A PEAK UNDER THE COVERS
by Jay Hanson 11/11/97
I'm sure of this much, though: If you're looking for a
straight word on global warming, the last people to
ask are oil companies, auto manufacturers, electric
companies or the politicians they hire. They would
pump carbon monoxide into maternity wards if they
could make a buck at it without getting sued.
-- Donald Kaul, Tribune Media Services
in the 10/27 Orlando Sentinel
IF the corporations only can be stopped by human die off,
THEN the corporations will be stopped by human die off.
-- Jay's Theorem
. . .
It is said that politics makes strange bedfellows. This is never
so apparent as when President Clinton -- the president of the
most environmentally destructive government on Earth -- expresses
concern over global warming:
"Make no mistake, the [threat of global warming] is real. If we
do not change our course now, the consequences sooner or later
will be destructive for America and the world."
Experience in American politics teaches us that government NEVER
acts for publicly stated reasons. Instead, EVERY political
action is motivated by hidden agendas,[1] and is designed to
reward political friends or punish enemies. Then, once the plan
is ready to go, plausible, approval-winning reasons are cooked-up
and fed to the public. Let's speculate a bit on what might be
really going on "under the covers".
_______________________________
AMERICAN POLITICAL FUNDAMENTALS
I see the White House is like a subway -- you
have to put in coins to open the gates.
-- Johnny Chung (1997)
America's so-called political system is based on money. BIG
CORPORATE MONEY now owns the best government that money can buy.
Presidents are NOT elected because they give a damn about either
environment or posterity; they are elected because BIG MONEY
wants them elected so BIG MONEY can make even more BIG MONEY.
The obvious question is "Which BIG MONEY interests want President
Clinton to curtail our present energy orgy because of concern
over global warming?"
If that's the right question, then aside from the BIG INSURANCE
COMPANIES, it seems unbelievable that ANY individual BIG MONEY
interests would WANT to end our present energy orgy. (Remember
that this would abruptly curtail the economists' shop-till-you-
drop theory of salvation.)
So the obvious question is obviously not the right one. The next
possibility is an energy issue that ALL BIG MONEY interests are
deeply concerned about -- so concerned, that they are even
raising the possibility of reducing energy consumption.
I think I spotted it. I think BIG MONEY sees an apparition so
terrible that neither governments nor oil companies are allowed
to even breathe the word: PEAK.
_______________________________________
GLOBAL OIL PRODUCTION IS GOING TO PEAK!
40 years ago, geologist M. King Hubbert developed a method
for projecting future oil production and predicted that oil
production in the lower-48 states would peak about 1970. This
prediction has proved to be remarkably accurate. Both total and
peak yields have risen slightly compared to Hubbert's original
estimate, but the timing of the peak and the general downward
trend of production were correct.
Global oil production will begin to "peak" when approximately
half of the "Estimated Ultimately Recoverable" oil has been
recovered:
"For many years geologists and oil companies have published
estimates of the total amount of crude oil that will ultimately
be recovered from the earth over all time. Remarkably, these
assessments of Estimated Ultimately Recoverable (EUR) oil have
varied little over the past half century.
[MacKenzie, http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/eur-oil.html ]
In his new book, THE COMING OIL CRISIS,[2] C. J. Campbell makes
two points very convincingly:
#1: That global conventional oil production is going to "peak"
within very few years: "At the time of writing in late 1996,
there are still three more years to go until the end of the
transition." [p. 59]
#2: That energy experts have known it for a long time: "Already
by 1908, the world's largest petroleum system, the Middle
East, with about forty percent of the world's ultimate
endowment, had been found". [p. 77]
Of course, Americans won't be surprised at the cover-up because,
well, it's just another "gate". I am calling this one
FOSSILEGATE.
The coming PEAK remains a heavily guarded secret because if it
became widely known, the stock market would hit the cellar --
permanently:
"The global price of oil after the supply crunch should follow
the simplest economic law of supply and demand: There will be
a major increase in crude oil and all other fuels' prices,
accompanied by global hyperinflation, rationing, etc. After the
associated economic implosion, many of the world's developed
societies may look like today's Russia. The United States may be
competing with China for every tanker of oil, with the Persian
Gulf oil exporters preferring Chinese rockets to American paper
dollars for their oil." [Ivanhoe, http://dieoff.org/page90.htm ]
So BIG MONEY's big question becomes "How do you convince Joe
Sixpack to accept drastic energy cuts -- and a drastic cut in
our all-time favorite euphemism: 'standard of living' -- without
scaring him out of the stock market and into a depression?"
