MoveOn.org Prioritizes "Energy Independence"
Posted by Glenn on June 2, 2006 - 4:59pm in The Oil Drum: Local
In an online poll of it's members on top 3 priorities for the next year, Healthcare just barely edged out Energy Independence by 4,000 votes. And Energy Independence had more than double the votes of Global Warming. I think this shows that Energy Independence (Rather than just environmentalism) is clearly high on the progressive agenda.
The results are in. We're proud to announce the MoveOn member choice for our new, positive agenda:
These three goals were nominated, debated, and overwhelmingly selected by more than 100,000 people in local house parties and then online. Most groups would say this is a far too risky way to make such a big decision. But it's this grassroots consensus that makes this agenda different--and powerful.
- Health care for all
- Energy independence through clean, renewable sources
- Democracy restored
So what's next? This month, we'll launch a major campaign for a clean energy future, starting by breaking the vise-grip of big oil in Washington with our "Oil Free Congress" initiative. Expect hundreds of local events, advertising, national media attention and accountability at the ballot box--and that's just for the first of our 3 new goals.Of course, we won't let up in our work to end the war in Iraq, and we'll still respond to immediate threats in Congress. But our new agenda will focus our long-term work, offer voters a positive, inspiring reason to support progressives on Election Day, and push Democrats to think big and fight hard.
And they end with this plea for new new members:
Let's be clear: we've chosen big goals here, and seeing them through won't be easy. There are powerful interests who prefer things the way they are, and we'll never match them in sheer dollars or backroom deals.Our strength lies where it always has: the voice, energy, and creativity of 3 million MoveOn members. If we're going to make health care a right, power America with clean energy, and restore our democracy, we're going to need as many likeminded folks on board as we can get. So today, we're turning to you to help build the team.
I realize that TOD attracts people from many different political persuasions, but I think we can all agree that this is a major watershed. In the past progressives focused most of their political efforts related to energy on the defense - stop nuclear, stop drilling, stop everything...even the Kennedy clan coming out against off-their-shore wind power. Now MoveOn has a clear mandate to push in a positive direction for energy independence. The risk, which is already evident in their "Oil-free Congress" idea is that scapegoating and name calling are considered "positive action". Another risk is that they fall for some "sounds good, but is completely unrealistic one-shot solution", like "We'll just do it like Brazil on ethanol".
They must realize that, when it comes to the Politics of Oil, the Discourse Must Change
The clear path to energy idependence is to dramatically reduce demand for energy in an economically responsible way that is sustainable and equitable. This means everything from Alan's rail electrification proposal to taxing gasoline to finding ways of using less fossil fuels on the farm. It may even require more nuclear!
And I think the folks over at Daily Kos have produced a pretty good blueprint.
But still, this is progress for those of us deeply concerned about peak oil and it's potential impact on economics and our society. While a few years ago, energy was pretty low on the national consciousness, it is now atop the US national political agenda. How that plays out, depends on us good citizens bringing sanity, data and logic to the debate.
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There is a state of being, a value that is more important and significant that energy independence and that is fossil fuel independence. What have we ultimately gained if we become independent of the middle east while, we at the same time ravage our mountaintops and the atmosphere with domestically produced coal and Canadian produced oil sands, all the while plundering our topsoil with Iowa produced ethanol?
Using big oil as the enemy is a dangerous paradigm. It misdirects us from the real source of our problems, that being us. We would not even be talking about this if it weren't for high gas prices. If they don't rise much higher, we won't be taling about this a year from now.
However, energy independence is a worthy goal and a great starting point for the real debate on energy.
Most important is redefining the term to include independence from energy.
The sooner the US is not starting wars for control of energy, the better.
All you need to do is watch "A Bug's Life" for a little inspiration. The grasshoppers may be strong and scarey, but once you realize the ants have strength in numbers anything is possible.
"There will be massive efforts with unconventional oil, such as Canadian tar sands and the tar and very heavy oil deposits in Venezuela. However, I predict that unconventional sources of oil will only slow--and not reverse--the decline in total world oil production because of the time and energy needed to expand production of these "oils".
"Without question, we have to reduce greatly our energy consumption to account for this new reality. What can we do? I have seen two very sensible proposals.
"The first is that we fund Social Security and Medicare with a tax on energy consumption, especially at the gas pump, offset by reducing or eliminating the highly regressive payroll taxes. Doing this would unleash enormous free market forces against profligate energy use. The second proposal is that we electrify our freight railroads and encourage freight to go by rail instead of truck with any of a variety of economic incentives while building electric urban rail systems, such as DART, at a rate much faster much faster than today's pace. Incidentally, both strategies will also find favor with those concerned about global warming."
