ones you mentioned as alternatives – maybe it will be a combination of several of them.

This explains the failure of “free market” solutions fairly well, from:

KURO5HIN

“We would like to believe that progress into new energy and more efficient use thereof is slow merely because not enough money is being put into it. As the price of oil rises, therefore, more money will go into such research, more progress will be made, and new technology will then be implemented and deployed to preserve our way of life. A common slogan is “the stone age didn’t end for lack of stones, and the oil age won’t end for lack of oil.” This faith is utterly misplaced, and comes from a misunderstanding of the free market.

While facile solutions to our energy predicament may emerge, taking faith in that scenario is foolish. It implies that you believe in the All Too Convenient Anthropic Principle – the principle that the laws of nature are tuned not only to cause the emergence of life on our planet and its evolution to include the appearance of our species, but also that the laws of nature are conducive and will forever be conducive to our species enjoying a Western consumerist lifestyle from now to eternity. Don’t count on it.

Gold Rust then says:

I agree that ethanol could not possibly be a single replacement for petro, but I have no hard time envisioning it in hybrid cars that run on it and solar, etc.

The problem is the production of ethanol requires industrial farming techniques that depend on pertoleum. Also, there is the ethical question re: using food to “bring Muffy to Soccer practice…” Especially as food costs skyrocket (I discuss that below).

I think your problem is that you don’t look at the whole picture – the world isnt going to just wake up one day and say “Oh my gosh, theres no more fossil fuels!” – it will be gradual.

I agree – which is why I am not a “Fast Crash Nihilist” like many peak oil researchers.

As petro becomes less common in the ground, prices will rise – ever heard of supply and demand?

I dismantled that argument with the kuro5hin quote.

Why can’t we just where sweaters in the winter? Thats what they do in Russia, and I still do it today – a sweater can keep you just as warm as a heater, at a fraction of the cost.

I do to. BUT: drive out to some suburb in say, Indiana, and go up to some McMansion – you know – one of those new big ugly houses with the SUVs in the parking lot, and all the lights on – and tell these people (often dupes of the Republican Party) that they

a: have to start wearing sweaters around the house
b: sell their SUV and buy a tiny toyota hybrid, or better yet, a used Toyota Echo, and ride their bicycles as much as they can – get a trailer for the bike and use it to buy things at the market
c: put timers on their lights
d: stop using the gas fireplace, and plant some trees in back for fuel in 15 years, and install a wood burning firebox/stove NOW.
e: stop using a gas range for cooking
f: forget the clothes dryer – set up clothes lines in the back and drying racks in the garage
g: buy a high efficiency front loading washer
h: learn to do the dishes by HAND
i: Abandon the TV set and read books to each other for entertainment, and learn a bunch of card and dice games
j: Install a solar PV panel set up for daytime electricity to power their new hyper efficient refrigerator
k: get used to Much Higher Indoor Temperatures in the summer, because their central AC is done for.
l: Open cans by hand
m: learn to chop food with a knife not a processor
n: learn to COOK food, from raw materials that do not require freezing or refrigeration
o: dedicate a corner of the basement as a root cellar for the winter storage of potatoes, parnsips, turnips, and rudabagas.
p: install a solar hot water heater on their roof
q: start a food garden.

Now, those are just SOME of the things people are going to have to get used to post peak oil. Sweaters in winter are just a tip of the iceberg. The suburbs (at least those that are not on a train line) are completely screwed. The loss of petroleum is going to effect every aspect of modern living, no exceptions, and no sympathy given. It’s going to be, as the book title suggests: A Long Emergency.

Cooking requires relatively little energy it could be supplied to a whole neighborhood by a solar panel or a wind turbine down the street. This obviously wont be the most likely solution, but I don’t think a lot of trouble will be in this area.

Sure. Tell that to the restaurant industry. The shift in cooking and food production will prove to be the most difficult, as it directly impacts everyone – the rich and poor alike will face the same problem. The restaurant industry will shrivel up, but not disappear. See it return to more of a “cafe” system, with electrically heated water for beverages, and wood powered onsite baking. Haybox and sun box cooking will provide more efficient hot dinners but many hours of cooking will reduce capacity and increase expense.

