John Gulick,
In your PS you describe your point that
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.
as an "elementary observation." Elementary or not, it is a critical
one, as you note. Many on the left have made the incorrect conclusion
that "peak oil" advocates are also leftists. My own judgement is that
most are apolitical. What the rest are is difficult to discern.
Gene Coyle
On Sep 28, 2009, at 7:46 PM, John Gulick wrote:
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
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