Jed Rothwell wrote:
[Please respond to Vortex!]
Edmund Storms wrote:
2. To discourage the development of alternative energy source.
See the book "The Prize" for details.
Yes, these are the arguments of the past. The question is do they still
apply.
No, they do not, because there is now a permanent, worldwide shortage of oil.
The problem can only be fixed the way the whale oil shortage was fixed, by
finding a replacement resource.
After all, this would mean you would also get less selling to China .
That is exactly my point. If they lower the price to help Bush, they
also get less from China. China is not hurting and would gladly pay the
price.
Yup. Good point.
and sell it as quickly as they can, before someone invents a cheaper
alternative. Sooner or later, it will be worth nothing.
Yes, eventually this will be true, but not in the life time of anyone
living today. In spite of a wish for a better attitude, the present
energy industries will fight any effort to change the present source of
energy at every turn.
This reminds me of what businessmen said back in 1980: IBM will always dominate the computer industry,
and Mother Bell will always dominate the phone business. They thought of IBM as a force of nature. They
said that even the Justice Dept. anti-trust lawsuits could not hurt these two behemoths, so what chance
do other business have? By the year 2000, IBM was a shell of its former self, and AT&T was gone.
You may be right that "oil will not be replaced in the life time of anyone living today" but
if history is any guide, it may also be replaced by 2015. Change sometimes moves though industry much
faster than people anticipate. Oil based transportation is one of the obsolete industries on record. It
was overdue for a change back in 1960. It has "vulnerable" written all over it. If GM does
not start making hybrid cars it will be bankrupt in a few years.
Energy industries and the like are powerful and wealthy, but they can be
defeated by market forces or the public. They can be defeated overnight, and
bankrupted in a few years. Back in 1900 the railroads owned the Congress and
more or less ran the nation to their own advantage. People said they were
all-powerful and impossible to control Then in 1908 Ford began manufacturing
the Model T and by the late 1920s every railroad was on the skids. Their
political power evaporated. They never recovered. If someone invents a better
battery today, and Toyota, Mitsubishi or the Chinese Cherry automobile company
starts selling viable electric cars, the oil industry will be defunct in 5 or
10 years. The Chinese plan to start selling $6,000 automobiles in the U.S. If
they sell electric cars and hybrids for one-third the cost of Ford and GM cars,
how long do you suppose Ford and GM will survive? They will gone as quickly as
Data General and DEC vanished after personal computers were intro
duced.
I have some books of predictions from the late 19th century. People then thought we would still be using sailing ships in the year 2000, and horse transportation, and a host of other things that were gone by 1920. They also predicted that race war was inevitable and that all U.S. native Americans and black people would be killed off by the year 2000. This kind of prediction was printed in a matter-of-fact way in major newspapers back then. It wasn't pessimistic; people thought that killing other races was a good idea, just as they thought we should exterminate the buffalo. They said it would improve the nation. H. G. Wells and many other prominent people advocated race genocide. People tend to make dire predictions about the future, and to expect the worst, or the most dramatic outcome. We did not commit genocide after all, and perhaps now, in this era, we will avoid a depression and global warming and the other horrible things we fear. Perhaps in 20 years we will make oil
obsolete, even without cold fusion. Technically this would not be difficult. I
am sure that we can avoid these things, if only we have the will and the wisdom
to act. Our ancestors were wise enough to stop the Indian wars after Wounded
Knee, and to stop killing off buffalo and whales, so maybe we will also act
wisely.
I agree, sooner or later, another source of energy will take the place
of oil. The only issue is how soon and how much pain we all will suffer
in the process. Because the oil companies are so rich and powerfull all
over the world and because an effective alternate energy source would be
so financially disruptive to every industry at first, a great effort
will be made to resist any rapid change. For example, when cold fusion
is made to work on a potentially commercial scale, the negative
propaganda would ask the public the question, "This is a nuclear
process, would you want an untested nuclear reactor in your home or in
your neighborhood?" Few people would be given enough information to
understand the difference between this kind of nuclear reaction and the
fission process. After all, the system has been very effective in
keeping even basic information about CF from the general public for 19
years so far. This approach would stop the transition for at least a
generation while the method was tested in the Third World on a very
small scale. Even there, attempts to sell operating reactors would be
met with political rejection based on the use of bribes. The only wild
card would be China ad Russia where bribes would not work and where
citizen objection would not count. So, it is easy to predict that
development of CF would mean even more pain for the good old USA as
China and Russia obtained one more advantage. Eventually, we would catch
on and make a change, but the suffering here would be huge. The world
is not a nice place when such high stakes are involved. Of course, I
hope I'm wrong.
Ed
- Jed
