Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower
How Rising Oil Prices Are Obliterating America’s Superpower Status
Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated the Soviet Union as the world’s other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites in Eastern Europe.
Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at American pumps, and diesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the USA will no doubt continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the nation’s economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as an ex-superpower-in-the-making.
That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet Union’s superpower status was obvious to international observers at the time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over an empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing nearly half of Europe and much of Central Asia. The relationship between rising oil prices and the obliteration of America’s superpower status is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let’s consider the connection.
Dry Hole Superpower
The fact is, America’s wealth and power has long rested on the abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time, the world’s leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while generating a healthy surplus for export.
Oil was the basis for the rise of the first giant multinational corporations in the U.S., notably John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company (now reconstituted as Exxon Mobil, the world’s wealthiest publicly-traded corporation). Abundant, exceedingly affordable petroleum was also responsible for the emergence of the American automotive and trucking industries, the flourishing of the domestic airline industry, the development of the petrochemical and plastics industries, the suburbanization of America, and the mechanization of its agriculture. Without cheap and abundant oil, the United States would never have experienced the historic economic expansion of the post-World War II era.
No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the global reach of U.S. military power. For all the talk of America’s growing reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth technology to prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave the U.S. military its capacity to “project power” onto distant battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan. Every Humvee, tank, helicopter, and jet fighter requires its daily ration of petroleum, without which America’s technology-driven military would be forced to abandon the battlefield. No surprise, then, that the U.S. Department of Defense is the world’s single biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of it every day than the entire nation of Sweden.
From the end of World War II through the height of the Cold War, the U.S. claim to superpower status rested on a vast sea of oil. As long as most of our oil came from domestic sources and the price remained reasonably low, the American economy thrived and the annual cost of deploying vast armies abroad was relatively manageable. But that sea has been shrinking since the 1950s. Domestic oil production reached a peak in 1970 and has been in decline ever since — with a growing dependency on imported oil as the result. When it came to reliance on imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now has passed 65%.
Though few fully realized it, this represented a significant erosion of sovereign independence even before the price of a barrel of crude soared above $110. By now, we are transferring such staggering sums yearly to foreign oil producers, who are using it to gobble up valuable American assets, that, whether we know it or not, we have essentially abandoned our claim to superpowerdom.
According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a current price of about $115 per barrel, that’s $1.5 billion per day, or $548 billion per year. This represents the single largest contribution to America’s balance-of-payments deficit, and is a leading cause for the dollar’s ongoing drop in value. If oil prices rise any higher — in response, perhaps, to a new crisis in the Middle East (as might be occasioned by U.S. air strikes on Iran) — our annual import bill could quickly approach three-quarters of a trillion dollars or more per year.
While our economy is being depleted of these funds, at a moment when credit is scarce and economic growth has screeched to a halt, the oil regimes on which we depend for our daily fix are depositing their mountains of accumulating petrodollars in “sovereign wealth funds” (SWFs) — state-controlled investment accounts that buy up prized foreign assets in order to secure non-oil-dependent sources of wealth. At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion.
The ADIA first made headlines in November 2007 when it acquired a $7.5 billion stake in Citigroup, America’s largest bank holding company. The fund has also made substantial investments in Advanced Micro Systems, a major chip maker, and the Carlyle Group, the private equity giant. Another big SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, also acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Citigroup, along with a $6.6 billion chunk of Merrill Lynch. And these are but the first of a series of major SWF moves that will be aimed at acquiring stakes in top American banks and corporations.
The managers of these funds naturally insist that they have no intention of using their ownership of prime American properties to influence U.S. policy. In time, however, a transfer of economic power of this magnitude cannot help but translate into a transfer of political power as well. Indeed, this prospect has already stirred deep misgivings in Congress. “In the short run, that they [the Middle Eastern SWFs] are investing here is good,” Senator Evan Bayh (D-Indiana) recently observed. “But in the long run it is unsustainable. Our power and authority is eroding because of the amounts we are sending abroad for energy….”
