What if you knew…
with absolute certainty in 2000, that we were going to face an oil shortage-driven holocaust sometime in the next 20-25 years? What if you knew with absolute certainty that Peak Oil was real, irreversible and that we missed the window for an orderly energy transformation that was opened during the Arab oil embargo? If you were president with a conservative mindset what would you do?
This question, frankly has haunted me since I got up to speed on Peak Oil, and it just got exacerbated by this little piece of news, i.e., one of the industry’s most prescient analysts, Robert Hirsch, is calling for $12-$15 a gallon gasoline in the not so distant future. The implications of that are nothing less than catastrophic. So back to my question, what would you do?
First, you’d do whatever it took to forestall the inevitable for as long as possible, i.e. invade a nation that had a huge oil supply. Hello Iraq.
You’d make sure the “elite” would be set up to survive the holocaust, no matter how difficult the circumstances might be for the rest of us. Hello eight years of unparalleled wealth transfer.
And finally, you’d dismantle democracy, because in a catastrophic world where it just might be every man and woman for themselves, you’d have to be able to put down uprisings and enforce the rule of law without constraint. Welcome to the shredding of the Constitution.
The answer isn’t science fiction, it’s what Bushco’s been doing for the past eight years. It was probably the topic of the secret energy meetings Cheney had at the beginning of this administration and the one thing that will never be revealed. They’ll reveal the Kennedy assassination conspiracy before they’ll let this loose.
Tin foil hat? Maybe. Maybe big time. But it makes too much sense, given the purported “idiocy” of the past 8 years. Maybe not so stupid–maybe we just don’t understand the game.
I think Bushco is bigger than a raw power grab. Much bigger. And dealing with consequences of nearly 40 years of poor energy policy is the single, most important issue that (I hope) President Obama addresses. As important as health care, social security, and the budget might be, they pale in comparison to the implications of Peak Oil and what is going to happen to this planet when the real effects are felt in the next 10 to 15 years. It might not even be that long.
Obama will need to act fast, put together nothing less than a Manhattan project-level commitment to energy transformation within 10 years, impose rationing on consumers, federalize and/or highly regulate certain key industries like the automotive, transportation, oil, energy and airlines, and brace all of us for what will be, no matter what, a very rocky road. Even then, it’s not going to alleviate the pain for many of us. It’s going to take real leadership, which is why McCain and Hillary aren’t the ones we need. Question is, is Obama? Is anyone?
Posted: May 24th, 2008 under Best of the Blogs.
Comments: 15
Comments
Comment from timr
Time: May 25, 2008, 9:17 am
LC, so what are you personally doing? esp since you-from all your comments posted here-seem to live in socal. BTW, in merry ol England they are already paying $10-11, and diesel is running over $12-and one whole heck of a lot of cars in the common market run on diesel. Granted a lot of their cost is due to taxes, but still, they pay $10-12 for fuel, a whole lot more than we, the fuel guzzlers of the world pay-remember V-8’s, and what about all the V-10 trucks. And the BIG SUV’s that everyone wants. We created out current problem, so what can we do to get out of it? Also the most wasteful way to transport everything is by OTR(over the road-18 wheel semi trucks) This is by far the stupidest way to move goods. Far better to transport by train to a central hub, then by truck, but Nooooo, we had to go by truck, from producer to buyer, all the way across the damn country
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: May 25, 2008, 3:37 pm
Dropped carbon foot print in office, at home, and personal car (hybrid Ford). Lobbying for rapid transit (on committee advocating light rail instead of more freeways, flex hours and one-way boulevards in LA). Writing on blogs to remind as many people as I can that the only issue that really matters is planetary survival. Everything else is mouse shit. You?
Comment from Max
Time: May 25, 2008, 6:03 pm
Leftcoast,
I think you are very correct. Except that I don’t think the elites have much chance of riding this out unscathed. How well will those super rich people in East Long Island do when starving mobs from Queens and Brooklyn come rampaging out?