It does make sense, however, to set up a body or use and existing body, to monitor how we are doing each year and adjust the tax accordingly to ensure that we meet our goals. And we do need specific goals for carbon reduction.
On the other hand, the Kos approach may be more politically feasible. Because the carbon tax is relatively simple, and I mean relatively, perhaps it would be easier to shoot at ensuring that it is dead on arrival. I guess we need to impose costs and a little pain without people noticing, the American way.
Conservation, i.e. "demand destruction" is a political topic that no politician wants to discuss, because it can be marginalized easily before a uninformed public, or more emphatically, a public that doesn't tolerate any bad news.
The folks at the Daily Kos have IMO created a throughly unworkable hodgepodge of approaches ranging from the "no reason that that won't work" [such as solar water heaters] to the 50 percent carbon reduction sequestration edict scheme [Where were you when the lights went out for good?].
Pick an approach. Advocate that approach and complementary approaches. Advocate research that might provide real break throughs or even silver pellets even if out of the mainstream ... but for the love of logic don't buy into this shopping list as it isn't even for sale.
Is it just the lack of a concise message? Are you saying they should pick a particular project and let others pick up the rest of the list?
Speaking as a hodgepodger/generalist myself, I am well aware of the shortcomings of losing focus and trying too many things, getting spread out too thin.. Then again, I see energy as complicated, life as complicated, the solutions to losing our one, biggest draft-horse as a complicated blend of elements that will have to somehow be stretched out to fill a big shoe. Some answers are supplyside, some are demand, and finding out what we actually need, after a few generations of having access to many extra 'wants'.
You probably just got my goat by mentioning Solar Heating. I think that's one of the best ways to free up liquids and gases for transp, but it's too 'Sweatery' for people to get all excited about. It's so simple. My house burns about 12gal/day of heating oil through the cold months, and there are millions of homes and businesses that do the same.. Solar air and water heating could knock a huge chunk of that out.. if China doesn't get ALL our copper before we decide to start really putting them in.
Read throught the list. Ask yourself if they aren't getting just a little too cute with the sequestration of massive quantities of carbon dioxide [to way below current levels if the goal is energy self suffiency. My suppostiion is that they tacked that one one only to appease one of the core left wing consituent groups -- the hard core greens.
AReduced CO2 emmissions is not bad objective, but the massive reduction that was proposed struck me as nothing more than pandering.
Our copper? Is this the same idea as OUR oil under THEIR sand?
"What's behind the thefts is the rising price of copper, brass and aluminum and the demand for scrap metal in China and Taiwan, some say. On Wednesday, depending on the grade, copper sold for $3 to $3.10 a pound at Ace Scrap Metals, 5900 Manchester Avenue, St. Louis. Aluminum sold for 70 cents to $1 a pound, and brass went for 90 cent to $1.75, depending on the grade."
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/illinoisstatenews/story/C5A77E83E088F13C8625718000 16615E?OpenDocument
I don't claim the earth's mineral rights in the name of the US, but like the question of 'Energy Independence', I feel the issue is what we are throwing away, and at our own peril. What we treat as junk and even as a simple, movable commodity could be, like copper, a resource with enormous value if we look to possible uses (like solar hot water) that might call for a stockpile that we, in typical short-sightedness and devoted Market-sensibility, have allowed to ship overseas instead of creating a strategic reserve, or at least applying to countless current needs here at home.
Please, please name one right-wing blog that discusses energy issues without bring up the Oil-for-Food scandal or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
If you do and they allow unfiltered comments (highly doubtful), I will rip them a new hole should they say something stupid (highly probable).
There are more cornucopians there than there are here, but they do show up reqularly on The Oil Drum.
There are plenty of posters on Free Republic who can do the math, those that work in industry and know that if you don't drill you won't know but also know that oil is getting harder to find ...
You probably won't get a lot of support if you focus on caribou breeding grounds & migration routes. After all there are more caribou in the herd around Prudoe Bay than before that field was drilled. and there are also those that can recognize the difference between the Strikingly beautiful portions of the Brooks Range that seem to appear in ANWR stories and the not very photogenic Coast Plain where the targeted structures are located.
I personally have a mixed reaction to the ANWR drill / no drill debate. As an American, I would love to have it in reserve, except that it would be a reserve that could only be tapped after a five to ten year development effort which would not add much to security.