Winston Smith said:

Materials: All our high tech materials are dependent on the long molecular chains so easily produced from Petroleum. Our mining machines are dependent on petroleum.

And Gold Rust asked:

Recycling?

Recycling isn’t permanent. There is continuous loss in recycling due to oxidation of resources. Metals rust, plastics crumble, etc. We’ll be able to mine our landfills for years, but eventually they will also give out. It is the loss of metal resources that threatens industrial civilisation the most in the long term.

If certain steps will be taken, doesn’t it follow that we will continue to take steps to supply people with fuel?

IF and only IF: there is fuel to supply. As we go down the back side of the peak, petroleum will accellerate in price, and the fuel that’s left will be needed to develop more sustainable energy sources. None of the energy sources, outside of fusion, has nearly the power and none, including fusion, has the transportability and density of petroleum.

Basically, we’re looking at the loss of a one time gift of dense, transportable energy, and with it, the certain end of our style of civilisation. Because we use 7 – 10 calories of petroleum for every calorie of food we eat (farm equipment, fertiliser, harvesting equipment, transport to the food processor, transport from food processor to market, energy to keep market open, transport of consumer to and from market) we’re looking at a dramatic loss in the ability for society to feed itself. Example: Almonds. Almost all the almonds consumed in the USA are grown in Southern California (just drive around anywhere outside of Bakersfield – you’ll see). These almonds get to places like MAINE by way of truck. Add a zero to the cost of fuel for the truck and watch almonds get scarce in Maine, quick. Now, do that to the entire food industry, AND combine that stress with ever more mouths to feed from over population. Results: starvation in poorer countries, and massive re-alignment and rationing of the farming system in richer countries to prevent food riots.

Once petroleum is so scarce and expensive, fertilisers will disappear and desertification will rise exponentially. Permaculture farming will be the only sustianable alternative, but the yields aren’t high enough to feed the 10 billion people on the planet. Result? Malthus.

Winston Smith:

I would prefer a Die Down – where we depopulate peacefully and gracefully. But a depopulation is INEVITABLE. It’s not a matter of IF – it’s a question of HOW and WHEN.

and Gold Rust replied:

I quite agree – but HOW, most likely wont be from petro shortages, and WHEN will most likely be… erm, sometime between now and 500 years.

No, it has to be this coming century, and it has to be orderly, peaceful, and with dignity.

If we don’t depopulate as described, the results will be:

Duncan’s Olduvai Theory

I wish this peak oil issue was a point we could argue and make it go away. But it isn’t. It’s the real deal – a true crisis in Civilisation. I think we can manage it and make it a less bumpy road, but unless someone pulls fusion out of their butts in such a way that it is possible and practical, industrial civilisation is OVER.

Orwell’s 1984 will be seen as a quick signpost on the way down as we die off into something more resembling ancient Rome. If we don’t want to collapse back into a late iron age slave state system, we need to begin implementing post peak policies NOW, so we can pull the right hand side of the peak out – changing a crash into a slope.

Wednesday, February 01, 2006
Eating, Pooping, Fighting and Fucking

A few nights ago, I met some very nice people at an art opening, and we got to talking about energy, culture, etc. I wrote an email to a few of them, and I thought it was interesting and would make a good Early-Warning post.

So, I edited out the personal chunks and re-wrote other sections, and came up with the following. Lately I’ve been sick with the Devil Bug, and my head is full of snot. As a consequence, I’ve been sleeping a lot and taking it easy.

First, I should point out there is a HUGE debate raging in the energy community between the Nihilists and the Cornicopians. The Nihilists are of the opinion that

“We’re all fucking doomed – try what you will you foolish mortals!!! IT WILL BE FOR NAUGHT AND YOU WILL ALL DIE!!!!”

