“As recently as
a few years ago, only two groups of people were interested in the arid subject
of oil depletion. The first was Texas oil moguls and their lobbyists who roamed
the halls of Congress searching out ever juicier tax breaks from our elected
representatives. The second was a tiny group of cranks and conspiracy theorists
who not only wrote for Scientific American
but also frequented the sparsely inhabited corners of the Internet and begged
the world to pay attention to the obscure topic of “peak oil”—whether the world
wanted to pay attention or not. Fast forward to 2005, and the oil moguls
haven't changed much. The peak oil cranks, on the other hand, are cranks no
longer. In fact, they've practically become rock stars. Half a dozen books on
the subject have come out in the last two years, and magazines from Rolling Stone to National Geographic also have published
articles on the subject. The “end of oil” is suddenly a hot topic.” (Drum, Crude
Awakening, see below)
This week the US
Congress debates yet another version of an Energy bill, this time including the
opposition party in the planning process, but still 80% of it favoring
traditional fossil fuel industries, proving they still don’t get it. Today I watched Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) complain that the
Cantwell Amendment, which proposes to reduce foreign exports by 40% by 2025, would be a ‘back door’ attack
on CAF� standards. Defending the
auto industry’s fear of increased CAF� standards is the equivalent today of
insisting tobacco doesn’t kill. This backwardness partially explains why GM and
Ford rated ‘junk bond status’.
Nevertheless, even
if a comprehensive national renewable energy program ala the Manhattan Project
was launched today, we still wouldn’t avoid an energy crises: all current remedies
are on a five and ten-year cycle. Thus, it’s wise to look past the political
rhetoric and discuss reasonable measures we should be taking to minimize the
damage and changes to our economy and way of life.
Following this
commentary are some new and classic readings on this subject, in addition to
downloads. KwC
$4 A Gallon
by Michael Ventura,
Austin Chronicle, April 29, 2005
America is over. America is like Wile E.
Coyote after he's run out a few paces past the edge of the cliff – he'll take a
few more steps in midair before he looks down. Then, when he sees that there's
nothing under him, he'll fall. Many Americans suspect that they're running on
thin air, but they haven't looked down yet. When they do ...
Former Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, a pillar of the
Establishment with access to economic information beyond our reach, wrote
recently: "Circumstances seem to me as
dangerous and intractable as any I can remember. ... What really concerns me is
that there seems to be so little willingness or capacity to do anything about
it" (quoted in The Economist, April 16, p.12). Volcker chooses
words carefully: "dangerous and intractable," "willingness or
capacity." He's saying: The situation is probably beyond our powers to
remedy.
Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China,
the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2
billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her
neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing ("Benson's Economic and Market
Trends," quoted in Asia Times Online) – so we have no cards to play with
China, even militarily. (You can't war with the bankers who finance your army
and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand,
and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon
by next spring, and rising – $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts.
Their economy can afford it; ours can't. We may hobble along with more or less
the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4
America changes. Drastically.
The "exburbs" and the rural poor will feel it first and hardest.
Exburbians moved to the farthest reaches of suburbia for cheap real estate,
willing to drive at least an hour each way to work. Many live marginally now.
What happens when their commute becomes prohibitively expensive, just as
interest rates and inflation rise, while their property values plummet? Urban
real estate will go up, so they won't be able to live near their jobs – and
there's nowhere else to go. In addition, thanks to Congress' recent shameless
activity, bankruptcy is no longer an option for many. What happens to these
people? Exburb refugees. A modern Dust Bowl.
For the rural poor it's even worse. They are the poorest among us, with no
assets and few skills; they earn the lowest nonimmigrant wages in America, and
they must drive. When gas hits $4, their already below-the-margin life will be
unsustainable. They'll have no choice but to be refugees and join in the modern
Dust Bowl migration. So, too, will people who live where people were never
intended to live in such numbers – places like Phoenix and Vegas, unlivable
without air conditioning and water transport (energy prices will rise across
the board, regular brownouts, blackouts, and faucet-drips will be "the new
normal" everywhere). In the desert cities, real estate will plunge,
thousands will be ruined, most will leave – while all over the country folks
will have to get used to "hot" and "cold" again.