ANWR is not a silver bullet and may not turn out to be even a silver pellet. If I had to summarize my position on ANWR if would be that that both those that want to drill and those that oppose drilling are waging propoganda campaigns when what is needed is an honest examination of the facts.
If you decide to pay a visit to Free Republic, I would advise you to make reasoned arguments. If you try to "tear them a new ass" and you probably will be banned.
I meant a place where you don't get banned for saying something that does not follow strict fundaminionist lines.
Besides, Free Repubic just gives me the creeps and willies. They don't call then Freepers for nothing.
None of that has gotten me banned and I don't expect that it ever will.
I feel pretty much the same way about Democratic Underground that you do about Free Republic. I haven't spent much time reading Move On's writings, but I have not been impressed by their pronouncements as related by the main stream media. To each his own. Freedom of association is a good thing.
For instance, Instapundit has recently written some stuff here, but it is all nonsense and you can't comment.
And the Powerline bloggers only talk about Oil for Food and claim that Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is enviro-nazi stuff w/o addressing PO issues. And you can't comment.
As far as I am concerned, you have not provided a significant right-wing site that talks sensibly and openly about oil depletion with any kind of accountability.
Where do you think that there is an honest debate underway?
I have previously expressed my opinion that both the tree hugging tundra loving caribou conscious types and the drill everywhere pave it now growth at any cost crowd are being totally dishonest about ANWR and many other topics.
BTW do you think The Oil Drum is discredited because people like you and me can post using a screen name if we so chose?
- seeing the forest
- corrente
- political animal
- blogging of the president
- culture of life
- ezra klein
- atrios
- billmon
- maha
- agonist
- daily kos
You will not find anything like that on the right. They do not because it is not in their corporate best interests and it is not in the fundamentalist view of dominion over Earth. This basically covers the conservative right.I think that for the "religious" right wingers, PO is an inconvenient truth because accepting it then raises the question as to what benevolent diety would leave his followers in such a pickle and leave so much oil under the soil of the competing diety --you know, the Muslim God.
Additionally, for right wingers who worship Adam Smith, PO brings in to question why the markets are heading in the wrong direction and driving society toward the cliffs. In theory, the markets are supposed to do what is best for all of us thanks to the intelligent design of the Invisible Hand. PO proves otherwise. Therfore it is an iconvenient truth for them too.
Either they worship Adam Smith or Corporate Interests. Of course, corporations are the concrete manifestation of Smith's abstract theories, so they only worship Smith in an indirect way. Cronies, nepotoads and others in their local business sphere are the real godz.
I was suggesting that maybe because it conflicts with other parts of their ideology. That's all.
Either they acknowledge it and it exposes them, or they ignore it and no one brings up their ulterior motives.
Peak Oil is an inconvenient "mismatch" for the ideologies of many an organization or set of groupies, not just for the religious right.
- Free market capitalists don't like it because it means the Invisible Hand has been driving our auto-loving masses blindly towards the cliffs.
- Techno-fix geeks don't like it because it implies that they have not come up with the whiz bang fix (i.e. fusion) for this pickle of a problem.
- The Government-knows-best idealogs don't like it because it forces them to admit that the government did not see this one coming (refused to see it coming) and thus, just maybe governement does not always know best.
Wherever you look (except in the doom & gloom closet), Peak Oil is not one of those things that meshes well with the respective world models that the various groups hold so dear to their chests.(Every religion has answers to such challenges. No need on your part to point to the lobbyists who cause the IH to enter the minds and souls of our good public officials. Those lobbyists are authorized and certified prophets of the IH religion.)
But his Secretary of Defense was the former GM President and talked him into making them freewuys, not oll roads and going through cities.
The rest is history, and many square miles of concrete.
I have a free market capitalist worldview but I prefer real markets with competition where new competitors can enter fairly easily.
I am definately a techno-fix geek, I can talk about dozens of large and small techno fixes.
I believe a government can be both strong and competent, if it concentrates on vital core functions.
I am even right wing, within Swedish politics of course.
But my combination might be quite odd, I am afraid I am an individual that will have a hard time finding the right group to work with for maximum mutual benefit. I kind of wish I were a social group starter good at handling humans and relations and not only a man of ideas and fuzzy logic. :-/
Am I the only one who gets the impression that fundamentalists are mentally ill? Religion is getting in the way of thinking logically to try to mitigate PO and its problems. A rapture, if it occured and people were in fact raptured, it would be an instant disaster. Planes would fly on autopilot until they run out of fuel a la Payne Stewart, cars, suddenly unmanned, crash and cause gridlock. Trains continue on course and crash Payne Stewart-like, and ships drive until they run out of fuel with the tanks on suction. It's yet another case of religionists advocating disasterous violence onto unbelievers.
