The New York Times wrote: >> Oil Industry Sets a Brisk Pace of New Discoveries >> By JAD MOUAWAD
Michael Klare wrote: > As it happens, though, anyone who jumped to the conclusion that this field > could quickly or easily add to the nation's oil supply would be woefully > mistaken.... Thus, I put a question mark in the subject line of this thread. As I've said before, I think that if we are actually encountering peak oil, that's a _good thing_. We need to stop burning oil as soon as possible, in order to slow, stop, and reverse the global warming process. I'm hoping that Klare is right about a trend toward increasing per-barrel cost of extracting petroleum over time, while also hoping that this cost is reflected in the market price of oil (discouraging its purchase and use). I hope that all fossil fuels (coal, natural gas, etc.) suffer the same fate. On a theoretical level, the standard peak oil scenario goes back to David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus: the world population grows and grows and hits diminishing marginal returns in extraction of minerals from nature. (For these economists, it was agriculture using up the natural fertility of the soil). Thus, the economy settles down into a miserable "stationary state" due to natural constraints. A modern leftist version of this theory might blame capitalism instead of population growth, saying that capitalism inherently acts like a toddler, always testing limits and going beyond them: touching the burner on the stove, being burned, being chastised, but then trying again, or trying some new dangerous behavior.[*] This is a cyclical theory rather than one about long-term trends, however: the resulting rise in the price of oil not only discourages the utilization of oil (e.g., by raising the efficiency of its use or development of substitutes for it, such as natural gas) but encourages further development of new and cheaper ways to extract it. Any recession that results from higher oil prices (or from any other cause) would also reduce demand. This reaction to the high price of oil would cause a fall in its price, encouraging a movement into a new "let's burn a lot of oil" boom. Thus, we would see a cycle, one I haven't seen in doomsday scenarios about peak oil. As far as I can tell, the emphasis is on Malthus/Ricardo stationary states with a different culprit than population. To my mind, Marx would have had a different emphasis, following his dictum that "the real barrier of capitalist production is capital itself" (emphasis suppressed). It's not only that capitalism always leaps beyond barriers, leading to (almost always temporary) destruction. In addition, the nature of unfettered or neoliberal capitalism does not only involve the abuse of labor (when it doesn't face resistance) but also the progressive destruction of nature, as with global warming. In mainstream economic terms, the problem is that the "price system" of markets does not deal with external costs (pollution) well at all: in fact, markets encourage pollution because purchasers of polluting products do not pay the full cost. In addition, the costs of reversing pollution's typically exceed the benefits of its creation. Making matters worse, these costs are usually paid by a different group of people -- the working class, taxpayers in general -- than the group who reap the benefits. Instead of seeing merely a cyclical story of rising and falling oil prices, in this view, the process of destroying the earth is more of a trend -- unless there is some sort of government action. Whether or not this action actually reverses the trend -- or reverses it without the working class and other subordinate groups bearing all of the costs -- depends on what we do, i.e., what popular struggles we see on the political, economic, and societal levels. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. [*] Speaking of which, I spoke to a student who had had _two_ "texting while driving" accidents (while there was a story about a much more serious case of this phenomenon recently on US National Public Radio). Two? why didn't she learn from the first accident? It's probably because texting is addictive (for some people, at least). Capitalism's "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" expansionism seems to mirror the self-destructive behavior of an addict. Of course, one reason it does so is because of capitalist hopes and expectations that the costs can be shoved off on the working class and other dominated groups or on nature. BTW, if there has been an increase in individual addictive behavior in recent decades (something I perceive), maybe it's because, in this neoliberal age, people have been taking capitalism's systemic behavior to heart and are imitating it. If we're all supposed to be capitalists (ahem -- "entrepreneurs"), we should act that way, while blaming ourselves for any failure to attain that exalted status. Such failure encourages addiction, too, as a way to kill the pain. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