No Summer Tax Holiday for the Pentagon
Foreign ownership of key nodes of our economy is only one sign of fading American superpower status. Oil’s impact on the military is another.
Every day, the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles, and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing aircraft. With U.S. forces paying, as of late April, an average of $3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million per week, $5.1 billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per gallon for gasoline.
When questioned about why Iraqis are paying almost a third less for oil than American forces in their country, senior Iraqi government officials scoff at any suggestion of impropriety. “America has hardly even begun to repay its debt to Iraq,” said Abdul Basit, the head of Iraq’s Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi governmental expenditures. “This is an immoral request because we didn’t ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we didn’t have all these needs.”
Needless to say, this is not exactly the way grateful clients are supposed to address superpower patrons. “It’s totally unacceptable to me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the world from oil revenues,” said Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “It doesn’t compute as far as I’m concerned.”
Certainly, however, our allies in the region, especially the Sunni kingdoms of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that presumably look to Washington to stabilize Iraq and curb the growing power of Shiite Iran, are willing to help the Pentagon out by supplying U.S. troops with free or deeply-discounted petroleum. No such luck. Except for some partially subsidized oil supplied by Kuwait, all oil-producing U.S. allies in the region charge us the market rate for petroleum. Take that as a striking reflection of how little credence even countries whose ruling elites have traditionally looked to the U.S. for protection now attach to our supposed superpower status.
Think of this as a strikingly clear-eyed assessment of American power. As far as they’re concerned, we’re now just another of those hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump — and they’re perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can then use to cherry-pick our prime assets. So expect no summer tax holidays for the Pentagon, not in the Middle East, anyway.
Worse yet, the U.S. military will need even more oil for the future wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way, the U.S. experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under the military “transformation” initiated by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in 2001, the future U.S. war machine will rely less on “boots on the ground” and ever more on technology. But technology entails an ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) all consume many times more fuel than those they will replace. To put this in perspective: The average G.I in Iraq now uses about seven times as much oil per day as G.I.s did in the first Gulf War less than two decades ago. And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will skyrocket; and that the Pentagon’s capacity to shoulder multiple foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.
Russia’s Gusher
If anything demonstrates the critical role of oil in determining the fate of superpowers in the current milieu, it is the spectacular reemergence of Russia as a Great Power on the basis of its superior energy balance. Once derided as the humiliated, enfeebled loser in the U.S.-Soviet rivalry, Russia is again a force to be reckoned with in world affairs. It possesses the fastest-growing economy among the G-8 group of major industrial powers, is the world’s second leading producer of oil (after Saudi Arabia), and is its top producer of natural gas. Because it produces far more energy than it consumes, Russia exports a substantial portion of its oil and gas to neighboring countries, making it the only Great Power not dependent on other states for its energy needs.
As Russia has become an energy-exporting state, it has moved from the list of has-beens to the front rank of major players. When President Bush first occupied the White House, in February 2001, one of his highest priorities was to downgrade U.S. ties with Russia and annul the various arms-control agreements that had been forged between the two countries by his predecessors, agreements that explicitly conferred equal status on the USA and the USSR.
As an indication of how contemptuously the Bush team viewed Russia at that time, Condoleezza Rice, while still an adviser to the Bush presidential campaign, wrote, in the January/February 2000 issue of the influential Foreign Affairs, “U.S. policy… must recognize that American security is threatened less by Russia’s strength than by its weakness and incoherence.” Under such circumstances, she continued, there was no need to preserve obsolete relics of the dual superpower past like the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; rather, the focus of U.S. efforts should be on preventing the further erosion of Russian nuclear safeguards and the potential escape of nuclear materials.
In line with this outlook, President Bush believed that he could convert an impoverished and compliant Russia into a major source of oil and natural gas for the United States — with American energy companies running the show. This was the evident aim of the U.S.-Russian “energy dialogue” announced by Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin in May 2002. But if Bush thought Russia was prepared to turn into a northern version of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, or Venezuela prior to the arrival of Hugo Chávez, he was to be sorely disappointed. Putin never permitted American firms to acquire substantial energy assets in Russia. Instead, he presided over a major recentralization of state control when it came to the country’s most valuable oil and gas reserves, putting most of them in the hands of Gazprom, the state-controlled natural gas behemoth.