This is occasionally followed by the cynical chuckle of true despair that sounds something like “Muuuwahahahahaaaa…”

Then there are the Cornucopians. They are often referred to as “idiots”. They actually aren’t idiots – they just have greater levels of confidence in certain factors and data than the Nihilist think is rational and many of the rest of us think is justified.

Then there’s the “rest of us”. A diverse mix of people, of course, and rather than try to distill such a crowd into components, I’ll describe my own position, which runs like this:

The Nihilists are correct in one sense. We are all completely doomed *IF WE DO NOTHING*. If we do a little, it will postpone the disaster, but won’t avert it. If we do a lot we can cushion the downslope and evolve our society into a depopulated and sustainable system. If we do everything we can, we can not only evolve into that “good place” we can do it with relatively little loss of life.

The Cornucopians do have a few good points – mostly centered around technology. The Cornucopian technology fixes can certainly help avert a die off.

The problem boils down to one of population. If we don’t reduce our birth rate immediately, we are looking at an uncontrolled and violent die off, and possible extinction. I’m not saying “No More Babies, period” but that they need to be fewer in number, and much better cared for when they appear. With reduced population, there will be reduced pressure on the planet’s resources. Combined with sustainable practices (recycling technologies, permaculture farming, etc.) the future of the species is much brighter than the dark night envisioned by the Nihilists. But if we continue to crowd the planet with more and more people, the resources will give out, and result in massive warfare over the scraps. Not one, but several (small) nuclear wars would easily result.

Personally, I don’t want to see the world go down the path of trading nuclear tipped insults, massive starvation, or freezing to death in the winter on a ruined deforested planet.

The long term key is demographic. The short term key is culture and technology.

We can do this, but it will take enormous effort. I have come to the conclusion that the people who will matter the most to the species will prove to be those people born between 1945 and 2010. It is up to the older boomers (1945 – 55) to set the course as they settle into positions of power. It is up to the younger boomers (1955 – 1965) to agitate and do the planning and innovating. They are young enough and smart enough to realise it, and have sufficient numbers to make movements in the markets – their children are older and can focus on these issues with the clarity borne of experience. The generations of 1965 – 75 and 75 – 85 will end up doing the heavy lifting. They will get it in the neck, as they will be in the prime of their lives as the oil system peaks out in the 2010’s. The children of the 1990s will be crucial as they will be the parents of the first post-petroleum generation. This is a position of such crucial importance, I can’t emphasize it enough – their victories and failures will loom large on their children and grandchildren. Also, the children of the 1990s will have the greatest pressure on them to innovate and organise the new society. By their adulthood in the 2020s, the first wave of boomers will begin dying in great numbers, soon followed by the late boomers. The Children born in the 2000s (children of people born in the 70s and 80s) will be the last petroleum generation and will be pivotal in the transition. It is of extra-ordinary importance that they be raised with the knowledge and impetus to continue building the new sustainable civilisation.

People born after 2010 will simply have to cope with what I call the “Peak Generations” deal them. If the Peak Generations can come through and do the right thing, step up to the plate and set civilisation along a path of permacultural sustainability and graceful depopulation, then those born at and after the oil peak will will not curse their memory for having squandered the world, but will revere the Peak Generations for having had the wisdom and intelligence to look forward and help rather than stand around, do nothing, and hinder the human project.

Many Nihilists feel we are slaves to our basest natures. They are probably right, but I would submit that we are not chattel slaves – we are wage slaves! And as wage slaves to our basest natures, we have the ability in our leisure time to do something other than eat, poop, fight and fuck. It is this time we spend not exercising our base instincts that allows us to plan and culturally blunt our base instincts.

There is distinct pleasures to be had from our base instincts and processes: food is a delight when well prepared and shared with love. And after a big meal, a good healthy crap is a distinct (if smelly) pleasure. Fighting can be good, especially when the fight is one of principle and wisdom against ignorance and stupidity, and is fought on the battlefield of ideas. Nothing can oppose the force of millions of people peacefully united behind the ideas of justice and freedom. And the extra-ordinary pleasures of good sex is not to be underestimated, especially, if not most of all, when it is in the context of a deep, loving, and caring relationship.