They need to phase out the problem, not put it on life support.
You folks in NYC would really laugh if you came to the Bay Area - huge SUVs abound, I see more hummers here than I ever saw in right-wing Orange County.
Marc Maron is on the Air America affiliate in Los Angeles KTLK. If you want to listen to the show from last night on electric cars, you can go to the archives at AAR or find the torrent for free at isohunt.com.
I think that a high carbon tax on all carbon emitters would be a better approach than the one they are using. Combine this with carbon credit for everyone and you provide rewards to the non car users. As it is, you are rewarded for buying a more fuel efficient car but you get nothing if you have no car at all. This would also help those poor who cannot afford to buy or operate an automobile.
As for energy independence, the Bush team has a plan to achieve it: war. That challenge has to be faced head on. Folks, I don't know what year it is-- 1934, 35, or 36. But it's one of those.
Ray McGovern (retired CIA) used to give the PDB to the elder Bush. He's screaming at us. The are others, Paul Craig Roberts, Morgan Reynolds These are not old lefties like me--they are former administration officials.
Move On has moved over in my opinion. Great issues in ordinary times--not now. When the house is on fire, you don't just continue watering the plants.
Also, while "Energy Independence" MIGHT mean conservation, I'm afraid that to most people it really means that we'll grow the fuel for our SUVs on that cute farm we all remember from those Litte Golden Books were read as children. Sure gives one a warm, comfortable feeling, doesn't it? Keep in mind that most people have no idea what a farm actually looks like, nor any impression of Big Ag.
I'm not sure why anyone is surprised that people blame it on a conspiracy of Big Oil to rip us off, because of course that's exactly what they're doing - it's just that that's not the whole story by any means, nor is it happening in the way they think. But how do we expect the average channel flipper to get past that first impression? Do you think there's any chance the impression of Big Oil conspiracy is intentional? It sure is an effective distraction.
And yes, health care costs are crushing common people and small businesses alike, but it's great for the big pharma biz. But hell, I'm hoping to have enough money for food, and to be able to keep my home, heat it, do maintanence, educate my kids, etc.
So in the end I think that we need to make energy conservation the first part of any agenda (and climate change probably second). Unless we get a handle on energy, there won't be any need to worry about health care, and we sure as hell won't get our democracy back.
Do you think they'll let us vote on who to fight next (after Iran) - that'd be might democratic don't you think?
I just checked on what oil prices were on this date last year -- under $50. Today NYMEX was at $72.75.
If reserves are this low already, with the summer season just beginning, then by fall people's priorities may become very focused. The whole damned system could be falling apart.
And you're right on about the plan - which Democrats supported in cahoots with Republicans. It's nothing new. The objective of every US Administration post WWII (re: George Kennan) has been to maintain control over vast global resources for the benefit of a few, and damn whomever gets in the way.
That control has in fact been achieved at a terrible price of death, torture, collective punishment, assassination, regime change, terrorism, pre-emptive war, resource depletion, poisoning the environment, blatant lies, hypocritical posturing, whatever it took.
It's a terrible truth that much of our "non-negotiable" lifestyle derives from crimes against humanity and the planet.
But that control and lifestyle is inexorably slipping away, helped in large part by the unbelievably corrupt and dangerously incompetent BCR regime.
Yet while the world is on fire, most of us seem barely able to fiddle, must less complain, or stand up and fight against the horror.
Yes, I know this is an ad hominem. But remember it wouldn't be used so often if it was not effective.
The issue doesn't have an easy 'Enemy' to paint up, like Saddam, it tells us we've got to change the way we live, which strikes at the conservative part of all of us. We have our ways in place, change it? Now? .. Maybe tomorrow.
The tags "Liberal" and "Progressive" are taking a beating, especially right now, since there is a lot that needs to change, and a lot that will change, whether we've prepared for it or not. It's too easy to shoot the messengers that want to tell us that it's time for some changes. I think the bashing of words like liberal have made it a given that an openly liberal group like Move-On is considered an 'unreliable source', while openly conservative groups seem to inherit (untaxed, of course) the veneer of authenticity and authority.
