Peak Oil

[PlayOn]

Lots of important enviro and energy topics out there, and other important topics in other arenas, but I'll go out on a limb here and say this: Peak oil is the most profound, and imminent, crisis that is facing the US in particular, and the world in general. Why? In a nutshell: The food eaten by the average American travels 1500 miles before it's consumed. What powers that 1500 mile trek? Oil. And that's not even taking into account the fact that every step in the mass food production process requires an abundant supply of oil, from planting, to fertilizing, to pesticides, to harvesting. So what happens if the supply of oil becomes sparse? What happens to the food supply? Prices skyrocket, and then food production crashes. Need more? Do you or anyone you know take prescription drugs on a regular basis? Not without oil you (or they) don't. What if you need those prescription drugs to survive? No oil, no meds (pharmaceuticals are petroleum based). Going further, it is not an overstatement to say that every facet of modern American life is fueled by and dependant upon an ample supply of oil. In the US in particular, the energy equation is thus, to an overwhelming degree: energy = oil; oil = energy. And if you don't believe that, then do some research and educate yourself, because you are currently in a state of ignorance.

Here's the problem, folks: Oil is a finite resource, and the world is running out of it. That's not to say that there's not any oil left: there is, and there always will be. But once oil production has hit a peak, the downslope is oil that is increasingly difficult and expensive to excavate, and oil that is of a less pure quality. The expense alone means a good deal of the oil on the backside of the peak will never be captured, and to try and do so would likely result in a net energy loss (it would take more energy to capture the oil than would be had from using it). So getting to the peak of oil production really is the key. And there is growing evidence that the peak has already been passed.

Many energy "experts" are making the claim that the globe has passed its oil production peak, including oilman T. Boone Pickens and energy consultant Matt Simmons (a Republican who used to work for Bush). Thom Hartmann, who wrote a terrific book about peak oil ("The End of Ancient Sunlight") predicts the price of oil will reach $100 per barrel by the end of THIS YEAR. He's not alone: Goldman Sachs has gone on record as saying oil prices could get as high as $150 per barrel. What happens if they are right? Simply put, economic collapse. There is no way, particularly with the enormous level of debt the US has, that the United States economy could withstand oil prices at or above $100 per barrel; likely not anything even close to that. The cost of everything, everything, would explode, and most people -- already in debt up to their eyeballs -- couldn't keep up. The result would be mass economic collapse. The peerless Mike Ruppert has already predicted as much, by THIS WINTER, on his outstanding website http://www.fromthewilderness.com

And now the head of Saudi Arabia has died. I was stunned to read someone in another post say this was "no biggie" because this fellow had essentially been out of commission for a decade. This is an absurd statement. Saudi Arabia has the largest oil surpluses in the world (or so Saudi Arabia says, but they won't allow independent verification of this), and the country is already unstable. Any change in the political landscape of Saudi Arabia, any change, is precarious. Check the current oil prices if you don't believe this. Additionally, if and when Saudi Arabian oil production has peaked -- and Matt Simmons says it already has -- a severe and permanent energy crisis descends upon the world. To visualize what this may be like, think of the movie "The Road Warrior". The premise of that post-apocalyptic film was a world desperately short of gasoline (oil). What a tragically prescient message "The Road Warrior" may have delivered.

Is there anything to be done to avoid an energy catastrophe? I believe there is, and that it's twofold: big conservation efforts and a full-bore investment into alternative, renewable energies. But it's up to progressives and independents to spread this message. Bush is well aware of the pending crisis, and is determined to deal with it militarily and to profiteer as much as possible along the way: this explains 9/11, the invasion of Iraq, and the compromised US elections of 2004 and before. In a word, the neocons have been consolidating power (illegally) so that they alone will have control as the dam breaks and America drowns. Many Republicans in this country are too ideological to think outside of the box the neocons have built for them, so they are a hopeless case. It's up to progressives and independents to save this country from what may, literally, be imminent demise. I'm trying to do my part by writing this post. What is your part going to be? Whatever it is, if you are going to act, DON'T HESITATE. Do it now because time is not on our side: time is now our enemy.

