The Oil Drum

4/10 trillion dollars would allow for (and obviously it would have to be repaid by the future as well)

at 10 billion dollar a nuclear power plant we get 43 new nuclear plants operating at probably 2GW.

one can obviously reduce the demand for gasoline by simply taxing the shit out of it (look at norway, steady consumption for the past 35 years). I do not think rebates on the prius alone will work, taxation of heavy and fuel inefficient vehicles with the proceeds of the tax being applied to fuel efficient vehicles would be the best.

Hi substrate – you still don’t get it ... 

Bush & Co are aiming at conquering Iraq and Afghanistan for the sole idea of having a large open air prison in the post peak-oil scenario in a remote place overseas .. The warden’s administration building is almost finished – taking the shape of an “embassy” for the time being.

Something along the lines of what Australia became for the Britons some 200 years ago. The prisoners will be forced to count the sand grains, and when finished – one more time just to be sure!

If succeeding in “stealing” Iraq and Afghanistan, it will be the place to send future criminals. This has nothing to do with oil …. That’s oil folks

-apart from this your reflections are thougthfull :)

At 15,000 miles/vehicle/year, the difference in consumption is 300 gallons/veh/yr or 12.9 billion gallons/year.  This is about 840,000 barrels/day.

Iraq produces on the order of 2 million bbl/day.  I'd hoped that a different investment would at least offset the oil production of Iraq, but it seems that it only hits about 40%.

HOWEVER:  If the money was spent on the extra cost of a hybrid system (about $2000 per Toyota) for all new vehicles, that would cover about 215 million vehicles.  It would take quite some time to get them all built, but the ultimate savings would be about 2 Iraqs.

There are also serious societal costs, and political costs. I think part of the cause and effect of this adventurism is closely tied into the move towards Private Military Contractors...

So, I was just browsing around yesterday, like you do, following one random thought with another, disappearing off on tangents... when I came across the Wikipedia entry on Private Military Contractors... and the Rumsfeld quote in wikipedia, on this subject, in response to a question from the audience, is an area where one can peak behind the curtain just for a moment.

Bateman: "There are currently thousands of private military contractors in Iraq and you were just speaking of rules of engagement in regards to Iraqi personnel and US personnel. Could you speak to, since the private contractors are operating outside the Uniform Code of Military Justice, could you speak to what law or rules of engagement do govern their behaviour and whether there has been any study showing that it is cost-effective to have them in Iraq rather than US military personnel. Thank you."

Rumsfeld: "Thank you. It is clearly cost-effective to have contractors for a variety of things that military people need not do and that for whatever reason other civilian government people cannot be deployed to do. There are a lot of contractors. A growing number. They come from our country - but they come from all countries; and indeed sometimes the contracts are from our country, or another country, and they employ people from totally different countries; including Iraqis and people from neighbouring nations. And there are a lot of them and it's a growing number. And of course we've got to begin with the fact that, as you point out, they're not subject to the uniform code of military justice; we understand that. There are laws that govern the behaviour of Americans in that country - the Department of Justice oversees that. The [long hesitation] there is an issue that is current as to the extent to which they can or cannot carry weapons and that's an issue. It's also an issue of course with the Iraqis but, if you think about it, Iraq is a sovereign country, they have their laws and they're going to govern. The UN resolution and the Iraqi laws, as well as US procedures and laws, govern behaviour in that country depending on who the individual is and what he's doing, but I'm personally of the view that there are a lot of things that can be done on a short time basis by contractors that advantage the United States, and advantage other countries who also hire contractors. Any idea that we shouldn't have them I think would be unwise."

This quote is amazing... it is almost the global elite pitching the world's military elite on disobeying their local elites and joining the private sector, in return they will receive lucrative control of energy supplies in a post-peak world... foreseeing a complete collapse of society he basically reveals the plans of the global elite to shift to a completely stateless future - embracing a total dislocation with the state that currently has jurisdiction over the geopgraphic regions in which they may happen to currently reside. (What I am trying to say is the elites are already abandoning traditional states as dead and gone in a post-peak future and setting up what comes next... in this regard they have more in common with Al Qaeda and organized crime than governments of old)

Rumsfeld and the elites he represents are basically telling the elites in other (minor) countries that you REALLY SHOULD hire private military contractors to protect your interests instead of relying on a public national army...

Make no mistake: These guys are HARDCORE revolutionaries!

Now, as a group "we" are being blackmailed into accepting this, what to many would be a nightmarish, future by having a gun held to our heads on global warming - (and with the recent Southern Baptist announcment is there any remaining doubt that this is using the religious extremes to help control the masses and maintain their ignorance?)... basically the WE here is the educated middle class - either accept the overseer status you have as your lot or end up in the masses, or else we'll play chicken and keep burning the environment up... actually we are made up of the elites in minor countries and the educated middle class in the major countries.

So having created a vague us and them for rhetorical purposes here, they are saying: "Only if you accept our hegemony will we allow changed to be made to fix things like global warming and address resource depletion." And they will fix it. It'll be their equivalent of "at least Hitler made the trains run on time", that it took this sort of societal structure to finally solve the global warming crisis through massive authoritarianism.

I think this is the endgame organized crime has always played out for... mafia type entiites are merely ways for the lowest classes to fight their way up towards the elites and are tolerated by the true elites as a means of effectively controlling the poor. Again, this is tremendously inefficient, and corrupt kleptocratic societal structures have been disadvantaged in the high-energy-availability-fueled growth of the last few centuries due to the exponential nature of growth exacerbating relatively small differences in efficiency.

Finally, I think that the number of cases in recent history of mercenary companies almost, actually or attempting to take over governments in minor states gives some indication of the post peak end games that some of these PMCs or at least their backers are going for.

[apologies for rambling, this was getting too long for a comment, so i decided to diary a longer version at DailyKos in case you are interested]

--
When no-one around you understands
start your own revolution
and cut out the middle man