Once in control of these assets, moreover, Putin has used his renascent energy power to exert influence over states that were once part of the former Soviet Union, as well as those in Western Europe that rely on Russian oil and gas for a substantial share of their energy needs. In the most extreme case, Moscow turned off the flow of natural gas to Ukraine on January 1, 2006, in the midst of an especially cold winter, in what was said to be a dispute over pricing but was widely viewed as punishment for Ukraine’s political drift westwards. (The gas was turned back on four days later when Ukraine agreed to pay a higher price and offered other concessions.) Gazprom has threatened similar action in disputes with Armenia, Belarus, and Georgia — in each case forcing those former Soviet SSRs to back down.
When it comes to the U.S.-Russian relationship, just how much the balance of power has shifted was evident at the NATO summit at Bucharest in early April. There, President Bush asked that Georgia and Ukraine both be approved for eventual membership in the alliance, only to find top U.S. allies (and Russian energy users) France and Germany blocking the measure out of concern for straining ties with Russia. “It was a remarkable rejection of American policy in an alliance normally dominated by Washington,” Steven Erlanger and Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported, “and it sent a confusing signal to Russia, one that some countries considered close to appeasement of Moscow.”
For Russian officials, however, the restoration of their country’s great power status is not the product of deceit or bullying, but a natural consequence of being the world’s leading energy provider. No one is more aware of this than Dmitri Medvedev, the former Chairman of Gazprom and new Russian president. “The attitude toward Russia in the world is different now,” he declared on December 11, 2007. “We are not being lectured like schoolchildren; we are respected and we are deferred to. Russia has reclaimed its proper place in the world community. Russia has become a different country, stronger and more prosperous.”
The same, of course, can be said about the United States — in reverse. As a result of our addiction to increasingly costly imported oil, we have become a different country, weaker and less prosperous. Whether we know it or not, the energy Berlin Wall has already fallen and the United States is an ex-superpower-in-the-making.
Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and author of the just-released Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Metropolitan Books). A documentary film based on his previous book, Blood and Oil, is available from the Media Education Foundation and can be ordered at bloodandoilmovie.com. A brief video of Klare discussing key subjects in his new book can be viewed by clicking here.
Copyright 2008 Michael T. Klare
This is wonderful news! Once the United States war machine literally runs out of gas, the planet will be much safer. It even could be the saving of the soul of this country.
senator levin suggests that tens of billions of dollars are being spent in iraq for reconstruction, so iraq should contribute more to those efforts.
as far as i am aware, 20 billion was sanctioned several years ago. this is just now being used up. no other moneys have been sanctioned for reconstruction, although large amounts are obviously being spent to maintain the us army there.
of this 20 billion, substantial amounts have been wasted in incomplete projects. there are no records of the 12 billion or so iraqi sovereign money that was seized when saddam was toppled- it was sent by the planeload to iraq - if that- and distributed by the suitcase load.
all this makes no mention of the costs infrastuctural damage, deaths,illness, mental trauma, lost industry and agriculture and lost oil revenues, the loss of a generation, that iraq has suffered as a consequence of the occupation. who is responsible to repay that debt?
Desperate junkies are the most dangerous kind – especially now that the junkie sees its only chance to shoot at all is to shoot first.
I guess the next superpower will be the country that develops alternate energy sources while Peak Oil sorts out the rest. If only we could gas our cars on the bitterness of the next generation.
I’d love to see this front and center in the Washington Post. Maybe then people would wake up to the fact that we need to straighten up and fly right. Most people look at high gas prices and say “wow getting to the mall is so much more expensive”. If they read this article they’d say “wow blackballing the world is too damn expensive”.