To reference the accuracy of statements presented here, do an Internet search for the terms "peak oil", and "matthew simmons and peak oil". Be sure to visit Mike Ruppert's site http://www.fromthewilderness.com. And for a stark look at peak oil and what it means, visit this site: http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/SecondPage.html

[BlueEyedSon]

1. FYI there is a peak oil group on DU

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=266

[PlayOn]

6. Didn't know that

Thanks for pointing it out. Sorry if I posted in the wrong place.

[brokensymmetry]

2. Is there anything to be done? Not really...

Maybe if we'd started working on the problem, an all-out effort, thirty years ago. Frankly, it's too late. We will see a die-off of about 5 billion people, and all which that implies.

If we got our act together, maybe (big maybe) we could soften the blow a little; frankly, I see no evidence that anything is being or will be done.

By all means, spread the word. But be ready for some very hard times.

[unschooler]

3. Welcome to DU, PlayOn. This board and the PO group will

scare you to death.

[PlayOn]

9. Thanks for the welcome

[newswolf56]

4. No analysis of the impact of "peak oil" is complete without...

noting that while we as individuals are powerless to do anything about it, we are precisely the ones who will bear all the murderous burden of the impending and now unavoidable economic collapse. This is because under Bush the United States has already effectively become a Third World oligarchy with the plutocrats totally isolated from the impending disaster and everyone else totally disempowered and hideously unprotected. We have already been flung back to a world of only two classes: plutocrats and proletarians. Thus our only power is the power of class consciousness and collective action.

This in turn means the only relevent ideology is -- once again (just as it was before the advent of the New Deal) -- Marx and Marxism. Alas, this time around there is no FDR: the ultimate question then is whether Marxist economic theories can be grafted onto American constitutional principles in a manner that avoids both the economic errors of the Soviet Union and the genocidal tyrannies characteristic of the U.S.S.R., China and the capitalist oligarchy itself. Indeed, given the ever-worsening, ever-more-vicious global oligarchy, it is increasingly clear that Marxist analysis offers the only hope for developing a humanitarian alternative to the planet-wide equivalents of neo-feudalism and neo-manorialism, whether sustained by Christian Fundamentalism (as in the West) or Islam (as in the East). If the answer to this question is "no" -- if no viable alternative can be found -- runaway capitalism will fling humanity into the bottomless cesspool of a permanent dark age that will make the post-Roman and Medieval horror-years look, by comparison, like a time of universal enlightenment and a planet-wide Eden. Indeed the present capitalist crisis was predicted by Marx 150 years ago.

[pstans]

5. There are things that you personally can do

1. Get a fuel efficient car. (a hybird or a Diesel and use Biodiesel)
2. Install flourescent light bulbs in your house. (for each flourescent bulb you put in it saves 500 lbs of coal.)
3. Plant a garden.
4. Make sure your house is well insulated.
5. Geothermal heating
6. Think about installing solar panels on your house or a solar-wind combo system.
7. Drive less. Move closer to where you work. Ride a bike. Walk to the store, etc.

Now none of this will make Peak Oil go away, but it will ease the effects on you personally.

[newswolf56]

7. Not to be offensive, because I don't mean it that way at all, but...

your response to me is typical of both the aristocratic attitude and the total lack of class-consciousness that is the main factor in the alienation of so many working-class people from today's Democratic Party and from the environmental movement as well. The resultant class divisions are precisely the reasons we-the-people have already lost this all-important struggle. Bottom line, each of your seven to-do items are impossible, all because I am part of the socioeconomic underclass. Specifically:

Item 1 -- impossible because the cost of hybrid vehicles is prohibitive; I live on a fixed income, am prohibited from returning to the workforce by age discrimination, and will thus never again in my life be able to afford a new automobile or indeed any vehicle less than 15 or 20 years old.

Item 2 -- impossible because I live in an apartment in subsidized project housing. Changing the light fixtures is prohibited by regulations, and tenants are allowed no voice whatsoever in the project's policies. (I am not even allowed the company of a dog, one of the great heartaches of my life.) Moreover, organizing the building around environmental issues (or any other progressive analysis) is impossible: most of my fellow tenants are so hopelessly reactionary, they defiantly refuse to recycle, this despite wholly adequate recycling facilities provided by law.

