Tuesday, February 10, 2004
It really is all about oil
Not just the war--- oil is the cheap fix crux of not just our nation, but western civilization.
And it's running out. Pretty fast, it may turn out.
A Quick digression: A few years ago I was listening to Radio Times when I wanted to engage one of Marty's guests about something alarming called the TIPS Program that I had just read about on a lefty website. My comment was pretty much dismissed out of hand, its source questioned and the article's author called a known anti-American professional ranter now living in (gasp!) Scandinivia.
Of course, not two weeks later the mainstream press began to carry stories about Admiral Poindexter's program to have our neighbors, postmen, cable guys, and contractors spy on us, the thought being that they could get into someone's house routinely and notice things cops or feds couldn't. Like most neo-con proposals, on some level it makes sense at first, expect for the EXTREME invasion of privacy it represents. On a more practical level, such wide-open systems of snitching have proven highly unreliable in the past, they are often used for personal vendettas, and rely on basic assumptions like you're going to leave a note about your plans to destroy Western society on the fridge when you call the plumber over to fix the kitchen sink!!!
Of course, public outcry comdemned the TIPS program as originally envisioned to the dustbin of history.
I engaged in this brief (OK, somewhat long) digression for the following reason: Among the public there is large resistance to such fundamental topics. Those who advance them are often considered "one of those insufferably enthusiastic prophets of doom, the flannel-shirted, off-the-grid types who take too much pleasure in letting us know that the environment is crumbling all around us." This quote comes from a NY Times review of David Goodstein's new book, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil.
It turns out the author doesn't at all fit the above stereotype, as nor did the man who started this whole conversation in 1956, Marion Hubbert. An oil engineer with Shell in Houston, Hubbert predicted that US peak would occur in 1970. He was, of course, wrong. It occurred in 1971. Since then many scientists have replicated his formula to apply to world production and have come up with some scary numbers.
A review of such a book in the Sunday NY Times might be just the thing we need to get 'elite opinion' in this country to start to face the decline in oil that is an absolute certainty. Estimates vary widely, with world oil supply expected to peak as early as 2004 or 2008, or most reassuringly, about 2037. The earliest proposals estimate that we'll be dry by about 2040, the rosiest about 40-50 years past that. This means if not my lifetime, certainly the lifetimes of my kids or without doubt, their kids.
Yet where have we heard any discussion about this? Like everything else TeamBush has its head in the sand about, this issue is one being deferred to our grandkids so we can be reassured in the present as to how really normal everything is. Oh, and don't forget to go out and shop a bit more to help the economy.
The saddest part: Right now we could do so much to reduce the impact this will have on our lives in a pretty painless way. Consider this: If our baseline is people in Bangladesh, who, because of wretched conditions, leave very little footprint on the planet (what energy is expended for one's food, comfort, transport, the whole thing), then people in the United States rate at 168. That is, we use 168 times more total energy than a Bangladeshi to get our needs met. However, Europeans use only 17 times more energy than them. How could that be? Part is simple geography, but the much larger part is that Europeans have established energy standards, recycling and re-use standards, and are far more committed to local sources of food, products and livelihood than Americans.
It's that simple, really. And the choice is right here for us to make, and it's not even to the point of being painful. . . at the moment. Goodstein assessed the chances of 'Technology' solving our problems by the time they become problems thusly: ''In an orderly, rational world, it might be possible for the gradually increasing gap between supply and demand for oil to be filled by some substitute. But anyone who remembers the oil crisis of 1973 knows that we don't live in such a world, especially when it comes to an irreversible shortage of oil.''
It is that simple. And it really is all about the oil.
Not just the war--- oil is the cheap fix crux of not just our nation, but western civilization.
And it's running out. Pretty fast, it may turn out.
A Quick digression: A few years ago I was listening to Radio Times when I wanted to engage one of Marty's guests about something alarming called the TIPS Program that I had just read about on a lefty website. My comment was pretty much dismissed out of hand, its source questioned and the article's author called a known anti-American professional ranter now living in (gasp!) Scandinivia.
Of course, not two weeks later the mainstream press began to carry stories about Admiral Poindexter's program to have our neighbors, postmen, cable guys, and contractors spy on us, the thought being that they could get into someone's house routinely and notice things cops or feds couldn't. Like most neo-con proposals, on some level it makes sense at first, expect for the EXTREME invasion of privacy it represents. On a more practical level, such wide-open systems of snitching have proven highly unreliable in the past, they are often used for personal vendettas, and rely on basic assumptions like you're going to leave a note about your plans to destroy Western society on the fridge when you call the plumber over to fix the kitchen sink!!!
Of course, public outcry comdemned the TIPS program as originally envisioned to the dustbin of history.
I engaged in this brief (OK, somewhat long) digression for the following reason: Among the public there is large resistance to such fundamental topics. Those who advance them are often considered "one of those insufferably enthusiastic prophets of doom, the flannel-shirted, off-the-grid types who take too much pleasure in letting us know that the environment is crumbling all around us." This quote comes from a NY Times review of David Goodstein's new book, Out of Gas: The End of the Age of Oil.
It turns out the author doesn't at all fit the above stereotype, as nor did the man who started this whole conversation in 1956, Marion Hubbert. An oil engineer with Shell in Houston, Hubbert predicted that US peak would occur in 1970. He was, of course, wrong. It occurred in 1971. Since then many scientists have replicated his formula to apply to world production and have come up with some scary numbers.
A review of such a book in the Sunday NY Times might be just the thing we need to get 'elite opinion' in this country to start to face the decline in oil that is an absolute certainty. Estimates vary widely, with world oil supply expected to peak as early as 2004 or 2008, or most reassuringly, about 2037. The earliest proposals estimate that we'll be dry by about 2040, the rosiest about 40-50 years past that. This means if not my lifetime, certainly the lifetimes of my kids or without doubt, their kids.
Yet where have we heard any discussion about this? Like everything else TeamBush has its head in the sand about, this issue is one being deferred to our grandkids so we can be reassured in the present as to how really normal everything is. Oh, and don't forget to go out and shop a bit more to help the economy.
The saddest part: Right now we could do so much to reduce the impact this will have on our lives in a pretty painless way. Consider this: If our baseline is people in Bangladesh, who, because of wretched conditions, leave very little footprint on the planet (what energy is expended for one's food, comfort, transport, the whole thing), then people in the United States rate at 168. That is, we use 168 times more total energy than a Bangladeshi to get our needs met. However, Europeans use only 17 times more energy than them. How could that be? Part is simple geography, but the much larger part is that Europeans have established energy standards, recycling and re-use standards, and are far more committed to local sources of food, products and livelihood than Americans.
It's that simple, really. And the choice is right here for us to make, and it's not even to the point of being painful. . . at the moment. Goodstein assessed the chances of 'Technology' solving our problems by the time they become problems thusly: ''In an orderly, rational world, it might be possible for the gradually increasing gap between supply and demand for oil to be filled by some substitute. But anyone who remembers the oil crisis of 1973 knows that we don't live in such a world, especially when it comes to an irreversible shortage of oil.''
It is that simple. And it really is all about the oil.
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