Peak Oil. Bush tells people to give up the barrel.

Steve wrote-



If you are going to have a state of the union speech it is just as well to mention the most important aspect of it and oil is being mainlined goodstyle just as it is in many other countries.There has been a collective repression of this simple and obvious pathological condition led by politicians,financiers and media and it is a measure of Mr Bush's statesmanship that he has blown it up in such a high profile way.

The human constitution,physical and psychical,has been millions of years in its evolution and suddenly,very suddenly at that,here it is addicted to a juice just like the most abject heroin abuser.In fact I would go so far as to say that a heroin abuser with a comparative level of addiction would very soon be dead.

What is required is a complete rehabilitation of the collective mindset which would result in things like A2K meets in Chigago,mere whims as they are,being viewed in the same way as dogshit in the streets is viewed.

This very morning,only the second in ages with a blue sky,a good third of that sky was blotted out with vapour trails.What we have is situation utterly ridiculous.And we now have population levels as a result of this junkie spree which are congenitally unable to do anything about it and are going to need force to straighten them out.But not just yet as St Augustine famously said.

It's our legacy.

"Look out kid,
They keep it all hid."--Bob Dylan.In one of the most often played videos on the music channels.

"The bigger they are the harder they fall."

After hubris comes nemesis.

You know what biodeisel actually is.It is an additive to oil products which allows advertisers to convince people that when they drive a few hundred miles to see their grand-daughter play Little Miss Muppet in the school Xmas play they are contributing to saving the planet.

There'll be "Green" jetplanes next.

You're a hard bitten old cynic Spendi.But I agree a lot of it is window dressing. I would venture that most people haven't heard of 'peak oil' and fewer still understand the implications. Yet imo its driving a whole load of stuff going on around the world..most of it very unpleasant.

Oil is at the root of a lot of trouble. Long term we are screwing the planet's atmosphere through burning too much of it. Medium term we risk energy shortages because there isnt enough of it. And short term we risk getting killed on the 32 bus because some religious nut believes the oil belongs to Allah not George Bush.

As a matter of fact, "jet" engines (which are nothing more than high-speed, forced air turbines) are already "green." The turbine engine does not "care" what type of fuel it burns. It can burn ethanol from agricultural sources just as well as fossil fuels. If such an engine is to burn ethanol long-term, or exclusively, then certain design modifications are needed, but what modifications are necessary is already known. It would be a very simple matter to make the change. The main objection is a capitalist one--no one is presently producing ethanol from agricultural sources in large enough quatities (although farmers in the great plains of the United States and Canada are ready to go any time they are assured of a market for their corn--maize as the English would call it); and, power plant manufacturers, such a Pratt and Whitney or Rolls Royce are invested in the fossil fuel turbines. Airline companies already operate on margin, and don't intend to re-tool if they don't have to do so.

Many people in the industrialized world are loathe to use public transport, and prefer to drive their personally owned vehicles (POVs)--but in many nations of the industrialized world, the governments have taken steps to actively discourage POVs, or simple economics mitigate against the use of POVs (such as parking a vehicle in Tokyo--ruinous, private parking places cost more than houses do in London).

Actually, it would be possible to largely abandon fossil fuels, but societies are not geared for, and governments all too often take no steps to deal with the problem, or actually erect barriers to research on and exploitation of alternative energy sources. There's so much capital in the current system, and the pols are so deep in the pockets of the capitalists, that we can expect ruinous fuel prices and Muslim suicide bombers for a long time to come.

I suggest people read "The Long Emergency" by James Kunstler. While I think his long term predictions are not very solid (some even silly), his short term views are based on sound research. He points out that our comfortable modern life is based on cheap fossil fuel and without it we are in for some hard times. He also correctly points out that most alternative fuels need fossil fuel to be created and with a shortage of fossil fuel it will be very difficult to create alternative fuels in large quantities. All that corn that makes ethanol is produced with the use of petro-chemical fertilizers, no heavy fertilizers equal much smaller yields. I can't remember all the examples, but he was very persuasive that we headed for big trouble within the next 20 years.

Re: Peak Oil. Bush tells people to give up the barrel.