But where will the new refugees go, and what will they do when they get there?
They will migrate to the more livable cities, where rents are already
unreasonable and social services are already strained, and where the new
refugees will compete with immigrants for the lowest-level housing and jobs.
Immigration issues will intensify to hysteria. Native-born Americans will
clamor for work that only legal and illegal aliens do now. In a culture as
prone to violence as ours, that will probably get ugly.
Meanwhile, suburbs and cities will be in
various states of chaos, depending on their infrastructure. As inflation and
interest rates rise, and the real estate bubble bursts, millions will see their
assets plunge precipitously. In five years, many who are now well-off will live
as the marginal live today, while the marginal will sink into poverty. With gas
at $4-plus a gallon, real estate values will depend on nearness to working
centers and access to transportation. As has already happened in Manhattan, the
well-off will head for what are now slums, and the slum-dwellers will go
God-knows-where. Places with decent rail service will be prime. Places without
rail service will be in deep trouble.
One key to America's future will be: How quickly can we build or rebuild heavy
and light rail? And where will we get the money to do it? Railroads are the
cheapest transport, the easiest to sustain, and the only solution to a
post-automobile America. (For reasons I haven't space to detail, hybrid cars
and alternative energy won't cut it, if by "cut it" one means
retaining anything like the present standard of living. See James Howard
Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" on Rolling Stone's Web site. Also
check Mike Ruppert's site www.fromthewilderness.com and the documentary The End
of Suburbia.) A massive investment in railroad infrastructure could offer jobs
to the unskilled and skilled alike, absorb much of the inevitable population
displacement, and create a new social equilibrium 10 or 15 years down the line.
Old RR cities like Grand Junction, Colo.; Amarillo, Texas; and Albuquerque,
N.M., could become vital centers, offering new lives for the displaced.
Railroads are key, but the question is: how to finance them?
There's only one
section of our economy that has that kind of money: the military budget. The
U.S. now spends more on its military than all other nations combined. A sane
transit to a post-automobile America will require a massive shift from military
to infrastructure spending. That shift would be supported by our bankers in
China and Europe (that is, they would continue to finance our debt) because
it's in their interests that we regain economic viability. What's not in their
interests is that we remain a military superpower.
And that's where things get really interesting. The question becomes:
Can America face reality? If the government
responds to the coming changes by attempting to remain a superpower no matter
what, there is no way to underestimate the harm. The numbers speak for
themselves. Soon we'll no longer have the resources to remain a military
superpower and sustain a livable society that is anything like what we know
today. It happened
to England; it happened to Russia; it's about to happen to us. England
sustained the transformation more or less gracefully; it lost its dominance
while retaining its essential character. Russia is still in a period of
transformation, but has remained a player thanks to its oil reserves. Europe in
general – France, Germany, Italy, and Spain (all world powers in the fairly recent
past) – is creating a post-national society, the most experimental form of
governance since America's revolution. We have no appreciable oil, and we no
longer have a manufacturing base. So what will the United States do? Sanely
recognize its declining status and act accordingly, or make one last ignoble
stab to retain its position by force?
Half a century ago James Baldwin wrote: "Confronted
with the impossibility of remaining faithful to one's beliefs, and the equal
impossibility of becoming free of them, one can be driven to the most inhuman
excesses." Americans believe they're "No. 1,"
destined to lead the world. That is the America that's over. If we insist on
that illusion, then this world is in for tough times. We will neither hold on
to what we have nor create what we might have, but we will wreak untold harm
(if we don't destroy the species altogether). Or we can face and embrace
reality. And that reality is: There is no such thing as "No. 1" ...
there is no such thing as an ideal destined country that is better than any
other ... there is only us, doing the best we can, trying to live free and
sanely, within limits that are about to become only too clear. Our glory days
are done. What's next?
Remember, we're not talking about the far future. We're talking about the next
decade.
No country gets two centuries anymore. The 21st will be China's century. That's
what $4-plus a gallon means, and nothing can stop it. So: How will we change?
