Culture Change e-Letter
#24
Blow-back
The oil industry has plans for you
by Jan Lundberg
More drilling, spills, opening up public lands
for private profit, base consumerism, road building, Wal-Marts and other
parking-lot developments, climate destabilization, cancer, birth defects,
manipulation of science for PR, maximizing imports of liquefied natural gas, oil
wars, and more guerilla warfare in Iraq...
None of this "progress" is a surprise
to the White House or to society's other top sectors, nor to the conscious
intelligentsia. But, news-reporting on all of these developments--although a bit
scanty--makes it appear we are a people innocently discovering only now that war
can have "unintended" consequences.
Blow-back is the U.S. "intelligence
community's" term for delayed reactions to its interventions and covert
activity. Sept. 11, 2001 may have been purely blow-back, or something more
extensive. Anyway, we need a term for oil policy blow-back. Flow-back? Gas-back?
Oil-company weather?
Some oil watchers call the oil blow-back to come
"the historic discontinuity," flowing from the passing of the peak in
world oil extraction. The big eye-opener for the somnolent consumer is that
"they" (scientists, leaders) will not be able to "think of
something" to replace oil, as is assumed.
We have to have plans for the oil industry, if
we are to exercise awareness of the oil industry's plans for us. Boycotting
petroleum is doubtful, if not impossible these days. However, creating Citizen
Petroleum Councils, for example, will allow the public to find out what the
industry and government know about petroleum dependence, and will give
communities a chance to start planning around the petroleros' agenda.
[See the link at the end of this article for information on Citizen Petroleum
Councils and non-petroleum transport and agriculture.]
News keeps coming in that shows the U.S. will
continue to play the role of dangerous giant on the world scene, at any cost.
But it's interesting to note the world's vulnerability to maintaining petroleum
gluttony enabling the global economy of waste.
Prices of natural gas have risen greatly and are
going nowhere but up. This threatens economic growth. There
is no sign of conservation--or, more impressive--a transition to doing without
nearly so much energy consumption. The pointlessness and greed of continuing
present energy usage, when basic needs can be provided for on a fraction of
today's energy use, is never accounted for. That's why alternative press and
websites exist. The U.S. uses twice the energy of Western Europe, which takes
better care of its people and the environment.
However, it would be a losing game to cling to
the popular fantasy of fueling the present economy--with billions of
consumers--with substitutes for petroleum. What the Sustainable Energy Institute
has learned and tried to get across since its founding in 1988, is that there
will be no continuation of this nation's energy-intensive industrial,
agricultural and consumer diet once the peak of global oil production
passes.
The peak is about now, and no new discoveries or
oil wars can alter the overall trend. Therefore, it's vital for our survival to
visualize an alternative lifestyle and social structure. People are so enamored
with massive energy consumption and gee-whiz techno-gadgets that any departure
from that way of thinking is deemed to be insane and Luddite. Yet, hiding our
head in the sand is no solution.
If it hurts to say that the only model for
sustainability that we have is the American Indian, so be it. As the arrows fly
at us from the techno-geeks and hopeless consumers--flag wavers and non-flag
wavers alike--we hasten to say we know very well we cannot go back in time; Yes
there are too many people now and nature's pristine bounty has been trashed and
depleted; Yes, much has been learned that can help us to develop a sustainable
society. Appropriate technology must be applied for our short-term and long-term
survival, especially for ecological restoration and providing food and water
with renewable energy.
The fact that this is not underway except by
some fanatical visionaries and hippies does not bode well. The energy future
that is being pursued by mainstream society and government policy is going to
make the transition to sustainability iffy. Unfortunately, the funded
environmental movement is hardly helping, when it does not understand or tackle
petroleum issues and does not admit to overpopulation as already achieved.
Who's your daddy? Alan Greenspan
Low natural gas prices— now vital to economic growth—are not expected to
return unless "something is done." So Alan Greenspan was before Congress's House Energy and Commerce Committee
June 10. In a responsible-sounding economist voice, he was reiterating the
direction of energy policy: make more cheap energy. While it was the same old
story, we could discern the latest approach. Congressmen were blatantly
representing industry (in the guise of "jobs"), wanting more
manufacturing and less regulation. A revival in nuclear was also voiced by
Greenspan and industry lackeys on the Committee.
One Congressman pointed out that a policy of
conservation still pops up here and there in contradiction to incentives to use
more energy at a discount. Another Congressmen had Greenspan comment on the peak
in global oil production, which Greenspan claimed was perhaps many years off. It
was clear he is not interested in evidence that the peak could have just
occurred, although this would have massive implications for status-quo
economics.
The official topic for Greenspan's testimony was
on the "need" for more natural gas. Because of lack of reserves the
focus was on liquefied natural gas (LNG) that would be imported. This means more
port facilities and the facilitating of dangerous spills and terrorism, as
pointed out by Congresswoman Lois Capps of Santa Barbara.
Unmentioned was that more gas and LNG means more
greenhouse gas emissions. The LNG would not be replacing coal; it would be for
extending economic growth. More everything. Short term profits is what
Greenspan's bottom line has to be, or he'd be outta there.
That's U.S. energy policy, and it's given a
greenwash, such as when natural gas and LNG are called "clean fuels"
even though they're just petroleum. However, if substitution of coal (three
times dirtier than gas) were the goal, one should accept on a temporary basis
domestic natural gas as a replacement fuel, but not as a way to increase
consumption for the sake of "economic growth".
White House cover up
In mid June a scandal hit the White House and Environmental Protection
Agency: "EPA report omits climate section." The most fun part of this
story was learning how it was the American Petroleum Institute who had
questioned a well known study showing that global temperatures had spiked
sharply in the past decade compared with levels over the past 1,000 years. So,
that fact was deleted from the draft of the EPA report.
The EPA report is on the state of the
environment, but the White House was heavily involved in editing the climate
section: The New York Times reported, "risks from rising global
temperatures has been whittled to a few noncommittal paragraphs."
The result of today's energy policy, the same
policy that this country has always had, means disastrous breakdowns of the
transportation, agricultural and electric utility systems in the U.S. and
elsewhere. That is what your country is doing for you. We already know what it
is doing to the rest of the world: burning it up for profit.
The above does not take into account that the
drones and clones slaving away in the work place may be unhappy with their lot:
cancer, lack of time with family and community, and being divorced from nature.
The workaday existence in consumer boxes called homes, despite the amazing
technology that our ancestors did not have, is a dead end. Although many revel
in it, the plans that Big Oil and government have for all of us is more of the
same, and who voted for this? Global warming, no thanks. No more oil wars.
It's time to individually chart our own destiny,
and that might mean working closer to home or moving closer to the job. For more
ideas that the powers that be do NOT have in mind to explore or encourage, see
our website at www.culturechange.org, and talk to your family and neighbors
about options--unless Alan Greenspan is your daddy.
*****
June 27, 2003
See Citizen Petroleum Councils (CPCs) (Culture
Change Letter #11)
See Jan Lundberg's speech to The Institute of Petroleum (Culture
Change Letter # 12)
See Fall
of Petroleum Civilization
See our donations page mentioning CPCs
Back to Home Page
Jan Lundberg's columns are protected by
copyright; however, non-commercial use of the material is permitted as long as
full attribution is given with a link to this website, and he is informed of the
re-publishing: info@culturechange.org
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