E Coyle:
>Michael Klare is a populizer of peak oil and doesn't know much about
>the oil biz.
Klare may be a vulgar popularizer (and a vulgar analyst of capitalist
geopolitics too), but he has a point or three here. Nothing being reported
in the business press about the "staying of peak oil" is necessarily at
odds with the more sophisticated versions of the thesis (as opposed to
the simplistic Hubbert's Curve trend lines). Relative supply constraints
(among other factors) drive higher prices. Higher prices eventually engenders
more adventurous field exploration/development and more efficient extraction
technologies. But all the while the secular tendency is toward smaller
EROEI ratios. Of course this tendency is periodically buffeted by the ways
in which high prices induce demand destruction (accumulation slowdown,
conservation, product substitution, etc.) But the ensuing low prices also
lead to a (time-lagged) slowing of the exploration/discovery projects and
extraction innovations needed to address the relative supply constraints.
None of what Klare writes (I've never been a huge fan of his, BTW) is
inconsistent with this, although he himself may not fully grasp it. Despite
his over-amped apocalypticism, Mark Jones got it.
[PS I am glad that we have passed the stage where mere _recognition_ of
peak oil and climate change somehow implies a certain kind of politics. That
was always absurd, as if merely recognizing higher divorce rates makes one
a family values Republican, or merely recognizing rising wealth/income
inequality
makes one a redistributionist social democrat. Peak oil and climate change are
only socially produced and epistemologically mediated realities, like any other
normal part of the political landscape... NOT banners of political affiliation.
An elementary observation, perhaps, but a critical one as we move into an era
where (more or less well-grounded) global warming alarmism becomes
systematically
tethered to the project of capitalist climate managerialism).]
[PPS Don't get me wrong here... I am not endorsing the extreme and crude
versions
of the peak oil thesis, although not so long ago I strayed embarrassingly close
to that position... which now gets me thinking post-modern cliches about the
situatedness of knowledge]
J Gulick
Ansan, South Korea
_________________________________________________________________
Bing brings you health info from trusted sources.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=pet+allergy&form=MHEINA&publ=WLHMTAG&crea=TXT_MHEINA_Health_Health_PetAllergy_1x1
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
