>On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Darryl McMahon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> There's an oil crisis? Maybe I don't understand the term. I hear the >> price is rising for liquid petroleum fuel products, but in a "free >> market" economy, that's not a crisis, it's an adjustment. > >Yes, unless I missed something, this is the idea of capitalism.... >why have laws to prevent speeding or having giant SUV's. when >capitalism at it's best (worst?) will eliminate those by itself when >gas reaches $10 or $20 a gallon. Of course, this will be a big shock >to our economy based on cheap fuel... sort of like when rabbit >populations climb and then crash in massive die offs because all the >food is gone. But, that's just what happens. We might want to think >that we as humans are smart enough to adjust their natural behaviour >in order to anticipate and transcend these boom and bust cycles that >rabbits are subject too.... but I'm starting to think not.... > >Z
It's the how-to-kill-a-mammoth problem. <http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/msg30628.html> [biofuel] Mammoth corporations There's no real oil crisis, or there's no shortage of oil anyway. There wasn't any shortage in 1973 either, though you might have had a hard time convincing the guys waiting in the queues of that. Then and now it's all about money, and with the same set of culprits (and it's not OPEC) - only five sisters now instead of seven then, but they're much bigger and richer. The anomaly is that nobody talks about the oil crisis despite all the panic over the food crisis, though the food crisis is just a spin-off of the oil non-crisis and it's just the same, all about money, no genuine shortage of supply, or not of production anyway, and with a few giant global corporations in control, all showing massive profits, and it's hurting people. With both oil and food (and gold) the price has been driven up mainly by market speculation, independent of supply factors or production costs. With the food crisis, at last people are finally starting to point the finger in that direction instead of shouting about shortages where there aren't any and blaming biofuels (agrofuels). Nothing good to be said about agrofuels, but it's not much of a factor in the food crisis, or not yet anyway. "The "market," at least as defined by agribusiness, isn't working. We "have a herd of market traders, speculators and financial bandits who have turned wild and constructed a world of inequality and horror," says Jean Ziegler, the UN's right-to-food advocate. But try telling that to the Bush Administration or to World Bank president (and former White House trade rep) Robert Zoellick, who's busy exploiting tragedy to promote trade liberalization. "If ever there is a time to cut distorting agricultural subsidies and open markets for food imports, it must be now," says Zoellick. "Wait a second," replies Dani Rodrik, a Harvard political economist who tracks trade policy. "Wouldn't the removal of these distorting policies raise world prices in agriculture even further?" Yes. World Bank studies confirm that wheat and rice prices will rise if Zoellick gets his way." -- The World Food Crisis, by John Nichols, April 25, 2008, The Nation http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/04/25/8523/ David Coia of the USA Rice Federation said there is no rice shortage in the US. "Global rice production will hit a record of 423 million tons in the 2007-2008 crop year, enough to satisfy global demand. The trouble is that only 7% of the world's rice supply is exported, because local demand is met by local production. Any significant increase in rice stockpiles cuts deeply into available supply for export, leading to a spike in prices. Because such a small proportion of the global rice supply trades, the monetary shock from the weak dollar was sufficient to more than double its price." -- Rice, death and the dollar, By Otto Spengler, Asia Times) http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JD22Dj01.html "Right on, Hugo. There is no shortage of food; it's just the prices that are making food unaffordable. ... Food and energy prices are sucking the life out of the global economy. Foreign banks and pension funds are trying to protect their investments by diverting dollars into things that will retain their value. That's why oil is nudging $120 per barrel when it should be in the $70 to $80 range. According to Tim Evans, energy analyst at Citigroup in New York, "There's no supply-demand deficit". None. In fact suppliers are expecting an oil surplus by the end of this year." -- Global Famine? Blame the Fed, by Mike Whitney http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19809.htm "It's time to stop worshiping at the alter of 'market forces'," says Anuradha Mittal in "Food Riots Erupt Worldwide", April 25, 2008: http://www.alternet.org/story/83457/ "Faced with the global financial crisis and the collapse of mortgage-based securities, investors are flocking to resource-based tangibles as a hedge against recession and the decline of the U.S. dollar. Hence gold is at record levels with oil keeping the same pace. How else to explain, for instance, the doubling of the price of rice in Asian markets in less than two months?" -- Crisis in Food Prices Threatens Worldwide Starvation - Is it Genocide?, by Richard C. Cook, 24/04/08 "GlobalResearch" http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19796.htm And so on. No shortage of oil, no shortage of food either. So it's a bubble, Wall Street types are saying that given a little time it'll burst, like the dot.com bubble or the housing bubble or whatever other bubbles that burst. Others are saying maybe it won't burst, or not soon anyway. I think they might be right. Why would it burst? Big Oil and Big Agriculture obviously like it just the way it is, and they hold all the cards, including Washington and the White House. If their bubbles do burst like the sub-prime mortgage bubble burst and things go bad for them probably the Fed will spend another few hundred billion US taxpayers' dollars to bail them out, compensate the culprits. Would the prices go down again then? Maybe they wouldn't. (Note that a few million taxpayers lost their homes and didn't get them back.) Meanwhile it's interesting how we sort of meandered off into discussing stuff like laws and how we can use less fuel. We were starting to sound a little like the faithful horse in "Animal Farm" after the pigs decided that all animals are equal but some are more equal than others, and each new crisis or scare or emergency the pigs engineered got the same response from the horse: "I will work harder." But the problem wasn't the work, it was the pigs. Chip said: "What I would suggest, is that the entire system be examined with a critical eye. very critical eye." Quite right. If the Big Oil and Big Ag corporations are really to be considered as corporate "persons", who (?) legally have more human rights than you or I do, then, judged as persons are judged, they've gone berserk. Unless they're reined in and brought under control millions or hundreds of millions of people are going to get hurt, to add to the hundreds of millions or billions who've already been hurt and had their lives and livelihoods destroyed by what neo-liberal economists and global corporations like to call the "free market". It's altogether a disaster. So what to do? Call your Congressman? Vote for Obama? :-) Best Keith _______________________________________________ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