I see both Liberal and Conservative perspectives as essential for us to function.. I compare it to our hands, conservative when we're grasping, liberal when we're letting go. Just to toss a ball, you have to do both well, and you also have to know when. It seems like right now, the conservatives are just clinging stubbornly, and the liberals are refusing to take hold of anything too firmly.. (seems too conservative, probably..)
but So What if we're called moonbats? It was moonbats who got women the vote, who protested Vietnam. It takes courage to say 'The system is out of whack.. we're going to have to make some changes' when you know all the other kids are going to laugh at you, even if you're right. Some of those tough-guy conservatives at Fox could take some lessons from the geeks who can stand up to derision and looking like a fool, but still staying there, cause you know you're right.
TODers range from right to left and all points in between. I happen to think Cheney and Rumsfeld are covert peak oilers. I passionately disagree with their remedy. I don't understand what the problem is?
Best,
Matt
And then there's Pat Robertson! Enough with the whacky Shirley Mcclain Gaia worship 1970s new agey stuff already guy.
Best,
Matt
I hardly see this post as a glowing review of the MoveOn agenda - it sure looked to me like there were a lot of reservations too. But if I can stomach a discussion noting that the 700 Club actually did a decent discussion of PO, I think you can deal with one about MoveOn.
Twilight....I hereby eat humble pie on two subjects.
Alleged Marine Masacre appears to have near overwhelming evidence.
My fiance was kept in interrogation for four hours earlier this week on arrival to the US. She is a 29 year old Columbian studying her Phd in Brazil and they interrogated her for four hours! No contraband and a valid visa and this is the treatment she recieved. Anyways maybe we are drifting toward a police state. I sent lengthy emails to several local, state, and federal politicians but have not heard back LOL.
Matt
Obviously, those wedge issues rile up the religious nuts, who can never understand PO anyways. They think the bible is the only science they need. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
If it works like that with airport security people, no one should be surprised when things like Haditha happen, nor believe it was an isolated incident. But the "few bad apples" defense is already in full swing.
I believe it was in Sebastian Haffner's Memoir that I read about how the state seeks ever to involve you in its misdeeds, even small ones, so that you become an accomplice. And once you get used to doing and accepting things that you know are wrong - well, it's not so much worse this time is it? The people who interrogated your fiancé are participating in this, as well as the people who accept it as ok.
In terms of you comments about the slide toward a police state, I fear that you are correct. My quandry is I am not certain whether liberal Democrats or the Neocons would take us to that state more rapidly.
Phoey. I am tired of voting for the lesser of two evils. There must be some true small government civil libertarians out there somewhere.
Technology probably limits abuses to a greater degree that it aggrevates the plight of those on the bottom. Think communication. Think mobility. Tell me why you believe that a backward society is more predisposed to value and protect the rights of an underclass?
Robertson is a money-grubbing opportunist who has made alliances with African thugs concerning the precious metals market.
Robertson evidently wants a piece of the Venezualan action.
But as long as AIPAC rules the US, no mainstream organisation will have the stomach for anything more serious.
They're saying we're vulnerable with this grossly imbalanced energy relationship, and owe it to ourselves to get off this drug. When they say independence, I do not believe for a second that they are suggesting that we somehow produce domestically as much as we consume from imports today. You know that they would be promoting both intense conservation measures and the development of renewables.
I also dispute the suggestion that there is something anti-arab in their message, just because our trading tryst with S.A., Qatar and UAE would be (theoretically) interrupted. It can also be reasonably understood from this Progressive Org, that the rebalancing of our energy-trading in the Middle-east would start to remove some of the extreme imbalances of economic power in the region, and start to improve the prospects for decent governments and relationships between neighbors. Oil money has brought little to the people, and too much to the Monarchs and Ruling Elites. Even though our contributions in aid to Israel are prodigious, so also are our accounts-payable to S.A. and the like, and yet none of this has 'purchased' peace for the area.
If the peak oil community allows our message to be coopted by either of the moribund political parties and compromises to let this debate enter the field of partisan politics the whole world will lose, just as the American Anti-war movement has been lost to Move On acting as an adjunct to the Democratic Party. Let those who have ears , listen, 'cause you don't need a Weatherman to know which way the wind blows
"If the peak oil community allows our message to be coopted by either of the moribund political parties and compromises to let this debate enter the field of partisan politics the whole world will lose"
I hate to say it, but I would venture to guess that the "peak oil community" (I'm excluding the neocons here) has very little influence on what THE (because they're the same) political party that rules this nation does. Campaigns are solely about coopting messages and other dirty tricks. I don't think it is organized, the media are just lazy dumbfucks--plus they're also massive corporations that tow mainstream culture line.