However: each of these pleasures comes with a series responsibilities. The food comes with the responsibility to not waste the food left over, and for food to be produced in a sustainable and healthy manner for not only the people eating it, but for the soil and environment that produced it.

And the good healthy crap that follows a good meal, we must realise that our bodily waste is a very valuable resource. Which is why we must reduce our consumption of hormones, chemicals, and medicines – it all comes out in our wastes to poison the earth and it endangers other creatures. We will need our (“clean”) waste in order to fertilise our fields.

The fighting must continue as long as there is injustice and exploitation in this world, as long as people are denied the simplest freedoms, the fight must continue. However, the fight must be along the lines envisioned by Ghandi and Martin Luther King: it must be a fight of peaceful masses of people moving and demanding justice and freedom. This requires the same level of solidarity one would find in any military unit – the forces of hate and violence will seek to divide and conquer the forces of good and progress and provoke them into violent confrontation. The movements must maintain solidarity and peace, but must also not compromise either their ideals or integrity, even as their comrades are blown to bits or beaten to bloody pulps. It is from this solidarity that the communities of the sustainable future will evolve.

And the fucking must continue, for reasons too obvious to mention. However, as sex is the source of the demographic problem that is essential to our predicament, on the socio-political front, we need to greatly expand birth control and voluntary sterilisation programs. I would recommend that birth control methods be heavily subsidised by the .gov and sterilisation procedures (vasectomies and tubal ligations) be free of charge. This would reduce pregnancy and the transmission of diseases – a net gain in both directions. But beyond the policy wonkery: sex is a good thing, and I recommend it…

So, in each case, we can see how even our “basest instincts” can be routed into constructive and positive directions that will lead to the development of the civilisation we need: a non-petroleum based sustainable, permacultural depopulated world civilisation of 500 million souls living full, rich, and colourful lives slowly evolving into homo futuris – the human of the future.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Petro-dollar, petro-euro, Iraq, China, and You
On a list I write to, someone made a statement that the Iraq War was actuallly alll about the almight petro-dollar. Someone then retorted

PPLLEEAASSSEEE… … don’t try to make the totally absurd assertion
that the war in Iraq is not about oil. If Iraq had no oil we would not
be there. This IS a war about control of energy resources… plain and
simple.

Being of sound mind and body, I had to insert my two sense and I responded:

Actually, you are BOTH correct. It’s not a zero-sum Boolean thing – it’s a confluence of complex and inter-related actions, needs, desires, demands, and systems.

First, you are *not* completely correct in saying it is a war “about control of energy resources… plain and simple.” There is nothing pure or simple about this conflict.

That is certainly a major part of the equation, but Ron’s point about petro-dollars is equally important. Iraq was under our thumb and a virtual non-entity during the Clinton Administration, because he basically bombed the crap out of them. Iraq was in a nearly identical, if not somewhat worse, condition at the invasion than it was on the last day of the Clinton White House. What changed was S.Hussein’s decision to move Iraqi oil off the dollar toward the euro. One of the first things to be implemented upon the invasion of Iraq was to put it back on the petro-dollar.

So, yes, Oil *is* fundamental to the war in Iraq, but not the only – the economic machine around it is of equal importance, as is the geo-political strategies of how to deal with a powerful China.

Example: Let’s say ALL oil producers sell oil in a variety of currencies – pretend there is no “petro-dollar”, making the market similar to pre-1945. Then the invasion of Iraq would be seen as an absolute grab for the resources, as the only way a given resource would be salable would be in the prevailing currency of the invading party, in this case, the USA.

We had vast control over the inputs and outputs of Iraq throughout the 1990s, Iraqi oil was in petrodollars, and there was no invasion. Once Hussein started grumbling about dumping the dollar, things got interesting, and when he made moves to pull out of the dollar and go to the euro – bingo: the hammer comes down and he’s found hiding in a spider hole.

