Mark,
Apologies for my unclarity.
I was noting that the corporate press--not you--are ignoring the system's
ever-climbing oil consumption versus OPEC's proposed drop-in-the-barrel
production increase of 800,000 b/d.
Comradely,
Seth
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [CrashList] World oil consumption
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2000 07:13:52 +0100
charset="Windows-1252"
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Seth wrote:
>the articles Mark Jones posted to
>Crashlist from the official sources deftly omit one big part of the global
>oil production story: World consumption of oil was 76 million barrels a
day
>during January-April 2000, an increase of eight million barrels a day
since
>1990, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). And the US?
Its
>oil consumption was a mere 19 million barrels per day during January-April
>2000 versus 17 million barrels in January-April 1990, according to the
IEA.
>
>Seems that concrete reality is a bit much for the official sources to
report
>to the public, eh?
>
Not only am I not "deftly omitting *rising* oil consumption", that's my
whole point! In article after article over many years, I've been arguing
that there is NO SUCH THING as 'virtualisation' of the economy, NO SUCH
THING as the so-called 'New Economy', Internet etc, actually REDUCING energy
consumption. We have been told time after time that energy is 'no longer
important' because it takes 'too small a percentage share of GDP to matter
any more'; we have been told that capitalist economies have become
'energy-efficient' and that energy input costs have become 'decoupled' from
economic growth and that energy is a 'declining part of each dollar unit of
GDP' etc. All lies! For a long time it was impossible even to get a hearing
(but people like Doug Henwood and Carrol Cox are now more clearly revealed
as ostriches). The truth was that (a) oil was AND IS indispensable to modern
economies, (b) oil is a highly finite resource; (c) oil is irreplaceable,
and the so-called 'alternatives' (wind, PVs, biomass etc) are just hoaxes;
(d) oil supply would start to peak and decline after 2000.
And the truth WAS AND IS that capitalism cannot exist WITHOUT GROWTH: it is
a grow-or-die society, and that too is what I've repeatedly been saying, and
I've been pointing to the simple fact that when energy deficits bite,
capitalism will almost INSTANTLY enter crisis, and depending on what happen
s next, that crisis can be final, ie, can result in a catatsrophic economic
slump, followed by wars, mass dieoffs and more besides.
_________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at
http://profiles.msn.com.
_______________________________________________
Crashlist resources: http://website.lineone.net/~resource_base
To change your options or unsubscribe go to:
http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/crashlist