MoveOn, and FrontPageMag, and all this that and the other thing "dot com" with overt political agendas is just engaged in a shell game of diversionary BS. Or, if you wish, "insignificant minutiae" plus retarded neverending debates about morality...
The problem is that people are really fucking lazily (intellectually) in this country (the US). The general population is in a daze of electromagetic TV waves and cultural blather about celebrities and individual-interest stories... The future is going to be a lot less about the individual and a lot more about the group.
The Army of One... christ sake, we are running our army with a CEO... and training all of our officers to become little CEOs...
The US government is the largest corporation in the world, with no spending limits--this is something you want to be in business with, and the good old ethanol lobby knows it--not to mention the leech that is the defense department... Should I not even bring up the projections for all the federal entitlement programs? Health care? Hah! People my age will be damn fucking lucky if we even get social security... Hell, the baby-boomers will be lucky. I'm sure those crackpots over at DKos know exactly when Social Security and Medicare go insolvent--god bless 'em =]
The PO community is hardly cohesive, and from what I've seen it is made up of very disparate messages and POV. Not to mention, that since the topic is such a massive issue, it can be upsetting to some. What is it that fucker Plato said? Every city-state is constantly at war with every other city-state? Something like that. Anyway, I think about it as at any given moment everyone (in the competitive sport world known as "professional politics" or "internation finance") is coopting as much as possible in whatever manner that benefits one the most. This is surely how it will play out in American politics in the short run. It is already happening...
Chevron is taking the "Join us and make the world a happy better place, we're nice, fluffy fluff fluff"
Exxon is like "fuck you, you whoring honkwinder--I'm gonna take my profit and shuve it up your PO-ass because I have so much, and I'm only going to get more! Sppppfttt, I spit on your planet... Driver, take me to my Lear Jet."
The American people lament: "Gas is to expensive, you gouging us! Go get us some freakin lower energy prices, even if you have to burn the soles off the feat little children in Kkyrgyzstan."
Hillary Clinton (the really bright genius that she his!) has decided to go with: "Hey everyone, lets grown lots of corn, waste time, money and not address the issue while at the same time making it look like I really know anything about something"
BP goes the route, "Hey, look, we made our gas stations FUCKING GREEN!!! YOU SEE THAT BYOITCH! That's right, and we're Beeeeeeeeyond Petroleum, you see, because we now have GREEN GAS PUMPS and have a little shed in new england that prints some little boards that supposedly absorb some light? I dunno, you'll have to check on that since I need to go think up some more colorful mostly GREEN ads to be printed on non-recylced paper in many millions of magazines.
Okay, that is enough channeling messages for one night. Sleep beckons.
Good night you ghosts in the ether.
People don't like experts, get you used to it.
You're all "experts", "elitists", etc...
For fucks sake, why don't you go find Jesus and stop complaining about "energy". You can buy it in a bar, you know, just like gold--and it's cheaper!
No, in all seriousness--I think the politics of "central planning" are most likely going to be too little too late.
Market forces are going to take hold. And people will respond accordingly. I happen to agree with that little Weasely Pulitzer-cock Daniel Terdgin that the crude price will do a "undulating" sort of dancing sway back and forth--but I do not agree with his 99% chance assessment that that will buy us time to replace global decline rates from 2-6%
Fact of the matter, things will not change until the American consumer is squeezed a wee-bit more... It seems like this event is getting closer--and I would define it as surpassing the adjusted price of oil in 1980-81.
Which is around $95... and when that happens there is sure to be a pullback eventually because of retarded (no, not in the "special" sense--but more as in Coor's stadium ) economic growth. My long winded point is that market forces will are going to dictate policy, not the other way around--which MoveOn thinks they can magically achieve....
I would put this on par with the Clinton's "National Health Care Plan". Hah! What a joke... With the way the treasury has been run since the beginning of this century--I'll be surprised if health care is a political priority as PO hits. Health care comes after a lot of other basic services--at least good health care does.
Daily Kos is for people who just love to read the newspapers about all the fucked up shit going on and then they constantly talk about it. Much like us with energy, hey, come to think of it they aren't so bad. =]
Just a little to into discussing politics as if it were sports, which it sort of is...
phew
BTW, the videos did not win.
What is the perception? Who was he supposed to be legitimizing?
It is the reaction to Peak Oil that is political. Right now, neither party appears to be doing much about it. It is obvious why. It is a game of chicken. Which party will be the first to deliver the bad news? As more of the general population becomes aware of Peak Oil and the longer neither party deals with it, the greater the anger grows amongst the populace. That is why the MSM lid on the subject has been held down tight (until very recently).
