Culture Change e-Letter
#3
Spare Iraq and the atmosphere, avoid oil shock
The impending attack on Iraq does make sense for pumping up
the U.S. and British military. But it does not pump more oil. Oil
may be secured in the short term, which has been the history of U.S. and
European involvement in the Middle East. But the danger of upsetting the
oil cart becomes more severe as years go on.
The always restrained New York Times has warned,
"If oil supplies are disrupted, as they were during the 1991 gulf war, and
(oil) prices rise sharply, the economic effects would be felt in the United
States and around the world." (July 30, 2002) The next day, the Times's
Thomas Friedman spoke of oil at "$60 per barrel or $6."
As a veteran oil analyst I think the risk could be even
greater than something like 1979's oil market disruption that was triggered by
the Iranian revolution. (A 9% shortfall in gasoline supplies made for a
replay of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo's "days of lines and hoses," as
immortalized by my co-publisher Dan Lundberg.)
The peak of world oil "production" (extraction) is
happening about now, or in the next few years. The inevitable downturn in
oil extraction, an unalterable fact no matter what additional reserves are
eventually extracted, will not allow for any more "unlimited growth"
in the economy. A small shortage in world oil supplies can cause panic
buying, and create economic chaos in a matter of days. The bubble of the
stock market and the whole petroleum infrastructure will burst, and an historic
phase of socioeconomic reorganization—along the lines of thrift and local
self-reliance—will start to replace the world oil/motor vehicle economy.
Renewable energy cannot provide a seamless transition (as explained below),
especially when the trucks finally stop coming to the supermarket.
The final crippling oil shock is
coming in the next several months or years whether or not we throw the Middle
East into a deadlier mess. But the Bushies assume that (1) the U.S.
military can control everything during and after the attack, and (2) the world
economy will be even more under U.S./corporate control to a satisfactory degree.
However, the likelihood of precipitating an oil-related economic disruption is
enhanced by war, international jitteriness on oil supply, and the greater chance
of violent reprisals like 9-11.
This is no time to step up the milking of the "war-time
president" formula for popularity and immunity from ethical and legal
scrutiny. But, this is a very activist regime, known around the world as a
renegade, so woe to other peoples of other lands. This nation has engaged
in over one hundred military interventions in its history and has killed perhaps
six million civilians. Now the difference is that a major petroleum
disruption, which is on tap anyway, can kill more than bombs and depleted
uranium—left on the ground amidst food boxes rained down from
agribusiness-military contractors. Here's how:
The world is eating petroleum: For all but the few
remaining self-sufficient villages and nomads obtaining all their own food, the
whole globe is fed by oil-shipped food that was grown mostly with petrochemical
agriculture. Think also of the oil fuels used in tractors and in other
machinery.
— Today's mechanized, petrochemical
agriculture uses 100 times the energy that traditional, non-mechanized
agriculture does (or did).
— Traditional, non-mechanized
agriculture produces (or produced) ten calories of food for each calorie of
energy inputted into the food system.
— The U.S. uses more than twice the per capita energy
per acre of farmed land compared to other industrialized nations, and 28% of the
world's agricultural energy budget.
— Flying commodities by air, which uses nearly 40 times
the amount of fuel that sea transport uses, is now a regular feature of world
trade.
— Every ten glasses of orange juice drunk in Britain
requires one glass of diesel fuel for processing and transport. That
diesel poisons the world.
This petro-agriculture system has allowed for a massive
swelling of all industrial and semi-industrial populations since the
1930s. There is no handy replacement for petroleum in agriculture/food
distribution - for six billion people, anyway. Therefore, a crash in oil
supplies would mean a population crash, if the needed oil is not well
distributed during a well-planned oil-weaning phase.
With economic crash, and people no longer able to consume
their lives away and drive for dollars, agriculture and food distribution could
be hit with insurmountable interference, upon an oil/socioeconomic collapse.
The fact that unethical corporate energy corporations have put nails into the
economy's coffin is sort of a side show, with ironies including the Bushies/Cheney
type of profiteers.
There will be a petroleum supply crash because the dominance
of petroleum corporations and oil exporting nations has been complete. The
oil market is sensitive and vulnerable because it is so massive, which in turn
keeps alternative energy forms suppressed and undeveloped. And, the
substitute energy forms that that have been introduced are not nearly as
versatile as petroleum. Petroleum in the form of natural gas makes such
things as critical fertilizers and seemingly indispensable plastic bags.
One does not get chemicals for agriculture out of solar panels, or asphalt-oil
out of windmills, or tires (synthetic rubber) out of fuel cells. What's
more, the "technofix" energy forms never have imbedded energy
taken into account, i.e., how much fossil fuel goes into making the
renewable-energy system components. Net energy is therefore
crucial, at a time when new U.S. oil wells today on average "produce"
at zero net energy.
Instead of going after Iraq militarily and thinking only in
terms of oil, the U.S. government and its corporate-establishment alter ego
would serve everyone better by allowing segments of the economy to be weaned off
fossil fuels. Conservation, and secondly renewable energy, would avoid
some of the disruption and chaos ahead, and spare the atmosphere from global
warming gases. Low oil prices are even worse than super high oil
prices, because demand has been maximized by subsidizing petroleum.
Conservationists differ with the establishment view on oil prices: "A
proposed attack on Iraq is an extraordinarily high-risk economic adventure that
could either destabilize the governments of one or more oil exporting countries
by creating a prolonged period of low prices, or, if things went wrong..."
said Philip K. Verleger Jr., an oil consultant with the Council on Foreign
Relations (emphasis added), in the New York Times July 31.
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