Eating as many as we can get; or: we are the Walrus
> America will never -- repeat, never -- be energy independent
> America is such a major energy user and the energy market is
> so complex that we can never be independent. America simply
> sucks up too much oil (25 percent of world production), too
> much natural gas, and too much coal to ever cut itself off
> from the global market
He's wrong there. It's more American arrogance, and very shortsighted.
Perhaps we should forgive ourselves -- using as much as we can get is human nature. There is a correlation between rising energy per capita, and societal wealth; and a correlation between rising societal wealth and billions spent on long term research. The insatiable human gluttony for "more!" also created the surplus that allowed brilliant insights of physicists into space, time and gravity, and the efforts that produced sugarless gum, MP3 players, talking GPS devices that tell us where we are and where to turn, and one of the biggest miracles of all, the fact we can buy pineapples any time of year (and in Manhattan, at any hour of the day or night).
Now say goodbye to all of it.
American will become energy independent because it has no choice. In a time of energy scarcity, it's every nation for itself. For awhile, war can change that equation: the world's energy capacity may be dramatically and instantly extended if someone gets bold enough to nuke the parts of the planet that use the most energy and contribute the least of it. But armies are expensive, as total available energy dwindles each year the world will deglobalize, and question becomes not whether America is energy is self-sufficient but whether your VILLAGE is self-sufficient.
The punchline is America still is one of the most energy rich countries on earth -- our oil has been deep in decline since 1970, but we still have practically more than anyone. We still have one of the world's biggest supplies of coal and (though also deeply in decline) of natural gas. If we shifted to cities and abandoned the suburbs, and splurged building a few railroads built to last, and reduced the population by 2/3rds, we could live happier and healthier and with more bicycles for centuries on what we have, and still have enough surplus for sugarless gum and a few pineapples. But since we don't have the leadership to bring us there by the high road, we'll have to straggle in after the energy party is over and scrape by on what's left.
In 5,000 years will our monuments be as impressive as the pyramids? Maybe not, but then the Egyptians never came close to inventing the television remote control, or the nearly universal ability to drive to buy a hamburger at midnight. We could have done better. The biggest irony is in our time of fabulous energy wealth, we wasted so much of it in highways that created a lousy lifestyle of isolation, television instead of human companionship, and 2 hour commutes, when we could have built cross-USA superconducting subways, and in every neighborhood palaces filled with theaters with live actors (much more fun than the film kind), and solar powered public baths, and hanging gardens gushing with hydroponic fruits; all built with stone good to last 5,000 years.
Sure, we are pigs, splashing around in oil, but humanity spent thousands of centuries doing all the nuisance hard work of evolution and scratching around in the mountains trying not to starve and inventing alcohol for crissakes; the energy boom that made us all rich is a tiny 150 blip in the big million year picture of history. After so many centuries of deprivation, perhaps we should be forgiven for initially reacting with a big sloppy party.
> Also, too much misdirected hostility towards Bush for my
> liking. Blaming oil depletion on Bush is just a way of being
> lazy
I agree with that.
Bush is a mystery. Matt Simmons, one of the most articulate and mainstream and intellectually relentless of the peak oil boys (he may not have a huge amount of creativity; but he has the guts to take ideas to their logical conclusion and admit the result) has TOLD Bush about peak oil. Does that mean Bush "gets it" and is actually responsible for 9/11, a ruse to invade oil rich countries? Or is Bush an idiot, talking about hydrogen (which actually accelerates depletion of resources) and about ethanol (which use more energy to create than it provides; and anyway there is not enough land in the country to grown enough corn to create 1/1000th of the ethanol we could need to replace oil)? Does Bush have an ugly military plan, or not really understand the crisis, or worst of all is he a mad Christian welcoming the apocalypse?
Three possibilities, and they're all horrible.
But the crime happened long before Bush got on the scene. President Carter told us all about it; then arch criminal Reagan took the solar panels off the White House and tore down the highway speed limits and said "let's party!" But what is President Clinton's excuse? Why did Al "ecological" Gore never mention this issue? I blame them more than Bush. Carter made this a Democratic issue, and Clinton stood up and blushed about Monica as the clock ran out on the industrial world.
The people I blame most, though, are the artists.
Just as our dreams are our warning system -- reminding us, we hope, of those terrible things we know but can't face -- so artists are the warning system of the culture. In the movie "Forbidden Planet" the character Moribius sympathizes with the Krell -- a lost civilization that destroyed itself becuse it forgot it was capable of destroying itself. "After a thousand centuries of shinning sanity," Morbius says, "the Krell could hardly have understood what was destroying them".
Irony #1: Morbius learns he has the same blind spot, and his use of remaining Krell technology made him -- just like the Krell -- capable of irrational destruction in ways he is blind to see. At first Morbius resists this realization, even though he admits he has seen glimpses of the truth in his dreams.
Irony #2: The movie is our culture's dream. We are the Krell. So rich. So rational. So many computers and so many futurists, and so many powerpoint charts... After 150 years of industrial progress, we could hardly have understood the game already is over...
It is always the artists who see this first -- or who should.
- Charles
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Using all the energy we could get is ugly but also a basic fact about human nature.
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FROM "Through the Looking Glass" (the companion book to "Alice in Wonderland") poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter"
`I like the Walrus best,' said Alice: `because you see he was a LITTLE sorry for the poor oysters.'
`He ate more than the Carpenter, though,' said Tweedledee. 'You see he held his handkerchief in front, so that the Carpenter couldn't count how many he took: contrariwise.'
`That was mean!' Alice said indignantly. `Then I like the Carpenter best -- if he didn't eat so many as the Walrus.'
`But he ate as many as he could get,' said Tweedledum.
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Charles B. Kramer
cbknyc @ aol.com
I will appreciate if any copy if not complete refers to this full original post |