Using labels of "progressive", "liberal", and "conservative" are a waste of time and discriminatory. I am conservative when it comes to the environment. I am conservative when it comes to energy. I am conservative when it comes to my retirement money. I am conservative when about the security of this country. When I vote for a president, I don't vote for a party, I vote for a person. Most recently, I have voted for Democrats, but I have voted for Republicans before too.
So what am I? What one label can you slap on my forehead? Will that label apply to me tomorrow? Who the hell cares? The real issue in my mind is who will step in and have the balls to do something meaningful about the sh*t hitting the fan. Who's got the mop ready to do the dirty cleanup work?
Let's hope peak oil doesn't break that way ...
* - I am a "lapsed Republican" in part because of that war on science
am i the only one here who sees that it will take longer then a decade not only to change the publics mind about it but to get rid of those who would oppose the measures?
I don't know whether or not sulphur will work but think on this.
When someone gets high blood pressure they can take many different meds. Beta blockers for example. But with those you can become impotent or too much and you die. Calcium channel blockers ACE inhibitors....there are few meds without side effects. These are the ones that were approved after significant trials. There has been no testing of climate manipulation other than retrospective studies of what we have done accidentally. Is it wise to dump sulpher willie nillie into the atmosphere? I don't know. I told my dad when he got high blood pressure to loose weight and eat healthy and exercise more. Maybe all humans need to cut back, use cleaner energy and bike/walk more..
Matt Tipton
Many health sites link salt and hypertension.
http://www.pritikin.com/eperspective/0605/hypertensionSaltPotassium.shtml
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/medical_notes/393201.stm
http://www.uihealthcare.com/topics/nutrition/nutr3178.html
Yes, we all need to cut back and use cleaner energy. The sulfur is the first installment of the cleanup for what we've used thus far; it keeps the problem from getting worse, like setting a stain.
More nuke/solar/wind/hydro....
Less fossil....
More trees...
on the lines of sulphur in the sky...what about iron in the sea?
It's not in the right place. You can dump a hundred million tons of sulfur in the lower atmosphere and get mostly acid rain the next week, or you can put a few million in the upper stratosphere and it'll do its magic for up to two years.
What we need to do is arrest the melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and restore some of the polar ice cover. Once that's stable we can decide what to do next, without being overwhelmed by events before we can act.
Pretty much the same, AFAIK. If we're injecting it in the stratosphere we probably want to liberate it as H2S because that's the lightest non-elemental form.It was a good idea but I understand it didn't work as well as many had hoped.36 hours worth of meth seems like a side effect. My point on meds is they all have side effects. You take one then need another to balance the effects of the first. The best drug combo I've seen is HCTZ with an ACE. Very few side effects and hard to accidentally OD. Verapamil a CACB is cleared through the liver but grapefruit juice prevents that. The two together can kill you or put you in the hospital. Anyway eat healthy.
matt
As far as the one 35mg hit of nifedipine, I was a speeding redskinned-from-body-blush bipolar! When I went back to that doc, I DEMANDED a beta blocker when he tried to hand me an ACE inhibitor. After 36 hours-of-meth's worth, I made sure to take charge. Too bad I never got the propranolol as a kid. It would likely have saved me a LOT of heartache.
Antoinetta III
D-fly41,
This is a little off track from what you are chasing after, but I think we should come to grips with the understanding that PO is not really a "geological" event. It is actually very political, very social, very cultural.
Imagine that we belonged to a society whose religion forbade the use of liquids obtained from underground. In that case, we would never have used oil at all.
In truth we belong to a society whose religion (Adam Smithism) calls for the selfish exploitation of all natural resources we can get our grubby paws on. Both the Democrats and the Republicans worship Smithism.
There is no fundamental difference between the American Red and Blue parties on this most basic of issues. The Smithism machine urges us to keep sucking on the oil straw relentlessly until it is sucked dry. (Picture the guy above sucking on an in-ground straw.) Then, when it is no longer "economical" to keep sucking, the markets will "provide" new alternatives. So why worry? The Smith will provide.
Peak Oil is not a geological "truth", it is an artifact of our societal organization. Hubbert's curve is not a Law of Nature. It is an observed behavior of large populations of capitalist resource extracters. They go for the maximized profit. They go for the lowest hanging fruit. They go for short term gain. Hubbert's curve is the outcome of this herd-like and mindless behavior.
Now the extraction rates and consumption are based upon economic religions and political practices and may use the above analyses to make decisions, but at its core there is a scientific fact:
- One half the total volume of a light, sweet, viscous liquid has been removed from the rock-entombed, global vessel.
