The Oil Drum

In one of the recent threads, I asked for good local statistical sources and got a few gems, including the Bikes at Work census data commute-to-work mash-up by zipcode. So I ran a quick search on the highest walk to work locations in the US for towns over 1000 population. The results were surprising to me in the lack of diversity:

They are almost all locations that are centered around an institution, like a university or military academy where many people are housed very close to their classes or jobs and the concentration of people and buildings conspires to reduce the amount of spaces that could be used for roads and parking of automobiles.

The editorial, by a well-respected British pundit, was insightful and interesting, and led me to conclude what many on the European Tribune have long suspected: that NATO is simply an instrument for Europe to support US strategic priorities, and that the "West" exists only when Europe (and in particular France) aligns itself unconditionally on US positions. The UK, as per that senior British commentator, has as its main role that of disrupting and dividing Europe when it is insufficiently respectful of US interests.

Since I'm French, you may be tempted to conclude that this is just sour grapes by a citizen of a supposedly declining country; however, what I found more interesting in that article was the dominant tone of fear - about the west being under siege, and needing security against various threats - in the form of coordinated military power and little else. It was a narrow, downcast, closed vision of the world, with little about values, progress or hope.

The comment thread is worth reading too, and one of the last comments, by Loefing, pointed me to another article on the same topic, this time by a graduate of the US Naval War College, Tony Corn. The article, (The Revolution in Transatlantic Affairs, has the same dominant tone of fear, but a much more detailed examination of the world. Given the credentials of its author, it is likely to have serious influence on the thinking of the strategists in the Pentagon, and it is thus worth deconstructing.

Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover gave a amazingly prescient speech in 1957, which every TOD reader should read, if they haven't already. Among other things, the speech talks about

• The relationship between fossil fuels and economic growth.

• The relationship between fossil fuels and military power.

• The fact that oil, natural gas, and coal are expected to peak, and the approximate timeframe.

• The responsibility of Rickover's generation to tell later generations about the fact that fossil fuels will deplete, so that they can start very early making plans for the difficult transition away from fossil fuels.

This speech was posted in December 2006 on the Energy Bulletin. This speech was made available by the work of two people: Theodore Rockwell, author of The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference, who had this article in his files, and Rick Lakin, who sought out the article and converted it to digital form.

The text of Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover's May 14, 1957 speech to the Minnesota State Medical Association is available below the line.

For those who don't know Monbiot: he writes for the Guardian in the UK, and publishes the articles on his site. Monbiot writes on many issues, the environment is one of his strong points, but by no means the only one. He is an excellent researcher who time and again manages to come up with sources that others 'ignore'.

On this Sunday, here are some articles he published this month. They cover a broad range: micro-generation, decreasing water supplies, war protesters, carbon offsets, and halting climate change. The material, the content, as well as Monbiot's unique and outspoken views make him highly relevant for everyone at TOD.

Hence this somewhat unusual angle: a TOD post written about what Monbiot writes (even better, in one article, he writes about what Fred Pearce writes). It's hard to summarize his articles, since they are truly 'information-dense', so reading the originals is recommended.