A Separate Reality

*
Over the weekend, I was deep in the now verdant Hill Country.

But before it started, I bumped into James Carville on Friday night.

We visited as he ate his steak and green beans.

We of course talked about the back story on Porter Goss.

I suggested that it looked like Rove would be indicted.

He agreed.

I asked if the Climate Change issue was moving up in his surveys.

He said yes, but slowly.

He asked me about Matthew Simmons, the author of Twilight in the Desert.

I offered that I thought he was enjoying his new found celebrityhood,

but that he was a straight, bright, seasoned energy professional.

He asked me what I thought about Peak Oil.

I told him that when he came to Washington in 92,

the World consumed 62 million barrels of oil a day,

and that today we probably consumed somewhere close to 85.

That's a big difference.

I told him that even Bush's Campaign Chairman, Midland prayer buddy

and former Secretary of Commerce, Donald Evans,

thinks that 87 million BPD will be the top of production.

I offered that Peak would come in the next two years,

and that we would see pressure on the price after that,

barring a World War or equivalent demand destruction calamity.

He asked about Nuclear.

I told him that it's the most fascist energy technology there is.

It takes a giant entity to mine and enrich the fuel,

an army to safeguard it from being stolen or misused,

an army and an air force to protect the plant from attack,

a government to assume the disaster risks for the capitalists who won't,

a police force to guard the waste,

and even then, like oil and gas, it is a finite resource.

Then today, I saw this nice piece about the dark promise of Nuclear, which is perhaps as good a reasoning as we need to not go down that path.

It is a dangerous distraction from the correct path.

Why Nuclear Power is a Non-Response to Peak Oil
Rob Hopkins, Transition Culture

My first reason why nuclear power is a non-response to peak oil is that it will take the steam out of the profound and far-reaching renewables revolution which is the only thing that will actually get us through peak oil.

In the long run, we need to restructure society so that it becomes more local, with local food production, decentralised energy grids and so on, as has long been argued at Transition Culture .

This is the ONLY thing that will pull us through.

Nuclear power offers the illusion that “something is being done”, and takes the steam and the necessary funding out of the urgency to start the programme of profound change needed.

(clip)

We have to begin the Great Reskilling and profound relocalisation, and we have to start now, applying all the resources we have at our disposal. This is our once off window of opportunity, one which nuclear power would close for good. "

Carville then mentioned that a famous military historian

has recently compared Bush's disastrous march into Baghdad

with Caesar's blunderous march into Germany,

which was one of the great military follies of human military history.

I suggested that perhaps Iraq has far greater oil reserves

than most of the world knows, perhaps 250 billion barrels.

He replied that if that was true, everyone would know.

And it was then that I realized that this hero of our time,

the man who gave us "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow",

and Fleetwood Mac, live from the Arkansas State Capitol,

didn't seem to appreciate that attacking another country,

for their oil reserves,

Is a War Crime.

Perhaps the worst.

I guess that's what happens when you marry a Republican.

And the Beltway becomes your creator of reality .

He went off to watch professional basketball,

And I went to see V for Vendetta.

Don't miss the latter.

"Reality is in some sense constructed by the mind, not simply perceived by it, and many such constructions are possible, none necessarily sovereign." Richard Tarnas

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