I can think of two reasons: (1) Hypocrisy. If America is addicted to oil, Bush and his vice president have spent much of their business carreers as pushers. He is as phony in his complaint as the guy who murders his parents, then pleads for mercy because he's an orphan.

(2) Senate seats. While most Americans voters live in urban areas these days, votes in the Senate tend to come from states that are rich in land and poor in population. To win the Senate seats of those states, then, it helps to tax urban voters to throw farm subsidies at states in the `heartland'. Ethanol programs are politically convenient because they let Republicans reconcile generous farm subsidies with the free-market ideology they pretend to believe in.


That's what people like the Club of Rome have been telling us thirty years ago.

(And by the way, I think your concerns about peak oil are as misguided as Stanley Jevons' 19th century concerns about `peak coal'. I don't know if `we' can do anything about it, but in any case I think we shouldn't.)

Steve wrote-



I saw a scientist the other night say that it's already screwed.If we stop using oil now,heaven forbid,it's too late.So you might as well splurge on folks and read On The Beach when you've time to relax.

But it beats me how you can be bothered.I just find it hard work being a consumer.Veblen called it the "night shift" about a 100 years ago so what he would call it now I can't think.A living hell maybe.

Re: Peak Oil. Bush tells people to give up the barrel.

That was directed at Steve, not Green Witch. I made a cut&paste error when I inserted my response to her. Apologies for any confusion this may have caused.

Should I reread The Theory of the Leisure Class, then? That one slipped by me.

roger-

It is the best investment I ever made.It wiped my brain quite clean of all the shite and set me firmly on the road to ease and prosperity.

Try the two short essays on women and women's frocks.

roger-

This is what Kingsley Davies says about Veblen on p477 of his book Human Society-

"No bibliography on economic institutions would be complete without mention of Veblen,who was in a way the agnostic founder of institutional economics.This (The Theory of Business Enterprise)is one of his most systematic books,but all of his others,if one can endure his archaic style,are relevant."

And I love his style most of all.

You pointed me in the direction of Stanley Jevrons before Thomas. He was quite right to be worried...imo. The British Empire ran on coal. And coal was finite. Therefore the British Empire would come to an end. Well he was right wasnt he?

Its a good analogy but it really isnt applicable today. For one thing Jevrons couldn't see an alternative. We have plenty of alternatives, but as Setanta says we are not tooled up yet to exploit them efficiently. Its just been too easy to keep shooting up with big H ydrocarbons. We are imo leaving it perilously late to make serious efforts to get off oil.

No one now disputes that Peak oil will hit, its just a matter of when. So modern economies will HAVE to change eventually. I think whats happening is the US (which now imports 60+% of its oil) plus loyal allies such as UK are securing an easier transition to post fossil fuel economies by aggressive action right now over the significant oil reserves of the middle east.

ps Thomas I'm in Germany next week.

roger-

I once told a panel of professors that anybody who hadn't read Veblen was basically illiterate and you should have seen the feet shuffling and heard the coughing and spluttering.

But that was in the days when I was still trying to win friends and influence people.

My how things have changed.

So if its too late to prevent catastrophic climate change and Earth will become the new Venus whatever we do, what should we do?

Steve wrote-



As an Edenite I believe the British Empire came to an end because of the American jealousy of it and a determination to reduce us to a satellite.And the rest followed like night follows day."Loyal allies" means us being loyal to them but not them to us.
Like the Greeks were to the Romans and look what happened to Romans.

But our language is another sort of empire.

Steve wrote-



Hurry,hurry,hurry while stocks last.Read On The Beach.Might as well go out with a bang as a whimper.The condemned man ate a hearty breakfast.

But don't tell the kids and grandkids.

You know I think they might find out. And when the stress is acute, they wont think twice about disposing of those sort of ideas, together with the aged parents and grandparents that held them. Have a good w/e Spendi. African Nations Cup final still on eurosport if you're interested.

I would like to revive this thread.

The BBC is putting out a series of really excellent 25 min programmes on Radio 4 entitled Driven by Oil by Tom Mangold.

You can listen to the first one here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/

Please listen and comment

Why does Bush talk about addiction to oil, but not about peak oil?
Why do commentators connected to the administration suggest peak oil is decades away, when the US administration's foreign policy suggests otherwise?

This really is an important topic and should have a much wider audience.