Petrocollapse roundup: Ruppert
Posted by ianqui in Policy/Politics
Tags: peak oil, government, petrocollapse (all tags)
Wed Oct 05 at 9:28 PM EDT
As Stuart did for the Community Solutions conference, peakguy and I will be writing a series of posts over the next couple of days about the Petrocollapse conference that was held in New York City today. There were many interesting speakers, and we'll get to all of them, but I wanted to start with Mike Ruppert. Now, I know Ruppert is a controversial figure, and he's been discussed (not necessarily positively) on TOD before. Before seeing him speak today, I hadn't really read much of the From the Wilderness publications, but when I came home I scanned the website, and on the recommendation of JLA's comment in the above linked story, I read the Nation article about him. When it comes to 9/11, he seems pretty nutty. And with respect to peak oil, he's firmly in the apocalypticon camp. Still, he's a dynamic speaker, and I can see people being easily convinced by his message, at least as it was delivered today. Many of you will no doubt be worried by that.
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Ruppert firmly believes that the government certainly knows about peak oil and has started preparing for it, although their solutions are not what the American people will want to see. He started off his speech by mentioning a comment made by Dutch economist Maarten van Mourik at the 2003 ASPO conference. As repeated on Kunstler's website, van Mourik reported to the ASPO attendees that "deep water drilling would not add significantly to the world's oil reserve, that it did not make sense economically, and ultimately could only produce five billion barrels. Van Mourik also made the interesting observation that, 'it may not be profitable to slow decline.'" With this in mind, Ruppert proclaimed that "until we change the way money works, we won't do anything to fix peak oil."
Ruppert reminded the crowd about the Hirsch report (I forget—was it ever re-released or not?), which said that if we only initiate action when the peak occurs, there will be a liquid fuel shortfall of 2 decades. Since Ruppert believes the peak is already upon his, he takes this to mean that there will only be a shortfall because after 2 decades, there will have been enough of a die-off to go back to a lifestyle where the populations may be able to use liquid fuels again.
Ruppert then outlined several steps that the government will take in the face of the energy crisis. If Ruppert is right about the timing of the peak, then we should see this as a set of predictions that will soon be verified or debunked.
* Rationing. Ruppert believes that because of treaties that have been signed with the IEA, they can come into the US and impose rationing on the American people without making the federal government look bad. [I think rationing is possible in the near future, but we'll have to wait to see see whether or not Ruppert was right about blaming it on the IEA]
* Coal. Brian Schweitzer of Montana thinks we can fuel US transportation for a long time using Fischer-Tropsch.
* Critical infrastructure. The government will do whatever it must to protect military, police, fire, internet, electral power generation, pipelines, airports, water supplies, food processing, highways, ports. [This doesn't sound so terrible to me, except that they might do it by increased domestic military powers—which was actually another one of his predictions.]
* Strengthening FEMA. Ruppert warns us that FEMA's primary job is to protect critical infrastructure, not human lives. [I'm not predisposed to believe this, but the handling of Katrina didn't do much to instill confidence.]
* Suspend minimum wage laws and change and tighten bankruptcy laws. The second has already been done, and the president has set a bad precedent regarding the former in New Orleans, where he suspended the Davis Bacon act, which requires federal contractors to pay prevailing wage.
* Allow and facilitate population reduction through famine and disease. [Yes, the message got increasingly hysterical. I think there was some mention of the bird flu here]
In the second half of his talk, Ruppert detailed a timeline demonstrating when the government first knew about peak oil, and specific government acts that support the idea that their only goal is to protect businesses and the elite. Much of this involved quoting Dick Cheney's various comments about oil depletion when he was CEO of Halliburton. He also thinks that Saudi Arabia's recent doubling of their reserves is laughable. I won't go into this in further detail, but I'm sure you can find it somewhere on From the Wilderness. Ruppert ended with 5 rules for "survival" of the coming collapse. Actually, they weren't so much rules about how to survive as they were apocalyptic observations, but here you go:
1. No combination of alternative energy can replace petroleum [to maintain our current lifestyles, I think he meant]
2. Even if it could, we'd need 30 years to develop a plan. PO is here now, and the current infrastructure simply cannot be maintained.