I think the Bushies really miscalculated. They thought that they would really win the Iraq war and that they could keep the cheap oil merry go round going anther generation.
Well it didn’t work. Whoops.
I see the potential for a 50% decline in US population in the 10 to 15 years, due to starvation, and internal conflict.
So what to do?
I have been studying this problem for several years, and I think transport is key. Without transport, people and goods do not move, society collapses. In America, virtually all transport depends on oil. The only electric trains in America (Amtrak) run from Boston to Washington. The rest are diesel.
As John McCreery can also tell you, Japan is covered with electric trains. In the Tokyo/Yokohama megalopolis, nobody lives more than walking distance from an electric train. That is 30 million people. Electricity can be generated by nuclear power, and nuclear power is going to be our only reliable source of energy for the next 50 years.
No, Japan will not be immune from what is coming. But we have existing transport systems that tie the country together. People will still travel from Tokyo to Osaka. And they will not be tourists. In the future, I expect travel to be highly regulated, and energy rationed.
I live in Japan, and I intend to do all I can to bring this to America:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maglev_train
A Maglev that has been clocked at 581 Km an hour. Assuming America is 4,000 Km coast to coast, throw in some stops, that is nine hours or so by train from San Francisco to New York. Powered by nuclear generated electricity. And we are going to have to build electric trains from urban centers radiating out into the country, for some several hundred kilometers.
If we preserve transport, we have a chance of preserving the nation, and can think of further steps. But we are facing a problem that serious.
Here is an American who deeply understands the situation, and is speaking out.
http://www.kunstler.com/index.html
This is his article, The Long Emergency. But I suggest buying his book, I did, it is an enlightening read.
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: May 26, 2008, 5:28 am
Easy lads: “everything else is mouse shit”?; a 50 percent decline in the US population in the next 10 to 15 years due to starvation”?
This is just as much a case of timr’s “sheeple” as anything else. It’s still called supply and demand. And cost is relative. Other countries have gas prices three and four times ours, and they have elites, and they drive, smaller fuel efficient cars, but they drive. Service industries that use gas pass the cost along to consumers. Same for farmers. The cost of fish is going up, not as fast, but it will.
Meanwhile McBush and death-wish Clinton want to fix it all with gimmicks. They both imply that there is a quick solution around the corner, if they get elected. Obama appears a little more honest on this front. But if all these doom and gloom scenarios start to play out, I would expect Obama to address them, first through the so-called bully pulpit, but also by calling on the nation to sacrifice. I also expect he will be repairing damage to the south as part of the oil solution. He has already confronted the automakers.
Meanwhile, healthcare is more important than environment. I would dare say there is more environmental awareness about solutions–greenness–than there is about healthcare. The poor are cut out of both, and the elite are sitting prettier, but morbidity, like gas prices, is an equal opportunity killer, to use a word in the spirit of the comments above.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: May 26, 2008, 9:21 am
timr: I think I prematurely hit “send” and gave you half a response–the other half is your citing Europe’s ability to cope w/ $12 gas. It’s easier there because of shorter geographic distances, concentrated urban populations and real rapid mass transit. If gas were $12 a gallon in LA, it would either become Blade Runner or a ghost town. Same with Atlanta, Dallas/Ft Worth, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas–any new boom city that’s built around the idea of suburbs linked by freeways.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: May 26, 2008, 9:35 am
Josh: First things first. No great health care system can survive, nor can we, without energy–and we’re headed there in about 10-15 years, max. There is a conflating of energy and environment, and while there are some overlaps, they are two entirely different things. I’m talking only about energy, green or otherwise. Europe is in much better shape (see my response to timr) if for no other reason, they’ve federalized/socialized the elements I outlined in my initial post. There isn’t a European city without terrific rapid transit. Geography is smaller. People are habituated to using mass transit. The scale of everything, including their consumerism is much smaller. For us to do that is going to take a WWII mindset. Try selling that over the din of American Idol and Desperate Housewives.