My nightmare is after the U.S. battlegroups in the Indian Ocean have emptied their magazines on Iran after Bush orders his long awaited strike, upon anchoring in port, they are told, “Congratulations!” “Good Job!” “Boowah!” and so on, and, oh by the way, there isn’t enough money to refuel your ships for a second strike.
I think that the article’s contention (oil is everything to the status of the US as a superpower) is slightly myopic. Russia is doing better all the time, and I love to hear it, but the US has double the population, and a much more developed existing infrastructure, AND it remains on the receiving end of the rest of the world’s brain-drain.
The US military will probably be what finds our way around oil …because there’s no urge in the human species like that of the lust to war.
It is money flow when it comes to countries and oil. Russia and Saudi Arabia have benefited from the rise in oil prices. We have suffered from those same events. Half the run up in oil prices are due to the fall in the dollar. When you add $4 trillion to the U.S. debt in 7 years and run a $700+ billion dollar trade deficit for more than 5 years, your currency goes lower.
Arise257, why wait with anticipation for the mainstream media to report it? We’ve got to get past this idea that others are going to do our work for us; it isn’t going to happen that way. We have to educate others ourselves. There are so many creative ways to do so. But we have to abandon (and boycott) all mainstream media resources - and create & support alternatives.
I agree that the U.S. might become a far better place and the world a far safer place when the U.S. military grinds to a screeching, oil-starved halt. But it’s a terrible shame that we must as a society be forced to acknowledge reality by adverse circumstances that we ourselves created by our folly.
The cause of both the economic decline of the U.S. and the oil shortages is U.S. stupidity, the stupidity of its people, its schools and its television culture.
The U.S. will continue to decline in power, influence and living standard until it returns to Constitutional rule and to regulated capitalism as its economic system. Presently, the U.S. offers a dog-eat-dog system for commoners and a purely socialist system for corporations. Corporations and corporations alone receive government protection of profits and liquidity as well as the full support of the military in establishing and plundering foreign markets.
But there’s no guarantee that life will improve with the economic and political collapse. It may be that our leadership will start bigger and more brutal wars in desperation of maintaining their empire by adhering quite naturally the usual definition of insanity. It may be that the same corporations whose propaganda spewing television sets dumbed Americans down to point of national suicide will also succeed in convincing citizens that their problems arise from any among the usual suspects - terrorists, hippies, protesters, unwed mothers, homosexuals, abortionists, the unemployed, the homeless, flag burners, drug users. Success here will lead to more war and even to a genocide of U.S. citizens in KBR extermination camps. George Bush will make a big profit from our gold teeth and our lard.
There is so much that is untold and unknown by far too many. It amazes me that so many are still so blind to what has been happening and is about to end OUR America.
Want to know some real honest truths from back in 1967…. watch this , a video made by some Real American Heros and told to wake the rest of us up. This is a real story about who is controlling Washington and why….and it sure isn’t about Bible prophesies, it is about GREED, something Washington DC knows about and worships every hour.
Watch, learn and find out who stands to gain from the next war.
“Loss of Liberty”
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/18.html
The Israeli Attack on the USS Liberty
Then if you care, pass this along and help more of us awaken.
Today petroleum sits at $126 a barrel. Sure, the price will jockey around somewhat due to traders, the weak dollar etc., but the truth is the USA is oil dependent and our days as an international leader are doomed. That said, it’s amazing that politicians are avoiding discussing this painful truth. Such reluctance translates into poor planning for a future with limited oil and gas. I’m not the first one to ask why we as a nation are not focused on rebuilding our railway systems and our river systems for human and material transport. Rebuilding our dated rail and river transport systems will put 250,000 people to work, greatly diminish our reliance on foreign oil, and may keep this nation from total collapse. Oh, and we may want to consider eliminating insane wars that sap our people, our treasure, and our remaining oil reserves. Just a thought!
A kind of poetic justice rendered by the gods if ALL the military vehicles end up frozen in the Iraqi desert due to a thwarting of the war’s chief intention: The END of oil stops them all there as a tribute to all nations where WAR inevitably leads!