Item 3 -- impossible because (A) I live in a city in which the soil is everywhere too toxified by industrial pollution to ever allow the safe production of vegetables and (B) even if it were safe to eat locally city-grown vegetables, there is no place within my building where storage of the requisite tools would be allowed, much less storage of the necessary quantities of canned or frozen foods. (I am intimately familiar with gardening, having grown my own vegetables for more than 20 years; one of the great tragedies of my life was ouster from my country home: my gardens produced the equivalent of about $1,000 per year in fresh and frozen or canned vegetables. The loss of my country home not only means I will never garden again but that all my considerable knowledge of gardening, composting etc. has now been rendered forever useless.)

Item 4 -- impossible for reason (2).

Item 5 -- impossible for reason (2), also because in my area there is no such heating available, nor will there ever be: the requisite proximity to volcanoes imposes fatal risks.

Item 6 -- impossible for reason (2). If I still lived in the country, impossible because of the cost: $75,000-$80,000 for an average size house, obscenely far beyond the reach of anyone who is not definitively wealthy and therefore a member of at least the lower level of the oligarchy.

Item 7 -- impossible because of (A) extremely limited public transportation, in which a 45-minute grocery-shopping trip would become a five-hour expedition, but mostly because of (B) the infuriating local crime pattern, in which elderly Caucasians are specifically targeted by viciously predatory youth, thereby making waiting for a bus in many neighborhoods (including my own) dangerous even during daylight hours. (For reasons related to local politics and political correctness, the cops will not move against these criminals -- teens and young adults, gang-bangers all -- unless they actually kill someone, which seems to happen about once or twice a year. But after a half-dozen close-call incidents in as many weeks immediately after I moved here, I came to realize with genuine horror the risk is so grave I will not ever walk anywhere in this city again -- even in daylight. The pending economic crisis will no doubt radically worsen these risks.)

Welcome to the wonderful world of the impoverished, especially the impoverished elderly: given the realities of the Bush Administration and the infinitely malevolent capitalism it has rejuvenated and unleashed, the lot of people such as I will only worsen as long as these economics prevail. Were I still living in the country, I could survive most anything the economy threw at me, this by a combination of gardening, hunting and fishing, heating with wood, etc. In real country, even the poorest folk can survive, but in the city -- any city -- the impoverished are doomed. As for me, I am condemned to live the remainder of my life in a city: I am in my 60s and despite being in reasonably good health will never again have the financial means to move back to the country. I am also totally isolated due to the ugly, viciously ageist realities of urban sociology. Thus I too am doomed: this crisis if it unfolds as predicted will kill me, and there is nothing whatsoever I can do about its physical realities: capitalism has flung me into a prison from which there is no escape. Moreover, my circumstances are typical: most if not all of the urban poor are in exactly the same dire situation.



Edit: typo.

[pstans]

10. I still disagree with you

You underestimate your abilities. Your posts are very well written and intelligent. You are a smart person that seems to come across some hardtimes. I do not know much about your situation, but still think that you do have some choices.

First off it is sad to hear that where you live lacks any sense of community. If there is little hope to improve the community (neighborhood watch, volunteer at a school, create a community garden, get active in local politics like city councils or groups like DFA) then it doesn't seem like a good place to be living now or in the future. You say you lack the means to move back to rural life and are stuck in the urban area. Why not try a smaller town of less than 30,000 people. There is something in the middle, in terms of size, of an urban city and a rural country setting. Many smaller towns at least have a sense of community and available land to garden. Right now it seems your a little fish in a big pond, why not move to a smaller pond. You seem to be very intelligent and finding a place to work would not be a problem.

Concerning item 1: You can find diesel cars/trucks from the 1980's and run them on biodiesel. I searched for diesel cars on ebay and find quite a few for sale. However, living in an urban setting, finding biodisel might be tough.

