Michael Perelman wrote: > > Proven reserves are very unreliable. That point seems to be key to the new Out of > Gas book. He asserts that the production curve is a lagged reserves curve. > > Just as we cannot predict the future based on a couple of data points of GDP or > unemployment, the NYT article is only a suggestion of a problem, not confirmation of > anything.
The material facts regarding oil depletion, global warming, mercury poisoning of the seas, have _never_ been a central issue except in the thought of those who cannot or who refuse to think politically. And thinking politically involves NOT "What should the government(s) do?" But "How can those who recognize the 'facts' achieve political power to do something about it?" How can 'we' achieve political power? Then the question becomes: In what way does knowledge of the future of oil contribute to achieving political power? And my answer to that question is, it does _not_. At a certain point environmentalist politics (or what one might call 'futurist' or 'predictive' politics) hit a wall, in the sense of being unable to achieve additional mass support. And that support by itself is not sufficient, or even close to sufficient, either to have the needed impact on capitalist states or to overthrow those states. In this key political sense, environmentalist (or what I am here calling 'predictive') politics resemble conspiracism: they have no 'bite' outside some theoretical courtroom where all the facts can be presented to a fixed judge and jury. One could compare also the bizarre debate among 'soft' leftists about the desirability or undesirability of an immediate u.s. withdrawal from Iraq. Their various suggestions (U.N. replacement of U.S. troops, etc.) have as much political bite as predictions of global warming or of economic collapse from oil depletion. The discussion of whether Mark Jones was correct or not in his analysis of oil is, then, a purely academic discussion. Carrol