KLARE says, “At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion.” LET these interests finance the war then, since it’s for and about THEIR profits!
In a sense, domestic oil companies along with those car manufacturers who PURPOSELY set their standards on completely fuel-inefficient vehicles are to blame and deserve a class action suit by Americans. Perhaps not the ones who selfishly chose to buy behemoth vehicles that get 10-15 miles to the gallon, but how about the rest of us caught in this devil’s bargain? And worse still, those along the equatorial belt, the victims of increasingly intensified climatic events.
“Rebuilding our dated rail and river transport systems will put 250,000 people to work, greatly diminish our reliance on foreign oil, and may keep this nation from total collapse.”
That’s called socialism . Americans will starve and “totally collapse ” before they would embrace socialism .
Here is my take on the situation. The oil doen’t have to run out before America collapses. Production just has to start declining while demand (from India and Chana) increases. And that decline has already started. And every other country has seen this coming for 50 years. Every war that America has waged since WWII has been all about oil and/or the control of oil.
I will admit that I didn’t know this was happening. I really didn’t think too much about oil being a finite resource. I just assumed that an economy that would grow indefinitely was a good thing. And my own stupidity is part of the reason that America and the world is in the mess we see today.
But looking back with 20/20 vision really doesn’t get me anywhere. Knowing how we got here and who is to blame really doesn’t get much done. I have to envision what the world will look like when the oil starts to run out. And what we can do as a nation and individually in our communities.
My sense is that nothing is going to happen at the national level until it’s too late. They are going to continue to fight as if they can actually win by having the last barrel of oil. Because oil has always guaranteed power and money to these monsters. And that’s all they care about. So we have to look elsewhere just survive, let alone thrive.
And it all starts with food and water. And how that gets supplied to the people. Oil dependent argriculture is dead. Well, it is in it’s death throws right now. As communities, we have to start working NOW on ways to feed oursleves. Without oil. And without “just in time” inventories on wheels. The “Relocalizion” movement is huge and getting bigger every day. It’s all about Community Sovereignty. See what is happening in your town and start becoming part of the solution.
Our world is going to change forever. There is no going back. So grieve if you must, but realize that life in America is not ever going to repeat the “good times” we had for the past 50 years. Consumption will no longer be the center of our lives. Production and community will be. And maybe that isn’t such a bad thing to work towards.
divine mauler: Rebuilding our dated rail and river transport systems will put 250,000 people to work
That may be true. But the capitalist will not acknowledge that or anything else. Because the capitalist relies on secrecy about what is possible, and where things are going, to get a toehold into every emerging market, to gain or secure control over the society.
This is why there is only one workable solution: Localism. Economic/political control shifted to the local level. Individuals have to shift their exchange/association away from the capitalists and toward the local community. There are many benefits.
We could rebuild a lot of neglected things in a New Deal way, but with tax breaks for the rich and prolonged war, they have racked up $9.6 trillion in debt. The Chinese will not lend us any more, no matter how many people shop at WalMart with the rebate checks paid for by borrowing from the Chinese.
If there is a post-script / obituary of the American Empire to be written, the sheer rapaciousness and shortsightedness of the ruling elite will go down as a prime cause (just as it doomed Rome, Czarist Russia, & dynastic China, for starters). One can only hope that said elite winds up like other shoved aside rulers, dear and / or impoverished.
Shortages of food, water and energy will lead to a break-up of the United States. Secession? The Second Civil War? Regional strife? Weren’t many military bases moved to the south during those rounds of base closures?
I think I just saw the lights flicker.
The end of oil and of fossil fuels in general will not be pretty.
One word.___ ~DEPRESSION~ ___It will happen and probably this year. When it hits, America will no longer be a world power of any size. If you are not prepared for it, you will go hungry. __ Very hungry. All of the economic trends point to a depression and facts are facts.
On yesterday’s news, there was a report that (115 million) Americans were more than three months behind in paying their utility bills.