Unfortunately, this has not be really raised by any of the candidates as a campaign issue. You’re right, the spat over the gas tax is a joke, as if it really mattered. And this problem is not something that’s going to be solved if bad things start to happen. It’s really late in the game now; if we start feeling the effects of the scenario I propose, it’s going to be way too late to do anything about it at all except to try to limit the damage. Which is why I postulated that Bushco is in the process of eliminating the Constitution…
Comment from timr
Time: May 26, 2008, 9:39 am
LC, use zero electricity from the grid, because have photoelectric panels on roof(lots of sunny days in sotx), in fact I have sent electricity back to the grid, so have gotton $$ every month from city owned utility-which gets 75%+ of its electricity from hydro and wind, and is partnered in building a nuke plant. Am lobbying state house(tx- most powerful pol is not gov, but speaker of the house, and senate majority leader) to pass a bill requiring that all developers include photoelectric panels on houses that they build, with a bigger tax credit, or assist in paying, to refit older houses, and to either clear branches or remove parts(not all) of trees that block sun.
Drive a 4 year old buick rendezvous-V6- that gets 25 hiway, and 22 city, keep up on tire pressure and repairs. Buy gas once a month, which we do by taking the city bus for longe trips in the city, like to Fort Sam or Lackland AFB-big upsurge in riders, more than 75% since gas went over 3.50. BTW, gas currently is 3.85 as of friday when I bought gas at Sams club-that and Costco are the cheapest in the city- As for carbon footprint, I don’t really know what that means, but we have been recycling for at least the last 25-30 years. Keep compost pile in backyard, use electric-nutron-battery operated lawnmower-allow grass clipping to remain on lawn to compost themselves. All powered lawn and garden tools are electric. Garbage pickup here is 2 days per week, we put out about 1/2 tall kitchen wastebasket bag per week, the rest we either compost or run thru our digester-garbage disposal. We buy 80% of all food from local farmers, only some fruits and veggies are bought at local grocery.all meat, chicken, and eggs comes from local farmers, purchased at either farmers market-located less than 5 miles from home-or directly from farm-about 10 miles from house. I understand that there is a law in Ca about allowing photoelectric panels on roofs of houses, Ca has lots of sunny days, how is that law working out?
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: May 26, 2008, 9:46 am
Excellent timr. The law in CA is too new, and the supply side (panel manufacturers) haven’t aggressively marketed the idea yet. No one understands either the economics of it (cost/saving) or the logistics. It’s going to take time, but when it hits here, it will hit big–I think a lot of people will be doing this. The utilities here are hugely supportive, believe it or not…
Comment from timr
Time: May 26, 2008, 10:09 am
LC, read your second post. All true about europe. US started the suburbia gig after WWII . I agree partly with Max about trains, but our entire food and everything else that is manufactured transport system is OTR trucks. Watermellons from Ga, to Seattle travel by truck, as do all food items, refers-refrigerator-trucks travel coast to coast. What we need to do is totally change our transport of manufactured and raw material goods from trucks to trains. A hub(trains) and spoke(trucks) system. If we keep going the way we are, prices for all goods will go up by at least 10-30% in the next year. But we won’t. Why, because we have a system in place, and any change will be resisted. Just because the system currently in place makes no sense, doesn’t mean it will change. Example. a stone quarry near here wants to make a 20 mile rail spur so that instead of 800-1000 trucks per day going to Houston, they can send the same amount in just 2 trains per day. Houston needs the stone either way, but trains make more sense. EXCEPT-conservation groups are fighting tooth and nail to prevent the rail spur, their thinking is that if the quarry has to continue to use trucks, then the stone will get to expensive, and the quarry will have to close. IDIOTS. Houston will still need the stone, and the closest place is from this area, the price will just go up and the trucks will continue to run. As long as we have people at loggerheads-wind power turbines are being objected to by conservation groups because sometimes birds get killed flying into them. But the wind generators are not on any flyway, so WTF. Loggerheads. Same with offshore wind power. The rich on the island of Nantucket don’t want them as they “spoil the view”, same here in Texas, despite oil rigs everywhere and somehow they got some conservation groups on their side. Same with Nuclear power plants, until we get some of the road blocks out of the way, people are protesting and nothing gets built. Their are current solutions, but anyone can file a lawsuit against any project, so nothing gets done. Granted some power generators should not be built, but other countries have had similar problems, and worked them out. Here, NIMBY-not in my back yard-rules everything.
