Preparing For Life After Oil ("Our Way Of Life Will Drastically Change")

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/audits/66625



Preparing for Life After Oil

By Michael T. Klare, The Nation. Posted November 8, 2007.

Welcome to the Age of Insuffiency: As oil prices hit new highs and supplies sink, our way of life will drastically change.

This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signaled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about "oil" in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of "liquids." The global output of "liquids," the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030 -- barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe. Aside from suggesting the degree to which oil companies have ceased being mere suppliers of petroleum and are now purveyors of a wide variety of liquid products -- including synthetic fuels derived from natural gas, corn, coal and other substances -- this change hints at something more fundamental: we have entered a new era of intensified energy competition and growing reliance on the use of force to protect overseas sources of petroleum.

- snip -

Petroleum is, of course, a finite substance, and geologists have long warned of its ultimate disappearance. The extraction of oil, like that of other nonrenewable resources, will follow a parabolic curve over time. Production rises quickly at first and then gradually slows until approximately half the original supply has been exhausted; at that point, a peak in sustainable output is attained and production begins an irreversible decline until it becomes too expensive to lift what little remains. Most oil geologists believe we have already reached the midway point in the depletion of the world's original petroleum inheritance and so are nearing a peak in global output; the only real debate is over how close we have come to that point, with some experts claiming we are at the peak now and others saying it is still a few years or maybe a decade away.

Until very recently, Energy Department analysts were firmly in the camp of those wild-eyed optimists who claimed that peak oil was so far in the future that we didn't really need to give it much thought. Putting aside the science of the matter, the promulgation of such a rose-colored view obviated any need to advocate improvements in automobile fuel efficiency or to accelerate progress on the development of alternative fuels. Given White House priorities, it is hardly surprising that this view prevailed in Washington.

In just the past six months, however, the signs of an imminent peak in conventional oil production have become impossible even for conservative industry analysts to ignore. These have come from the take-no-prisoners world of oil pricing and deal-making, on the one hand, and the analysis of international energy experts, on the other.

Most dramatic, perhaps, has been the spectacular rise in oil prices. The price of light, sweet crude crossed the longstanding psychological barrier of $80 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the first time in September, and has since risen to as high as $90. Many reasons have been cited for the rise in crude prices, including unrest in Nigeria's oil-producing Delta region, pipeline sabotage in Mexico, increased hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico and fears of Turkish attacks on Kurdish guerrilla sanctuaries in Iraq. But the underlying reality is that most oil-producing countries are pumping at maximum capacity and finding it increasingly difficult to boost production in the face of rising international demand.

Even a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost production by 500,000 barrels per day failed to halt the upward momentum in prices...

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[katmondoo]

1. So How are we going to have wars without oil?

How are the planes going to drop bombs if there is no fuel to fly them. This also raises the price of war, maybe even make war too expensive or go back to the days of hand to hand combat, no more tanks no more planes what a thought.

[liberal N proud]

2. Future wars will be over clean water

We are exhausting that resource just as fast as we are oil

[shadowknows69]

3. I own swords

I'm sittin pretty

[riverdeep]

4. This is a coincidence. I was reading stuff like this on another forum.

One really profound comment I read there will stick with me:

"The bad news is that our way of life is unsustainable. The good news is that our way of life is unsustainable."

[WritersBlock]

5. This article explains very clearly why the Democrats aren't harnessing Bush.

The New 'Washington Consensus'

<snip>

In considering these past events, it is important to recognize that the use of military force to protect the flow of imported petroleum has generally enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Washington. Initially, this bipartisan outlook was largely focused on the Persian Gulf area, but since 1990, it has been extended to other areas as well. President Clinton eagerly pursued close military ties with the Caspian Sea oil states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan after the breakup of the USSR in 1991, while George W. Bush has avidly sought an increased US military presence in Africa's oil-producing regions, going so far as to favor the establishment of a US Africa Command (Africom) in February.


One might imagine that the current debacle in Iraq would shake this consensus, but there is no evidence that this is so. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: possibly fearful that the chaos in Iraq will spread to other countries in the Gulf region, senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated US military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries.


Perhaps the most explicit expression of this elite consensus is an independent task force report, National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, backed by many prominent Democrats and Republicans. It was released by the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), co-chaired by John Deutch, deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration, and James Schlesinger, defense secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, in October 2006. The report warns of mounting perils to the safe flow of foreign oil. Concluding that the United States alone has the capacity to protect the global oil trade against the threat of violent obstruction, it argues the need for a strong US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores.


An awareness of this new "Washington consensus" on the need to protect overseas oil supplies with American troops helps explain many recent developments in Washington. Most significant, it illuminates the strategic stance adopted by President Bush in justifying his determination to retain a potent US force in Iraq -- and why the Democrats have found it so difficult to contest that stance.

I remember being told quite forcefully during Bush & Cheney's buildup of lies that I was being naive in thinking the Iraq invasion was about oil. I wonder if I'll be told the same thing about Iran.

What amazes me is that it seems to be almost taken for granted that we have the *right* to use military power to "protect foreign energy deliveries."

But what gives us that right? I somehow doubt that we would afford that same right to, say, China.

[riverdeep]

6. "Might makes right."

This is their guiding principle. You'd be surprised how many 'typical' Americans also believe that. That if their way of life were in threat of curtailment, it would be okay to kill others to take over their resources. It's actually in our DNA. Native Americans and all that.

[riverdeep]

7. By the way, Jimmy Carter looks fairly bright now, doesn't he?

Way back when he was promoting turning the thermostat down, and putting on a sweater, he was branded a 'kook' or 'miser'. He also started putting more resources into alternative energy, and I recall him showing off a solar panel powered something or other. And then Reagan came and shut it all down.

When will Joe and Jane six-pack realize the party's over? I talk to the 'normals' around me and realize they don't even have a clue.