I’d bet that figure is way BELOW the actual number of people who are now in dire straits, because millions more are likely only one or two months behind and the next month’s figures are not posted yet and millions do not have the cash to pay up.
Utilities cannot be shut off during winter months when people are behind in their payments, that’s a federal law. They can be now, winter is over and 115 million or more will shut off. Many owe over a thousand dollars, many more are over two thousand in debt with overdue gas, heating oil and electric bills. People have to eat and that’s what they are primarily buying, __FOOD.
Add that in to the housing crunch, the current job picture, the high cost of gas and food and one can expect things may likely get worse in a hurry. Houses aren’t selling and construction jobs are eleminated. People who have been kicke ut o f their homes cannot afford a a month’s rent, and a month’s rent in advance and a security deposit and therefore apartments are not renting as they should be.
People aren’t purchasing new vehicles and manufacturing jobs are lost, people aren’t updating or re-modeling their homes and sales of wood, insulation, wiring, appliances, plumbing, tile, carpeting, paint, roofing, etc, are way down. More lost jobs, layoffs and the cycle continues and rapidly grows, just like a cancer.
Check and see how many restaurants are closing or closed. How may stores in shopping malls are closed, how many dollar stores are now sitting empty. That of course depends upon where one lives. Where there are manufacturing plants still in operation, or where corporations that support military demands are located, the economy may be fairly stable. Most areas are not in that catagory.
Those vacation locations that depend upon the tourist trade are feeling the money crunch, as are resorts and casinos. Look at Las Vegas, they are in serious trouble now. The party is almost over there. One business that is thriving now are thrift stores.
Get ready, it’s gonna be tough.
“With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage…”
California alone uses 10 times that much. What happens is gasoline reaches $8 per gallon? Do you think that everything will transform or stay pretty much the same? I would be on the latter, with a hit on the economy.
You have the situation where people HAVE to get to work and back. Sure they could drive a Prius and not an Excursion, but what they have in the garage is what they have in the garage. They are so cash strapped with the mortgage mess and the credit crunch that they could not get anything else it they had to.
Gas could be $8 per gallon and people would still have to get to work and back. There will be very little car pooling and mass transit and I think anyone that is honest knows this. All the wonderful transformation to biking and walking is NOT going to happen and you know it.
It is like the Long Emergency book saying that we will all revert back to the land. Excuse me, but when pigs fly! People would rather go to war on borrowed money than revert back to some primitive state. When Bush said the terrorists want to destroy our way of life, this is what he meant!
I do not mean to seem negative, but realistic. We hear this world transformation stuff all the time on here. “If people just..” this and that. Wishful thinking. I would rather go with what is possible and probable than dream and hope. You can dream and hope all you want, but a lot of practical possible thinking and doing will get you a LOT farther.
Hillary recently announced that she would “break up” OPEC. Since she surely understands that we are near the apogee of the oil production curve and thus OPEC is not the fundamental problem, was she just pandering to the red meat crowd or was she threatening our suppliers? Either way, she was indicating her lack of fitness for the office.
Unfortunately, if it comes down to our having to “just take the oil” or suffer a depression, I think history tells us–to wit, our former military plans to take the Saudi oil if they had not lifted their boycott–that Hillary’s comment was not just a threat but the establishment position.
I don’t think we even want to contemplate what the outcome would be of such a stupid but predictable move?
America is not a member of OPEC and we have absolutley no legal control over what they do. The problem of oil prices comes from those who play the stock markets and buy and sell oil commodities. As long as that goes on the price of oil will stay high, near the $120 to $150 dollar a barrel range or perhaps even go higher.
Hey ~SJC~, what did you mean we’d rather go to war on borrowed money than revert back to some primative state? Did I miss something there, or totally misunderstand you, or did you accidently write your meaning wrong?
I believe it was going to war on borrowed money that has brought us to the present state. I’d love to revert back to 1999. When Clinton was our president, we had the best economic conditions we’d ever experienced since WW-2. I could handle that. The only ones who have benefited from the Bush cartel are the very rich.
