National energy conversation getting louder

[4dsc]

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=51&Itemid=2

Boy does this article ask and present some tough questions.. To bad we don't have any democratic leadership on this matter.. Its going to have to come from the grassroots..

Written by Jan Lundberg
Culture Change Letter #127

That’s conversation, not conservation. We’ll get the latter only if (1) we have the real conversation or (2) we get hit over the head with heavy pre-petrocollapse warnings. I’m glad to say that it’s not just the second factor shaping up.

Change is in the wind. However, the nation is dominated by small minds tied to the fossil-fueled status quo, instead of listening to big-picture energy analysts such as Congressman Roscoe Bartlett and consultant Robert Hirsch.

I asked "What is the role of the market in shaping the reaction to supply shortage from peaking? These studies on peak oil have not taken the market into account." Because I did not specify the oil market, the answers were more about the free market in general including the stock market. Congressman Bartlett’s position is that the free market will not be able provide more supply when depletion is setting in. He quoted Donald Rumsfeld regarding peak oil: "The market will fix it." "As if," Bartlett continued, "there are infinite resources. It will be a bumpy ride to a transition, including a crash." Hirsch pointed out that in 1973 the Arab Oil Embargo people panicked. He also said that there have been forecasts of oil running out long ago, but "this time it is not crying wolf" although peaking does not mean actually running out, as he said at the outset. Bartlett pointed out that in the story of the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf, "in the end the wolf came and ate the people."

Bartlett’s message is tremendously logical and moral: Don’t try to fulfill rising demand to cope with peak oil via supply solutions because this would mean "more greenhouse gases" and just increasing our future vulnerability to a greater supply crunch: "A bigger fall later. We pigged out. Filling the gap (with supply) is intending to further pig out."

Robert Hirsch is Senior Energy Program Advisor at the military/technology consulting firm SAIC. His presentation was clear, supported by facts and references, and also frightening. He says, "Worry now. The problem is enormous. There will be massive shortages unless we act in time. But mitigation takes a long time. Peak oil is not a theory; 33 out of 48 of the largest oil producing countries have hit peak. There is no warning for peak, as production goes up until the peak. After peak, the drop off is sudden." He asks, Why should we not expect the world peak to be like the examples we’ve seen for countries?"

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Some important reads are

1. "Winning the Oil Endgame" by Amory B. Lovins

2. "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution" by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins

3. "The Long Emergency: Surviving the Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century" by James Howard Kunstler

and my reading list

[4dsc]

2. I recommend "powerdown"..

By Heinberg.. He presents what I believe is a realistic solution to our gathering problem.. Lovins in my book is what Kunsler describes as a Jiminy Cricket thinker..

[Coastie for Truth]

3. I've met and heard both Heinberg and Kunstler

I've also met and heard Lovins and Ovshinsky (you'll have to google Stan). The term Jim Kunstler uses is "cornucopialist" - and I am a "techno-geek conucopialist" type by Jim's thinking. Of course, by my thinking he's an anarcho-Malthusianist.

But name calling gets us nowhere (which is where we have been going Reagan shut down Carter's programs).

Heinberg's power down model may be the after effect of the devastating round of depressions (Kunstler's model) and energy wars (Llare's model) - but as a "techno-geek cornucopialist" I am more optimistic.