Comment from timr
Time: May 26, 2008, 10:29 am
LC, actually the utilities are the biggest supporter here for the same reasons. The electric grid is overloaded, thats why brownout in socal over the last few years-and leave us not forget Enrons place in that. Texas apparently is not part of the national grid, we have our own so we don’t have the problems that national grid has-aging equipment. Same with all infastructure nation wide. Water, sewage, electric, roads, bridges, dams. Aging. And we, like the short sighted pols that the sheeple continue to reelect, do nothing. Just like in the military, buy the bright shiny new combat system, but screw buying repair parts,bullets, and beans you can’t take pictures with them.
We have been shortchanging our future by massive tax cuts over the last 40 years. We are faced with massive problems, and every single govt unit, be it local, state, or federal is going to have to, very damn soon, bite the bullet and raise taxes at every level. We want the services, then we damn well need to start paying for them. Another big problem, Ms, Ga. La, Fl, Tx, and NM have an annual drop out rate of very damn close to 50% per year. W in the F is going on????? and it has been steady like that for at least 10 years. NCLB did not do a damn thing to stem the tide, and gwb’s education miracle in Texas was just a paper mirage, dropouts were just never counted
Comment from Sasha
Time: May 26, 2008, 12:11 pm
Shall we talk about the energy cost of getting all that water to Southern California?
No “world class” health care system is worth crap if folks don’t have access to it. I think that both can be addressed, but children are dying today because they don’t have medical care.
Comment from Leftcoast
Time: May 26, 2008, 2:32 pm
No just SoCal. Vegas, Phoenix, Tucson–all boom areas with roof tops and non-environmentally sensitive open spaces that could be harnessed with enough solar generation to power the entire nation. That might be the “easy” part–the transit issue that both Max and timr have been talking about is not so simple, and the other part of the problem. If we only had a brain…
Comment from Josh Hammond
Time: May 26, 2008, 3:33 pm
Blade Runner? I think you are inhailing to many gas fumes. See Chinatown, again. These problems have been around for a long time. Start with Detroit: 85 percent of the cost of a car is marketing. Fuel efficient cars can be made now, at least in about three years, but us sheelpe will not abide it.
What you all are saying is not believable, it may well be true, but it is not believable. And no candidate could win a single electoral vote running on this issue, stated this way.
It costs more to buy a gallon of drinking water than a gallon of gas. Everyone complains as they say filler up. As the saying goes, if we keep doing what we are doing, we will continue to have what we got.
The US population is going to decline by half in 15 years? Does that include those caught up in the Rapture? I can’t believe I’m reading this stuff.
Comment from Max
Time: May 26, 2008, 7:08 pm
Trucking companies are already failing.
The thing is, there is no alternative in America. I think this is what history will record as the greatest failing of the Bushies, the failure to address the nation and prepare us for peak oil, and the failure to begin a crash program to develop an electric train system.
Comment from timr
Time: May 27, 2008, 8:41 am
max, very true, esp. the independent owner-operators, cost more than $1K to fill tanks each time. Fuel surcharge on contracts not getting to owners of trucks. Cost of diesel now higher than gasoline. The entire problem of goods transportation in this country will not get fixed until we reach a crisis point, that is the way the US operates, stumbling from crisis to crisis, no long term planning, just very short term. Corporations work the same way. Look no further ahead than to the next quarter. That is why so many countries are getting so far ahead of us, and to the general dismay, the US pretty much sucks at crisis management.
Re water. Bottled water is the most sucessful advertising/marketing project ever!, talk about selling freezers to Eskimos!
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