SJC lets do some basic math if gas costs “8 dollars a gallon” that’s 200 dollars to fill up the 25 gallon tank many SUVs have, and most SUVs in actual practice get less than 20 miles a gallon and many commuters drive easily 50 miles a day between commuting and errands so that’s 24 dollars every day just to fill the tank before any other expenses, guess what 80% of people CAN’T afford that sort of expense and would become unemployed and it would lead to an economic depressions that would make the great depression look like a picnic. It’s not like people will choose to go back to the land they’d rather be forced in that direction IF gas hits 8/gallon.
I guess that what Bush’s spokesperson meant when he proudly proclaimed that neo-cons weren’t part of the reality based community. Neo-con Bush supporters remind me of those Barbie dolls who when you pull the string in their back proclaim “math is hard.”
It’s this line of thinking BTW that makes me think lefty people ought to be keeping their powder dry rather than advocating for gun control. Lets not be naive about what the end of the fossil fuel era combined with a lack of planning would really mean, hint it isn’t pretty.
Kem I think SJC is simply in complete denial and believes his SUV will run on magic pixie dust:
SJC sed:
“Gas could be $8 per gallon and people would still have to get to work and back. There will be very little car pooling and mass transit and I think anyone that is honest knows this.”
SJC Ok genius where are ordinary people going to find the money to pay for the gas to keep our “happy motoring” (Knustler) society running under those conditions?
I swear “conservatives” believe in conserving exactly nothing and are s dumb as a box of hammers.
p.s. I am also login hootowl just to be clear, just on a different computer now.
There are lots of good posts above on the energy problem, and thank you.
More than twenty years ago, Ralph Nader, and the Public Interest Research Groups he helped start, were urging the radical conservation of petroleum resources through greater fuel efficiency in automobiles, and especially through the greater creation and use of mass transit alternatives to automobiles. They were also attempting to promote the use of other sources of energy than petroleum. Neither the elites nor the public, apparently, were listening. Why is it that a country supposedly concerned with “national homeland security” cannot act to stave off a coming energy disaster? Taking over the oil fields of the Middle East is not going to fix it, and apparently it isn’t working now. We were warned about the current mess a long, long time ago.
” Needless to say, this is not exactly the way grateful clients are supposed to address superpower patrons. “It’s totally unacceptable to me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the world from oil revenues,” said Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “It doesn’t compute as far as I’m concerned.” ”
IMAGINE THE INGRATITUDE OF THESE PEOPLE. AFTER ALL WE AMERICANS HAVE DONE FOR THEM. THE SACRIFICES WE HAVE MADE. AND THEY CAN’T EVEN SELL US CHEAP GAS SO WE CAN ROLL OUR TANKS INTO THEIR TOWNS TO PROTECT THEM FROM… UHHH…TERRORISTS!
Look deeply at yourself America.
Some of you are hopeless. Gas went from $2 to $3 per gallon and consumption actually went UP. You know I am right when I say people have to get to work, so they will pay more per gallon, they have NO choice.
Gas costs a family $2000, $3000, $4000 per year and they still drive to an from work. Carpools have not increased. Mass transit has not increased. Gas price doubles and people keep driving. These are the facts. This is not lost on the people profiting from this.
OPEC’s not the problem. OPEC sells petroleum at what the market will bear. Very capitalistic. And I think we like capitalism. Well, we used to like capitalism when it worked in our favor. Now the world has gotten on board and we’re no longer top banana. Remember when Reagan announced that we won the Cold War! Be careful what you wish for. Russia lost and over the last decade had turned itself into a major player in the international oil lottery. It’s thriving with the second largest reserves in the world. What is the USA doing? Still acting like it’s 1955 and on top. We helped create all this globalization stuff and now we’re at a distinct disadvantage. We’re shedding our wealth faster than a drunk quaffs a cool one! And I’m afraid the average American doesn’t understand the issues. He still thinks the Mexicans are to blame or funny people who wear kaffiyehs. I think the bottom line is this-we are going to have to make new living arrangements. The operation will be painful and few of us are prepared to undergo the surgery. It’s always easier to attack others rather than evaluate your own shortcomings.