Concerning item 5: Do a google search on Geothermal Heating. It does not require volcanos. I know people who have put them into their homes here in Iowa and we do not have volcanos. Geothermal heating is more expensive than regular heating, though there are tax incentives. Living in an apartment is an issue with this.

If life in this urban setting is so bad and there is so little hope now, what do you think it will be once Peak Oil really hits. When gas is $3 or $6 a gallon, natural gas to heat homes is running out, blackouts occure weekly, and the trucking industry is unable to transport our food and consumer goods around the nation?

[newswolf56]

12. The only urban community in which I've lived where the inhabitants...

were not hopelessly factionalized and thus effectively alienated from one another was New York City, specifically Manhattan (the Village and Chelsea), where there were strong, confrontative block associations -- the legacy of NYC's long history of radical socialism and labor activism. Elsewhere in America, as far as I have seen, urban neighborhood solidarity is but a fantasy. Though the barriers vary widely with the terrain: in Jersey the divisive factors were typically ethnic; in the South it was the self-imposed isolation of nuclear families; in many Pacific Northwest cities, the wedge issue is the conflict between the anti-gunners (who are truly hysterical, truly fanatical absolutists) and those who believe (as I do) in the right of armed self defense, which is guaranteed by state law. But the divisive issues here in my own neighborhood are age, class and money. This neighborhood is a very attractive, mostly upper-middle-class enclave of apartment-dwellers', but the occupants of my building -- low-income seniors -- are so ashamed of their comparatively low socioeconomic status they will not participate in any activity that requires they identify their address, lest they be marginalized on this basis alone. Hence they remain sullenly silent about neighborhood problems, even though the threat of assault not only keeps us from using mass transit but makes us virtual prisoners in our own apartments. The wealthier neighbors -- all much younger and therefore not such obviously easy prey -- are seldom bothered by the gang-bangers, no doubt in part because of legal concealed carry. (The gang-bangers seem intent only on inflicting injury and imposing fear on elderly Caucasians, never on commiting robbery -- their hatefully motivated sadism precisely what makes them so terrifying.) In any case, for the more affluent, this is merely a bedroom community. Their buildings often have 24-hour guards, their constant use of automobiles insulates them from the darker realities of the street, and most of all, their recreational activities take place elsewhere -- typically in protected and exclusive realms. The exquisitely beautiful city park that's close by has been effectively abandoned to the predators, even during daylight hours: the workers from nearby offices who walk it for lunch-hour exercise typically do so in groups of five or six and at the very least carry Mace. As to the well-being of the poorer residents in this neighborhood -- the people like us -- the better-off are haughtily indifferent; the politicians -- even Democrats -- simply don't give a damn.

As for me personally, I truly am trapped. Considerations of health insurance and supplemental income prevent me from leaving the state -- I could not obtain remotely comparable Medicare-plus insurance anywhere else (it even includes a regular work-out program at a local gym), and it is absolutely impossible for a person my age to find journalistic work in any area where he is not already reasonable well known, as I am here. But even here the work I get is minimal -- barely enough to supplement my pension to the point I can actually pay all my living expenses -- and I live from month to month in constant abject terror of the day my income is not sufficient to pay my bills. (One of the uglier truths about American capitalism, which very much includes American journalism, is that no matter one's talent or experience, age is the one absolutely impenetrable barrier -- especially if one is male.)

Small town living, which I enjoyed for a few extended periods when younger, would be impossible now for five reasons: no work (and no hope of ever getting work) in a small-town market; no affordable housing due to the wildly inflated rents and property values of the third most expensive housing market in the U.S., which extends inland all the way past the Cascades (the NYC and Frisco/LA housing markets are first and second); no affordable housing anywhere in the state outside the immediate Puget Sound area, this due to an absolute lack of subsidized projects and/or rent control (here, though it is a new and horribly sterile defacto prison, I pay less than half the prevailing local rentals and am protected by controlled rent, which means my landlord can't suddenly raise my rent 300 or 500 percent, which actually happens here in the regular economy); absolutely no mass transit at all in any of the smaller towns (a major consideration because the time will come when my automobile dies and I will probably not be able to afford to replace it); and lastly the fact that every small town in which I have ever lived has been dominated by malevolently intolerant Fundamentalist Christians who become hateful as soon as they learn I do not attend church and will not refrain from mowing my lawn or gardening or doing outside chores on Sundays; this may sound comical but I assure you the intolerance of Fundamentalist Christians whether in the small-town Pacific Northwest or the small-town South (where I have also lived) is vicious beyond belief. I am a good neighbor -- I lived in friendly cooperation and absolute harmony with my rural neighbors through most of two decades until a change of ownership evicted me from land and a cabin I had been promised was mine until death -- but I have no tolerance whatsoever for intolerance, especially the Yehvehistic kind that is ever more commonplace in the smaller towns.