But the question "How will we change?" is really the question
"How will I change?" Because history isn't a spectator sport. It's you and me. Everything depends on
whether we side with reality or illusion. Face reality, and we have a chance.
Cling to illusion, and we are lost. The America we've known is over – very soon. The America we
can create is up to us.
Copyright
� 1995-2005 Austin Chronicle Corp
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C.
Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research
and educational purposes. Information Clearing House has no affiliation
whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is Information Clearing
House endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)
article found at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8804.htm
Original at Austin Chronicle http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-04-29/cols_ventura.html
Also See
BP says global oil reserves growth stalled in
2004 http://www.energybulletin.net/6766.html
US Mayors agree (unanimously) to adhere to Kyoto pact http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/science/AP-Mayors-Kyoto-Protocol.html
New Apollo Energy Act contrasts sharply with ‘Jurassic’
GOP energy bill http://www.apolloalliance.org/apollo_in_the_news/archived_news_articles/2005/05_18_05_grist.cfm
Schoen: Can Saudi Arabia keep its
promise to pump more oil? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8217587/
The Next 50 Years: Four European Energy
futures http://www.energybulletin.net/6752.html
Yale poll reveals overwhelming public desire
for energy policy; less foreign imports and more clean
energy options http://www.energybulletin.net/6672.html
A Few Related Readings
Campbell: The Second Great Depression:
financial consequences of Peak Oil
http://www.energybulletin.net/newswire.php?id=5944
Drum: Crude Awakening. “The only hope for meeting growing world demand
for oil, say experts, is to tap Saudi Arabia's reserves. A Bush advisor on
energy says those reserves don't exist. Reviews M. Simmons’ new book, Twilight in the Desert. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0506.drum.html
Klare: The
intensifying global struggle for Energy http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0509-21.htm
Little: Esprit de Gore. The
VP is transforming into a fiery climate evangelist http://www.grist.org/news/muck/2005/06/09/little-gore/
Kunstler: The Long Emergency
The
successful regions in the twenty-first century will be the ones surrounded by
viable farming hinterlands that can reconstitute locally sustainable economies
on an armature of civic cohesion. Small towns and smaller cities have better
prospects than the big cities, which will probably have to contract
substantially. The process will be painful and tumultuous. In many American
cities, such as Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, that process is already well
advanced. Others have further to fall. New York and Chicago face extraordinary
difficulties, being oversupplied with gigantic buildings out of scale with the
reality of declining energy supplies. Their former agricultural hinterlands
have long been paved over. They will be encysted in a surrounding fabric of
necrotic suburbia that will only amplify and reinforce the cities' problems.
Still, our cities occupy important sites. Some kind of urban entities will
exist where they are in the future, but probably not the colossi of
twentieth-century industrialism.
Some
regions of the country will do better than others in the Long Emergency. The Southwest will suffer in proportion to the degree that it prospered during
the cheap-oil blowout of the late twentieth century. I predict that Sunbelt
states like Arizona and Nevada will become significantly depopulated, since the
region will be short of water as well as gasoline and natural gas. Imagine
Phoenix without cheap air conditioning.
I'm
not optimistic about the Southeast, either, for different reasons. I think it will be subject to
substantial levels of violence as the grievances of the formerly middle class
boil over and collide with the delusions of Pentecostal Christian extremism.
The latent encoded behavior of Southern culture includes an outsized notion of
individualism and the belief that firearms ought to be used in the defense of
it. This is a poor recipe for civic cohesion.
The Mountain States and Great Plains will
face an array of problems, from poor farming potential to water shortages to
population loss. The Pacific Northwest, New
England and the Upper Midwest have
somewhat better prospects. I regard them as less likely to fall into
lawlessness, anarchy or despotism and more likely to salvage the bits and
pieces of our best social traditions and keep them in operation at some level.
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0413-28.htm
Ruppert: Hubbert’s
Peak Revisited http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062104_berlin_peak.html
Check out Endnotes here.
Resources
Apollo Alliance http://www.apolloalliance.org/
Energy Bulletin http://www.energybulletin.net/index.php
Flash, PDF, PPT Downloads http://www.e-design.squarespace.com/pop-files/