here, here everyone. i often tell myself i am being extremist in thinking that the US is going to collapse into something far worse than a depression, but the evidence is far too strong to ignore. but most americans seem to be doing just that. I recently heard a woman talking about how her new BMW SUV was the best investment she ever made and how glad she was to find someone else in her office who “loves as much as she does” rock of love. it really “restored her faith in humanity”. this is what we are up against people…
SJC if we hit peak oil plus other parts of the world want to use more (China/India) there will be less for us, less for us plus no mass transit and no planning for alternative fuels in general equals higher prices equals less demand equals more unemployment say compared to Europe and Asia who ARE building windmills and mass transit. What part of basic physics (supply is not infinite) and economics (high gas prices will DEMAND people drive less due to not being able to afford it) do you fail to understand? Again your SUV will not run on magic pixie dust, as much as many Americans think people can do and be anything this Libertarian/New Age fantasy is about to get a hard cold does of reality really soon. Your state of denial that life will hum along as wasteful as ever because it “has to” will be punctured when everyone is struggling for the last gallons of gas. Denial is not helpful.
P.S. SJC I am going to guess by your blasé attitude about prices you are upper middle class so gas prices don’t effect YOU. But riddle me this how is Joe Average who works at Wal-Mart or Burger King going to get to work in their 20 year old beater when getting to work will costs 20 bucks and they are making 60 bucks a day and they are already in the hole when it costs them say 7.50 to get to work? The math simply doesn’t work, and because we have encouraged sprawl that is not reachable by mass transit these people are simply going to be screwed and they are like 30+% of the population. If 30+% of the population is SUDDENLY unemployed then it will have huge knock on effects and cause a massive depression. You conservatives laughing at the poor and building sprawl and acting smug are about to get bitten on the ass hard when he depression hits YOU. I’m sure the Russian Communist party elite were very smug right up until the end when they suddenly found themselves burning furniture in the fireplace to survive.
You can go on harping like monkeys on a keyboard. I am going to spend my time doing something useful. You losers can sit and yammer useless nothings forever. It is better to actually DO something constructive than sit and shoot your mouths off for the rest of your lives.
SJC I do plenty I just planted a garden, I shop at the local co-op and buy organic foods, I drive a fuel efficient Honda Civic that gets 35 mpg in the city and 40 mpg on the highway, I use compact fluorescent lights, I compost, I buy used clothes at the thrift and restore old stereo equipment from thrift stores that would otherwise be land filled, I work as a landscaper that doesn’t use pesticides or herbicides, etc. Yet all that will be moot if the rest of the society waits in a blase fashion and drives itself over the cliff of peak oil without planning on a macro scale for creating an alternative infrastructure. If we are going to survive and maintain a sustainable civilization it will require BOTH individual practical actions AND a critique of our wasteful short term goal oriented society that places quarterly profits for stock holders and mindless entertainment over long term survival.
p.s SJC you ought to read Jared Diamond’s Collapse. Sometimes societies do make bad decisions as a group and die out due to those bad decisions. Just because people happily motored to their strip mall and office cube jobs today it does not follow that it “has to” happen tomorrow. To hold that philosophy in the face of empirical evidence is as deluded as the Communists believe that “scientific socialism” showed that the triumph of the proletariat is “inevitable.” Just because you are confident it does not follow that confidence is warranted.
The gardens are sprouting, and there’s even a few who’ve turned it to business…yard farmers.
http://blogs.wsj.com/independentstreet/2008/04/22/entrepreneurs-see-opportunity-down-on-the-yard-farm/?mod=WSJBlog
I’ve no outside space but my kitchen floor & counters are being taken over by a container garden. The face of the USA will change, but new non-oil based businesses will hatch from the rubbish. I suspect we will end up looking a bit like Cuba post ’special period’ after their oil shock. Yard farms & gardens pretty much took over.