As to preferred areas, my most favorite part of the U.S. away from the seacoast states is the Northern Michigan wilderness, probably only half as expensive as living here on Puget Sound. But the lack of work in Michigan (where I no longer have any connections whether professional, familial or social), and the reality that I cannot afford the ruinously expensive medical fees associated with unsupplemented Medicare -- much less pay the costs of moving -- make Michigan as forbidden as Eden itself.

(Sorry it took me so long to respond. I wasn't shining you off: my Internet server was down all most of last night.)

[PlayOn]

8. Good news?

I don't consider myself a pessimist or an optimist, but a pragmatist. I consider the information as I'm aware of it, and draw my conclusions as they seem appropriate. This is why I tend to believe peak oil is coming soon and is going to be a hard blow. Having said that, I've come across some information that disputes my perspective, and in the interests of fairness, I'm going to post links here to both sources. Something to bear in mind: the author of the first article, who's also the head of the institute that published the second article, is a trustee of the Brookings Institute (conservative "think" tank) and a member of the National Petroleum Council. Think he's got a pony in this race? In any event, I truly hope his perspective is correct. Let's have some community analysis of these essays and see whether there is in fact reason for optimism. Please provide your thoughts:

http://www.cera.com/news/details/1,2318,7533,00.html

http://www.cera.com/news/details/1,2318,7453,00.html

[newswolf56]

11. I have followed this issue for years as part of my newspaper career...

and am convinced not even the worst-case scenarios adequately describe what is happening -- and what will happen to the United States (and indeed the entire capitalist world) in the coming debacle. Thus -- on the basis of objective analysis (and even in the face of a desperate search for hope motivated by my own deadly vulnerabilities) -- I am absolutely pessimistic. Indeed my best hope is that I will die of natural causes before the crisis reaches the absolute economic nadir and human behavioral sink I anticipate.

The chief reason for my pessimism is that the combination of market forces and humanitarian aka New Deal politics that have protected the American economy (and to a some degree all non-Marxist industrial economies) are no longer even minimally functional. This is proven both by skyrocketing costs (not only of petroleum products but also of vital services like medical and dental care and even children's education) combined with wages that even as they increase in terms of their given currencies invariably decline in purchasing power. What is happening is the intensifying division of the non-Marxist world into two classes: a tiny ever-more-powerful oligarchy and a vast ever-more-oppressed working class, what classical Marxism labels "the proletariat" but which should more properly be described as anyone who is not part of the oligarchy -- that is, anyone with a mortgage and/or personal debt sufficiently large they would be ruined if their income were cut off. The cause of this crisis is not "normal" market forces or even "abnormal" conditions such as caused the Crash of 1929, but rather the deliberate, malicious concentration of (ultimately limited) wealth by an oligarchy that seeks (ultimately unlimited) control. Indeed it is this very concentration of wealth and power -- the oligarchy preparing itself to weather the coming story by any means necessary -- that convinces me the forthcoming horrors are unavoidable. Outsourcing -- that is, moving the means of production out of America and into countries where factories etc. can be more easily and ruthlessly protected by extreme violence and terror -- this is but another part of the process by which wealth is being deliberately siphoned from American workers and concentrated in the hands of the global oligarchy. Were these trends NOT so overwhelmingly evident, I would be at least a little optimistic. But the plutocrats, like rats, are already abandoning the (ever-more obviously) sinking ship of the U.S. economy.

