Obama's Secret Door To Peak Oil
President-elect Obama has a lot on his plate at the moment, and much of it is probably quite unpalatable. The last thing he needs then, is a goblet of seeming hemlock to wash it all down. But sometimes some bitter medicine is necessary to alert the system to a serious new threat.
If his team does not get a hefty dose of energy reality, they are likely to make very poor strategic decisions. For instance, in the light of peak oil, is bailing out the dinosaur US auto makers the right thing to do?
Members of Obama's team have heard about peak oil and there is even a picture of Obama with Heinberg's Party's Over in his hand. The donor of the book asked him to read it after he was elected. Well, obviously he won't have time. Or will he? What if something prompts him to think about oil going into decline?
Could it be the ripping new IEA report "World Energy Outlook 2008"? Given the minuscule media coverage of this long awaited report, one might doubt it. Also, the report does not clearly say we are in the oil peak-plateau zone, rather that oil depletion is still an investment problem.
Nor is the staggering fall in the price of petroleum likely to prompt him to think about peak oil. But there is one thing that might: within minutes of receiving the call from McCain conceding defeat, Obama was thrust into a security briefing. And he will go on getting these briefings till he leaves office.
Why might this illuminate US energy policy? There are at least two groups of people who have known and worried about peak oil for a long time - the CIA and the US military. So, perhaps Obama will start getting frequent prods to delve into the complex supply-side of energy, not just the sink-side of carbon emissions.
The resulting knowledge won't taste like champagne - the age of exuberance is after all over, Greenspan now admits - but without the elixir of peak, how is Obama going to make sense of a military policy which has become the de facto energy policy, and how will he make good decisions about climate change, if he believes that oil output will simply respond to high prices as conventional economics will have us believe?
If Obama grasps the reality of peak oil, it may lead him to a plan of Rooseveltian scale to rebuild the economy of America around renewable energy generation, electric transport, and cities which will still work at the end of this century, when fossil fuels will be providing us with about as much energy as renewables do now.
Human nature seems to encourage us to dig deeper when we are in a hole, when the best option could be to just stop digging, or maybe to fill it in instead.
I can just imagine it: sinking good money after bad, propping up an industry that is part of a past period of cultural climax. Why get it up and running again at the previous level of output when demand and use for the product may have changed irrevocably ? Yet it seems that up to 10% of Americans are employed in this sector, in some way. The impact of such a collapse would be the "Fall of the Berlin Wall" moment that would rumble on and on throughout the US economic empire, and even out here in the distant South Pacific.
It may seem better to use the corporate structures to make (fewer) electric cars and buses or CNG powered vehicles, and maybe wind turbines etc. (surely the skills are easy to adapt ?). And yet, the leadership of this industry is responsible for vigourously blocking change, lobbying against higher efficiencies and against electric powertrains, where its mighty marketing capability could have done something different. Could anyone really expect different behaviour in this cultural climate ? Yet they were responding to the "American consumer", so all of you (us too) are complicit with it.
It's a tough predicament, and a decision not to be taken lightly. It's on the same sort of level as those Easter Islanders who cut down the last tree for transporting yet another statue for ceremonial purposes instead of making a fishing boat - shortly before they starved (see Jared Diamond on Collapse: How societies choose..).
This bailout has already happened with the banks who arguably set the slide in motion with their lending inducements and fancy risk transference schemes, so I suspect it will happen again. ("What's good for GM is good for America"). The surplus built up in the good decades will be frittered away on futile actions. Archer
Really! For one who is so astute about so many subjects, i.e., peak-oil, you really should have done your homework on Obama, who he is, who created him, and who's behind him. This is really too much; an outrageous over-sight.
Remember what happened to the Carter Presidency when he tried straight talk with the public about America's energy future? It was followed by Reagan's "Morning in America", the beginning of 25 years of denial based upon smoke, mirrors, and free market ideology. I propose that we assume Obama is up to speed on our real predicaments. How does he thread the needle politically? This will require nothing less than strategic brilliance. In the meantime, we can support leaving a reasonable world to the children of future generations by cultivating a strong positive, realistic vision of the future, and seek the wisdom, strength, courage, and perseverance to make that vision a reality. We also can seek to acquire perceptions such that we are able to see beyond modern myth and the now four generations of conditioning we have all been subjected to by Madison Avenue. Only by seeing beyond the mass cultural vision do we then possess some possibility of understanding our problems and real possible means of addressing them. Truly yours Frank from EntropyPawsed
Bill Clinton has read Richard Heinberg's books. That was publicly stated at the BOSTON ASPO conference a few years back.
With Hillary poised for the Secretary of State position, and Clintonians surrounding Obama, of course they are aware of Peak Oil. This also means they are aware of die off. Now it is just a question of what are they going to do about it.