Another aspect of this is the geo-politics of China, especially their strategic vision of the USA and geopolitics in general. This report is getting a little dated (pre 9/11 and Bush) but the fundamentals it discusses are very much a part of the continuing picture.

CHINA DEBATES the FUTURE SECURITY ENVIRONMENT by Michael Pillsbury, January 2000, National Defense University Press.

Both Clinton and China shared a similar long range outlook: a multi-polar vision of global security, where the USA gradually builds down into being a local power primarily dominating the Americas, China dominating east asia, and the EU in Europe. With this kind of an arrangement, the threat to China would be mostly economic, from India. China’s military was not united in their analysis, and some felt that the USA would not go to a multi-polar system for at least another generation. The installation of the Bush Junta proved their skepticism.

So: combine these factors, and the contemporary situation makes a lot more sense – it’s not just *merely* the oil resource itself, it is the economic and monetary structure that surrounds it that is of grave importance as well. With that in mind, we can see why Iran is such a threat to the Bush Junta’s neocon plans of unipolar global dominance. A devalued petrodollar that is weak against the petro-euro makes it harder to finance the military adventures necesary to prop up the petrodollar and access to the resource that the petrodollar denominates: Oil.

Since the USA is bogged down in Afghanistan and iraq, it is extremely unlikely that the USA can actually succeed in invading Iran. Therefore, proxies will be found to remove the Iranian nuclear capabilities, military or otherwise. This would, obviously, fall to Israel.

However, this wil not necessarily remove the Iranian petro-euro policy – and that becomes a significant stumbling block to the unipolar desires of the Bush Junta War Machine. It will serve to devalue the dollar, and gradually eat away the debt assets owned by the Chinese. However, the inflation created by this devaluation might not lead to a hyper-inflation, as the monetarist policies of the Fed will step in and raise interest rates to reduce the inflating money supply.

Depending on how high the interest rates go and the inflation rate rises, debt management becomes interesting – those with old debt will see their debts reduce in value with the lower dollar. Those with new debt or interest variable debt will get stuck if:

a: the interest rates wildly exceed the inflation rate
b: the interest rates don’t drop as fast as decreases in inflation
c: an oddly contradictory position of finding money very hard to get, and not worth very much when you do get it… Stagflation on steroids.

To counter these problems, the US.gov will have to directly reduce the deficit to zero, ASAP, in order to reduce pressure on the interest rates and free up money. How it does that will be “very interesting…”

This makes for a complex and volatile situation – enemies of the unipolar American Empire working to undermine the currency, economic rivals competing for the declining resources, a deeply conflicted populace in the American Empire, and burgeoning populations – it’s not a good situation, and it certainly demonstrates that the war in Iraq is not as straight-forward a “pure and simple” resource war as one might think.

Thursday, December 29, 2005
Greenwood, IN

Early Warning has been off line- I’ve been cavorting about the country, gamboling about the USA. I had a lot of final grades to submit on 18 DEC 05, and I left for holiday on the 19th, arriving in Greenwood, IN. I hate to say this … naaaah – I’ll say it: Greenwood Indiana is the poster-child of all that is completely fucked up with America. This place is screwed. Everything is only accessible by automobile. The winters are cold and damp. The summers are hot and muggy. These people are completely and utterly dependent on petroleum. All of their consumption is accomplished by way of giant national chain stores and regional franchises.

I write this from a Panera Bread Cafe. Easily half of the people sitting around me at this moment are obese. Not a little fat, not somewhat overweight. Obese. Full disclosure: I could stand to lose a few pounds (30 to be exact) but I *know* that I need to lose it and I have a plan I am implementing to do so. These people have no plans on doing so. These people are pigs at the trough, gulping down coffee and carbs.

