Scapegoats
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It cannot be understated how significant this statement is.
Donald Evans is one of the President's best friends.
He is the Midland friend who first started taking GWB to prayer breakfast.
He is the guy who ran the big local oil company from Midland.
He was appointed to the Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce.
Two nights ago, he told Chris Matthews that Peak Oil is real.
Here is the transcript.
MATTHEWS: James A. Baker from Texas, the former secretary of state, said the first war in the Gulf was about jobs, jobs, jobs. He said that was what the war about. I'm accepting your argument right now, your statement that this call for energy independence by the president is not because we have to rely on oil from the unstable Middle East. It has to do with our needs for economic growth. Is that your bottom line?
EVANS: Chris, that is my bottom line. The world is producing oil, the Middle East, every country at its full capacity and it's very unlikely that we're going to be able to see supply in the world grow from the levels where we are right now.
There's a debate about that.
I'm one that falls in the camp that says it's going to be very, very hard to do that.
But what I do know is China needs to continue to grow, India needs to continue to grow, America needs to continue to grow. So what that simply says is we've got to develop new forms of energy for the United States and the world."
Meantime,
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett briefed the Congress again this week.
Here is the transcript.
The Congressman's other presentations are at his web site.
Toward the end of this excellent presentation the Congressman says this,
(I have edited it slightly)
"In the few minutes remaining, I would like to use the /Apollo 13/ as an example of the challenge that we have. You may remember the /Apollo 13/. They had an explosion in one of their oxygen tanks. They had two oxygen tanks. And that explosion caused the other oxygen tank to leak. So not only were they going to be short of oxygen for themselves if they were not careful, they were going to be short of energy because they were using that oxygen to combine with hydrogen in a fuel cell to produce energy.
There are a lot of analogies between the /Apollo 13/ and where we are today. They had a challenge not of their choosing.
We did not choose to reach peak oil at this time, but they were faced with the inevitable decision of either making the right choices or not making it through, and we are faced with very much that same kind of a dilemma.
The ultimate goal is to achieve sustainable growth. By the way, Mr. Speaker, there is no such thing as sustainable growth, whether short term you may make it appear to be so; but ultimately there is no such thing as continued forever sustainable growth.
The ultimate goal, and we will get to that goal, we will transition. When the age of oil is finished and there is no more oil that can be gotten without paying more for the oil than you get out of it, we will have been transitioned to the renewables.
Mr. Speaker, I think we have a great future ahead of us.
The American people will respond if properly challenged."
I'm still listening to Brownie and the blame game hearings
for the poor response to the Katrina Disaster.
When the time comes for the Peak Oil disaster,
and the Climate Change disaster,
Who will the designated scapegoats be?
Exxon?
The Congress?
The President?
or
Ourselves.
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posted by oZ @ 9:09 AM
3 Comments:
so, what happens?
War?
Deflation?
Inflation?
Depression?
Transition?
Transition.
Possibly those other things.
Our religion of perpetual growth is temporary, and we must find another way.
I think it probably will not be fun.
Can we emerge better?
- CW
The more and more I research this issue, the more and more I concede only one of Marx's points.
The oil companies and the government cartels that sponsor them do not need convincing. Their own PR/marketing shell game is ontological proof that Peak Oil has come and gone and the change that needs to occur, regardless of the rising needs of Asia. And even if there are a select few that do need (what my gandfather called) "a sittin-down," to adequately persuade that fossils are a thing of the past, pun intended, it would not take long.
Marx was right: the first thing we do is disenfranchise the underwriters--the insurance companies.
We could begin converting most every mode of transportation on Earth to renewable fuels tomorrow morning if not for the warranties and underwriters that back those vehicles, if not for the underwriters that back the labor that produces the antiquated vehicles, if not for all the latent consequences the fossil fuel game generated, if not for a very different, exceedingly lucrative shell game.
There will come a time towards the end of my lifetime when the visionary and necessity merge in the road only to commiserate and decide to kill efficiency, only to walk farther down the road, take a left at Houston, and meet the latent consequences of fossils like Sprawl in the road, and kill them too.
Before closing, Oz will be happy to know that my word verification for this post is "WOTUS". Funny stuff.
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