Guess what?
_____________________________
GLOBAL WARMING TO THE RESCUE!
Don't get me wrong! I believe that global warming is actually
occurring, and that we should do something about it. But
corporations won't, indeed, can not cut profits over concern for
humanity's future. If they did, the stockholders would sue the
corporate officers. In fact, corporations are specifically
designed to convert the entire planet -- and its inhabitants --
into industrial garbage.
If one needs an example of a corporate concern for humanity,
tobacco companies provide the best. Cigarette smoking causes
about 435,000 American deaths each year. During the last 40
years, roughly 17 million Americans have been killed by tobacco
smoke while tobacco companies have pocketed something like a
thousand billion dollars:
"Realistically, if our Company is to survive and prosper, over
the long term we must get our share of the youth market. In my
opinion, this will require new brands tailored to the youth
market." -- R.J. Reynolds
[http://www.tobacco-litigation.com/states/statfile/Utah.htm ]
And in 1938, Ford had a better idea:
"Ford was also active in Nazi Germany's prewar preparations. In
1938, for instance, it opened a truck assembly plant in Berlin
whose "real purpose," according to U.S. Army Intelligence, was
producing "troop transport-type" vehicles for the Wehrmacht.
That year Ford's chief executive received the Nazi German Eagle
(first class)...."
[http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/greenwash/ford_nazi.html ]
Corporations are designed so they can't be concerned about
humanity, but they are certainly concerned about their own
financial survival -- they need to remain viable long enough to
see it through to the very end. In other words, the corporations
have to hold the economic system together long enough to kill the
last of the endangered species, dam the last river, chop down the
last tree, addict the last human to booze and cigarettes, catch
the last fish, pump the last drop of oil out of the ground,
pollute the last bit of the groundwater, and so on ...
So that's a PEAK under the covers: FOSSILEGATE. It's true,
politics DOES make strange bedfellows.
Jay
------------------------------------------------------------
[1] For a fascinating account of how American government operates
in the black, read VICTORY: The Reagan Administration's Secret
Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union,
by Peter Schweizer; Grove/Atlantic, 1996; ISBN 0871136333
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0871136333/7316-8640065-053141
[2] Campbell's is the best book BY FAR on oil depletion, read
THE COMING OIL CRISIS, by C. J. Campbell;
Multi-Science Publishing Company & Petroconsultants, 1997
ISBN 0906522110
See a review and order it now from Amazon books:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0906522110/3088-4711339-639335
Also visit these sites
OIL AS A FINITE RESOURCE:
When Is Global Production Likely to Peak?, by James J. MacKenzie
This great web site has been moved and reformatted!
http://www.wri.org/wri/climate/finitoil/
The M. King Hubbert Center for Petroleum Supply Studies
publishes a regular newsletter about the depletion of fossil
fuel. See: http://hubbert.mines.edu/
My FOSSILGATE http://dieoff.org/page122.htm
=================================================================
PLEASE UPDATE YOUR BOOKMARKS!
All of my files at http://csf.colorado.edu/authors/hanson/
have been moved to http://dieoff.org
I have added several new pages to my web index at:
http://dieoff.org/page1.htm
If you want to be automatically notified when a web page changes,
see: http://www.netmind.com/URL-minder/
. . .
If civil society has any chance at all to survive the coming
century (damned unlikely), it involves setting aside fairy tales
left over from the 18th century Enlightenment -- it involves
understanding the true nature of humans and learning to govern
for the common good. The key to our collective survival lies
in the new discipline of Evolutionary Psychology.
See "Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer" at:
http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/cep/primer.htm
It is not uncommon for right-wing authors to either misunderstand
or just plain lie about controversial issues. One of the MOST
controversial of our times -- and most lied about by both Left
and Right -- has been The Club of Rome's LIMITS TO GROWTH.
The book is now out of print but here is a synopsis:
http://194.126.129.33/globis_develop_cont1.htm
[And NO, the LIMITS TO GROWTH scenarios weren't wrong, they
ARE coming true.]
For daily environmental news, see:
http://www.enn.com/directory.htm
For a great, mostly-scientific, mostly-toxics newsletter, see:
http://www.monitor.net/rachel/
**************************************************************
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