I will now look out the window at the parking lot, and report the vehicles in the lot:

13 SUVs
8 minivans
6 full sized cars (Cadillacs, Buicks, a mid 90’s Oldsmobile, etc.)
14 midsized cars (Chevys, Pontiacs, mostly, some few Toyotas)
9 compact cars, one Toyota, one VW, the rest Chevy or Ford.
1 sub compact – a Mini Cooper.

NO Priuses. No Honda Insights.

Clueless clueless clueless.

The Panera Cafe uses natural gas to cook the food. The place has (I glanced into the kitchen and guess-timated) a total of approximately 150 sixty watt bulbs. Some of them are spots, so they’re a bit “brighter” because their light is more directed. The Panera Cafe, as it is presently configured, will likely cease to exist in my lifetime. I suspect they will be able to heat water for coffee in the future, but the coffee will be much more expensive. People will savour a single cup, instead of guzzle 20 oz. buckets of the stuff.

A young couple sat down next to me. She complained that one of her professors demanded that she write a paper about the environment. She said she really doesn’t care about the environment. She’s a psychology major. She and her boyfriend prayed before eating. I must remember that I am in the Bible Belt. If I takes a copernican stance, then I would conclude they are typical of the environment, and given that the fellow across from me is researching the book of Romans, I consider my observation reasonable.

The young couple next to me prepared to leave. she had ordered a loaf of soup: a small loaf of hard crusted bread filled with soup. she ate the soup and threw out the bread. Then they prepared to leave.

I told her “I heard you say that you don’t care about the environment. Well, it doesn’t care much about you, either. And frankly, in the greater scheme of things, the environment always wins. Just a bit of advice…”

They walked away. The look on her face was of utter cluelessness. She even had a faint smile on her face.

They will graduate from college, with their useless degrees in psychology and marketing. They will live on to become part of the problem, and drive their Stupid Useless Vehicles to the Mall to buy their food and consumer items. I find them all so depressing. The irony is this: if there is some nuclear conflict, the cities will be destroyed, but the cities consume (per capita) fewer resources than backwater exurbs like Greenwood, which would be largely spared in such a conflagration. It’s places like Greenwood that are the problem, and their destruction will be part of the solution. The funny thing is: it won’t take a nuclear war to rid the planet of dumps like this – the lifestyle is so unsustainable they will simply destroy themselves… unfortunately, they are so self-absorbed and greedy, they will want to take the rest of us with them as they careen over their cliff of wasteful narcissism.

This blog can be read by most anyone in the world with computer access and a knowledge of the English language. The rest of the world must understand that some of us: even as we sit in an energy wasting cafe full of idiots – are not idiots. We are working to change things. It will take active reform from within, but it will also take active resistance from without in order to avoid catastrophe. I can only hope the catastrophe starts in places like Greenwood with their endless miles of cavernous Targets, Kohls, Menards, Home Depots, Bed-Bath-And-Beyonds, Megaplex Movie Theatres, and the endless cavalcade of McDonalds, Burger Kings, Subway and Quiznos Sandwich Shops, KFCs, Paneras, Starbucks, highways, SUVs, McMansions on treeless lots, the never ending Horror that is the exurban nightmare of early 21st century middle America. Gads, these people disgust me. I’m not here in Greenwood because I want to be here – my in-laws, by weird twists of fate, live here, and I’m visiting them for Xmas.

I’ve told “Grandma” what’s going down. She doesn’t really believe it, but she doesn’t have to – she’ll be gone before it all hits the fan. And grandpa is way too old to be personally concerned. My sister and brother in law? They just bought a 3200 sq. ft. house on a treeless lot, amid an enormous field of other 3200 sq. ft. homes on treeless lots. Even if they planted some fast growing pine NOW, they won’t have enough wood in 15 years to keep themselves warm in any sustainable way. They don’t want to get it – they are too heavily invested in the Horror. Luckily, there is a train line that goes through Greenwood. There is no train station, but building a platform is a fairly simple task. These people might not completely starve. But I have NO idea how they will transition to a sustainable lifestyle.

I will return to a more regular posting schedule in the new year. The next few weeks are going to be spent packing and flying and flying and flying and flying…