Re: providing input to the Obama adminstration, I've been submitting posts and comments to www.change.gov the past couple of weeks which echo Michael Pollan's support of relocalized food production in his recent "Farmer in Chief" essay in the NY Time Magazine (which Obama has not only read but remembers since he mentions its key tennets in an interview last month--see below). I thought I'd post this message here to see if I can inspire others to make similar posts.
I noticed that most of the folks involved in reviewing natural resources policy are from the Department of Agriculture and thus most likely set in their ways. But perhaps the people assigned to deal with Health and Human Services and Energy would be more open to thinking differently about food-related issues and might be able to push for change.
Please feel free to forward this message as widely as you wish. I decided not to mimic the chain letter format ("Forward this to at least ten people in with a growing season local food with fill your home!") but I would love for people to pass these comments on widely and hopefully get others to post similar comments at www.change.gov.
Sincerely,
Joel Dubois
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Dr. Joel Dubois, Associate Professor
Humanities & Religious Studies
College of Arts & Letters
(916) 278-5332 // Fax #: (916) 278-7213
http://www.csus.edu/indiv/d/duboisj/home.html
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Dear Transition Team Members,
I would like to ask that the transition teams working on the economy, energy and health care set a priority on choosing a progressive and visionary secretary of AGRICULTURE who will collaborate closely with them, as the issue of food promises to be central for achieving energy independence, addressing climate change, and making health care not only affordable but effective in promoting health.
Consider President-Elect Obama's own words in an October 23rd interview for Time:
"...finding the new driver of our economy is going to be critical. There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. ...For us to say we are just going to completely revamp how we use energy in a way that deals with climate change, deals with national security and drives our economy, that's going to be my number one priority when I get into office, assuming, obviously, that we have done enough to just stabilize the immediate economic situation."
(full interview transcript: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2008/10/23/the_full_obama_interview/)
(full text of Pollan's article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?_r=1&sq=Micha...)
I would urge you in fact to invite Pollan, currently Knight Professor of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, to join the transition team. Pollan's recent essay articulates a number of sound policy ideas which, while inevitably inviting resistance from agribusiness companies, will no doubt draw broad bipartisan grass-roots support. Readers of his books will recognize that those policy ideas emerge not from some naive fantasy but from his careful research of the literature and in-depth interviews with farmers all over America. Pollan's plan for reform also fits well with the ideas of Lester Brown, whose book Plan B 3.0 I expect you are familiar with.
Thanks for all of your work and I look forward to seeing your plans unfold!
Sincerely,
Dr. Joel Dubois
California State University, Sacramento
Dear Bloggers:
THE ANSWER TO OPEC AND PEAK OIL AGE IS AT http://www.energynews.gr
WHAT WE NEED IS AN International Public Prosecutor Intervention.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Basil Dimitropoulos
Electrical Engineer
104 - 106 Kremou Street, Kallithea, Athens 176-76 GREECE
TEL: +30-210-9590530
From his actions Obama seems to have been told the truth about something most of us are not privie to - Satellites can measure Oil-fields,(so can educated spies) and estimate remaining oil with ease! He will Shut down Chrysler, GM is slated for bankruptcy, Gas/Battery cars from China are "on Order" for Israel and possibly the U.S. just to keep us mobile until the "Green Plan" gets the U.S. producing Union-free rechargeable cars for all, as the high speed rail system develops to take over long distance driving and air travel -All this and Obama has only been in office for a couple of months! The death of the Corvette car, the Cadillacs as we have known them, Suburbans, Escalades the Hummer, big Plymouths, Dodges, the 383 cu inch chryco engines the Cleveland engine plant, the Windsor 351 plant, Big Lincolns plant in Georgia and all, and a direct attack on the V-8 engine not convincing enough for you? The OPEC boys and the Saudis are shvtting their pants, withdrawing blackmail threats for higher oil prices and running scared! The South Western Solar sites are worth a fortune, and being developed as never before, Wind corridors on land are being surveyed as we speak, the coasts are being examined by wise raltors from the air for Wind and Tidal sites, and our country is scanned daily by satellite for Geothermal anomalies - Where have you been hiding? Under a GM dealership sign? If Obama moves any faster he will panic the people and everyone will hoard dough for the new battery cars, leaving the remaining gas car production go to waste, rotting on the sales lots and hurting the economy. His wife is planting a "Victory Garden" and intends leading the American people in surviving the sudden, abrupt, life-jarring violent, mind crushing end to cheap oil on earth - coming even before the OPEC and Saudi boys know! Nuclear reserves will be limited to military, then shipping uses, Solar, Wind, Hydro, Tidal, Wave and Geothermal will be king, and until the good folks from Chernobyl return to their home in the Ukraine, nuclear will be discouraged in the U.S.A. Wake up Amerika, its closing time! Closing Time! Wake up!
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