There is also another irrefutable reason I am pessimistic. Unlike all other industrialized nations, the United States has steadfastly refused to invest adequately in public transport -- a betrayal in which most Democrats since President Lyndon Johnson are as guilty as the Republicans. The consequence of this ruinous act of class-traitorism is that America's ability to get to work, to school and even to the store is directly dependent on the price of petroleum. Once fuel becomes unaffordable -- and at $2.50 per gallon it is already triggering both a wave of personal economic crises and a national surge of bus-fare increases -- the nation will grind to a halt. If $60-per-barrel oil means $2.50 per gallon, $120-per-barrel oil will mean at least $5 per gallon -- probably $6 and maybe even $7 with the oil barons' predictable price-gouging. Nor is there any relief remotely possible -- not even in the long term. Land acquisition costs plus the costs of outsourced steel and outsourced technology make the construction of an adequate American public transport network -- that is, transport that runs on rails powered by electricity -- now and forever beyond the nation's reach. The government does not have the resources, and the oligarchy will never allow it to have the resources again. As a consequence, the only public transportation the U.S. will now EVER see is a steadily worsening, ever-more-slow, ever more broken-down bus system -- typical Third World transport for a workforce deliberately reduced to Third World stature. (Note: transportation writers, of whom I have been one, have been reporting on these matters since the 1960s. But only in a few great metropolises -- New York City and the like -- has adequate public transport ever been built. And now it is quite simply too late -- which means it will never be built. Never.)

Lastly I believe there are no longer any accidents in U.S. national politics -- that in fact there have been no accidents since the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Because of that belief, I believe oilman George Bush was elected specifically to prepare the United States for the forthcoming crisis: not prepare it as FDR or any other traditional Democrat might have (by ensuring the nation is governed for all its people and expanding its social services to cope with the forthcoming economic dislocation), but rather to prepare it by imposing the jackboot tyranny essential to "keep the workers in their place" -- that is, terrified, exploited, ever more under-paid and above all else disunited. This is the reason for the Republican/Christofascist alliance, it is the reason for the Patriot Act (which can as easily be used to suppress labor activism or economic protest as to halt Jihadist terrorism), it is above all the reason for the Bush Administration's unprecedented thrust toward theocracy: given the Fundamentalist Christian origins of capitalism (for which see Max Weber), a Fundamentalist theocracy is the perfect society in which to impose maximum capitalist exploitation. Thus Bush is neither a political accident nor a stupid ruler: I believe he is in fact the most diabolically subversive, ruthlessly authoritarian president in U.S. history, elected by the oligarchy for the precise purpose of undermining constitutional governance once and for all -- and thereby giving capitalism and all its innate viciousness free reign forever.

Alas -- because of the absence of class analysis combined with the profound American economic ignorance that results in the knee-jerk belief in "limitless" wealth -- far too few people see the proverbial handwriting on the metaphorical wall. They don't realize the oligarchy is hogging ever larger slices of an ultimately finite pie -- that skyrocketing oil prices are an expression of malignant greed, not shortages now or even in the immediate future. The greatest irony of all is that this terminal concentration of wealth and the resultant emergence of an unspeakable nightmarish world in which anyone not of the oligarchy is a defacto slave -- this is precisely what Marx himself predicted would bring about the end of capitalism: which shows how his analysis is useful even if incompletely developed to cope with human nature. But precisely because of Marxist influence, citizens of genuinely mixed economies like those in Europe will no doubt fare somewhat better; it is only in America that true horror will prevail. And given the authority now concentrated in federal hands by the Patriot Act and other such measures dating back to the early '90s, there is no longer even one scintilla of hope that liberation will ever be allowed to come from within. In fact I seriously doubt -- that is, if it appears the Democrats may genuinely take back Congress next year -- we will ever be permitted real elections again. As if to make the game interesting, however, the international deck contains a few Marxist wild cards, not the least of which is China. What an irony if China's people are eating three adequate meals a day even as our own folk grub through garbage cans desperately seeking to avoid starvation.