DF41,
I'm not here to start disagreeing with you.
It's just that a lot of lurkers visit TOD, see these comments and then come away with wrong headed concepts about what "Peak Oil" is supposed to mean.
It does not mean that we are at "the" 50% mark in terms of total underground quantity, Q.
Instead, it means that the human race is unwilling to continue extracting at a rate matching or exceeding the highest rate achieved thus far (perhaps 85 million barrels per day world wide).
No one knows how much oil is down there, not Yergin, not Simmons, not even AlphaDog.
It is kind of unimportant how much total oil is down there.
What really matters is how the oil is distributed, how easy it is to get at, and how willing we are to go after it.
The biggest pools have all been discovered (except of course if there is another Saudi Arabia under Antartica.) The human race is now busy chasing after smaller and ever-harder to-get-at poolings of crude.
We are teetering on stilts out in the ocean:
We are howling with the sled dogs up in ANWR:
As Dorothy said to Toto, "I don't think we're in East Texas anymore:"
At some point the stilts are going to be too expensive and the booty not enough to economically justify going after more of the same. That's when we will have passed peak.
I was trying to get people to stop using liberal, conservative, left, right, etc. It's soooo 2004!!! We need to move on from that type of thinking if we are to survive this intact.
Your previous post has fantastic imagery. I especially enjoyed that last bit about Dorothy and Toto since I grew up in Kansas.
You give Mr. Simmons a run for his money on presentation.
prove it.
not with pretty pictures, or fancy catch lines, but hard peer reviewed scientific data.
i don't know where you were taught but it's pretty darn obvious that peak oil is a geological event because to know where the oil is you need to know geology, you need to know geology to know how oil is formed, where it can and can't form and even how to remove it safely from the ground.
of course for a oil company to make money they need to know where the stuff is too, so they have been working with geologists and have basically gotten it down to accurate process.
peak oil is when no matter how many wells are dug, how many tons of oil shale is heated, one can't pull it out of the ground fast enough to beat or stay pace with (insert max output here).
to put it simply it's like this.
think of all the worlds oil as soda in a soda bottle, but this bottle doesn't contain normal soda. the soda has multiple layers each one getting thicker as you go from the cap to the bottom. the light sweet stuff comes out the essayist and the fastest. how fast you remove this light sweet stuff is the only thing you can control, but this makes the peak come sooner. peak is of course when you are nearly out or have run out of the light sweet soda in the bottle. the following layers are still technically soda but they are not light and sweet. they also won't come out as fast as the light soda no matter what you try. this is peak.
As Speaker Tip O'Neil famously said, "all politics is local". People in my neighborhood don't talk about global warming or resource depletion at community board meetings (sigh...) - they talk about illegal biking on the sidewalk, bad or overly expensive grocery stores and asthma rates. I see my job as building the connection between those issues in solutions like bike lanes and greenmarkets. And after 6 months of effort, we are starting to move the ball forward. Next week I expect them to add another greenmarket much because of the efforts of a few local citizens and the local newspaper just wrote an editorial (after we supplied the right information). And thanks to local TOD:NYC reader Damek, we are building a snazzy new website...TBD...to help activate the local area to take action to environmental, resource depletion and community building.
How did I get to this place? Well, I completely disengaged from national politics after the last two elections. Gore, Kerry would have been much better, than Bush, IMO but Congress would have likely been extremely antagonistic on any domestic program to mitigate PO or GW.
Peak Oil is not going to be solved at the national level at this point, maybe if we had done something in the 1990s we would have built a different infrastruture and curbed the exurban / SUV boom. But now it's all going to be about local adaptation to new situations. The Feds can help or hinder, but I don't think they will be decisive.
I urge everyone to engage with your local elected officials, local newspapers, business leaders, join a few clubs (political or not), meet your neighbors, ask them what their concerns are and try to find connections between them and PO or GW. Be patient. Don't just yell at people. Don't talk down to people. Be humble. Listen to people. Be forthright about your concerns. Make your points matter of factly. Be persistent. Good Luck.
I think it has many great ideas. Some are much more practical and likely to be enacted than others, but I think they have done a great job of pulling all these ideas together in one place.
Only more illustrative of the systemic ignorance in culture of the first and second laws of thermodynamics....
I recently read Canada has 8 years of natural gas left.. I think the situtation in USA might be similar. Soon USA will be MORE reliant of foreign imports.
I think the focus should be shifted away from energy indipendance to simply reducing oil use.