<Net Oil Exports and the "Iron Triangle" The Oil Drum DrumBeat: July 14, 2007>

81 comments on The NPC Report...

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westexas on July 14, 2007 - 6:35pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

I don't think that it is a conspiracy per se.

I think that the auto, home and finance guys are focused on selling and financing the next auto and home.

I think that the media guys want to keep selling advertising to the auto/home/finance group.

The oil industry leg of the Iron Triangle is more complex, probably with motives ranging from they actually believe in the Oil Easter Bunny, to fears of punitive taxation and military takeovers (of oil exporters) to a deliberate effort to encourage consumption, discourage conservation and alternative energy and EOT plans.

Basically, the various members of the Iron Triangle seem to think that is a swell idea for Americans to continue to go into debt in order to increase their overall consumption, in effect asserting that an infinite rate of increase in the consumption of a finite energy resource base is no problemo.

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Don in Colorado on July 15, 2007 - 2:14am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

WT,

You do realize that the traditional use of the term "Iron Triangle" is to describe the military-industrial complex, don't you?

It's a term that's been around forever.

Personally, I believe CERA is a card-carrying member of the military-industrial complex and is being used to keep peak-oil denial in place for as long as possible so that as much wealth can be extracted as possible from consumer society before the big crack-up.

I think Yergin and CERA have been promised a suite of offices right below Halliburton in the Dubai Tower for their help in creating the neocons' new world order.

I've been reading Yergin since 1978. His attacks on peak oil seem way overboard to me.

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westexas on July 15, 2007 - 8:52am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

On Google, my version of the "Iron Triangle" appears to be at #5, and I never claimed to have originated the term.

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memmel on July 15, 2007 - 10:30am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

And your aware that the military industrial complex is especially sensitive to peak oil. They might need for example to go invade the country with large remaining oil reserves to ensure their continued existence.

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Don in Colorado on July 15, 2007 - 12:24pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top

Right, memmel,

I really think the military-industrial complex sees this a make or break for their survival. I'm sure they read WT's export model with great alarm.

Probably this era of American history will go down as the time that instead of using the nation's wealth to build an alternative-energy future, it was all spent to try to keep the M-I Complex going a few more years.

I just wonder whether that whole crew will just relocate to the Persian Gulf and cut off North America if all this starts to get dicey ... I suppose that's what I'd do.

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