3. No government will be able to do anything (federal or state).
4. Until we change the way money works, we change nothing.
5. All real solutions will be local and will originate at a grassroots level.
Please, dear readers, don't shoot the messenger. Many of you think that Ruppert is nutty, but still, I think his talk may prompt an interesting and worthwhile discussion here. Many of the speakers at the conference stressed that the society that will be formed post-peak will be a very local one. Even if the fall isn't hard, there are a lot of benefits to local production (especially with respect to food), since the centralized and global nature of supply chains is a large part of why so much of our fuel usage goes to the transportation sector. If nothing else, I think this is a valid point.
As an addendum, since I know you're all interested: the participants were about 80% business professional, middle class white American types. I was surprised at how few gray ponytails there were (no offense intended, of course).
85 comments on Petrocollapse roundup: Ruppert
owl on Wed Oct 05 at 10:45 PM EDT | Comments top
I was also at Petrocollapse today and enjoyed it immensely -- especially Mike Ruppert and James Howard Kuntsler. I found Mike Ruppert to be truthful, honest and sincere in his intentions to help those who are willing to be helped. James Kunstler is just pure fun to listen to -- outrageous and forthrightful...there aren't many who are willing to go out on a limb and both of these men are. They both seem to be fully enjoying Peak Oil and Life and is there any difference between the two?
SJMStrategy on Wed Oct 05 at 11:18 PM EDT | Comments top
I find these points very interesting (except his last point on population reduction - a bit much to swallow that one). I have actually come across opinion peices (not in mainstream media) that discuss the Bush administration's intention to expand the role of the military in the U.S., particularly noticed more commentary along this line in the summer (If interested I may try to dig up some links) but of interest is that the commentary pointed to the fall as to when we would start to see signs of such intentions.
I thought such talk was a crock of Shit. However, Bush commenting on using the military for purposes of quarantine during a flu pandemic had my jaw dropping to the floor (is this Bush testing the waters?). None of us should take democracy for granted and any developments in this direction should be followed closely. If other PO people have further info, please share.
[ Parent ]
odograph on Thu Oct 06 at 4:00 PM EDT | Comments top
My understanding that using the military to enforce quarantine goes way back(*). Do you remember the movie "Outbreak" with Dustin Hoffman?
There is actually a very brutal fact in this ... simulations show that to enforce a true quarintine, troops would have to be willing to kill Americans attempting to run roadblocks. In all simulations, even when the soldiers and National Guardsmen were shootin blanks ... they refused to shoot those blanks at the civilians.
This is harsh math, but in the simulations "not killing" a few hundred at roadblocks leads to (in worst cases) millions dying in other cities.
Not nice, but I believe that really is the way it goes.
* - I suppose a historian would say it goes by thousands of years.
[ Parent ]
BaSE on Thu Oct 06 at 4:05 AM EDT | Comments top
The most amazing thing to me is all the articles that claim that high proces have curbed consumption and that the reduction in demand is the natural operation of the "invisible hand" that they learned about in eco101. WAKE UP!!! We just lost an area of the US that is greater than the size of Great Britain. Isn't it possible that the reduction in demand is because 100s of thousands of homes were underwater and are no longer drawing on the energy bank. What do you think will happen when resources are applied to the reconstruction and as houses and infrastructure come back on line. And then we have to pay back what we borrowed in oil and natural gas and make up the difference and make up for growth. If we make it to Christmas, the new year is going to see some great changes.
[ Parent ]
Dave on Wed Oct 05 at 10:58 PM EDT | Comments top
Re: van Mourik reported to the ASPO attendees that "deep water drilling would not add significantly to the world's oil reserve, that it did not make sense economically, and ultimately could only produce five billion barrels".
That is a really crazy statement and I am sorry to see it repeated here. In their latest newsletter, ASPO made an oil depletion revision putting deepwater at 54 Gb and the (world) peak out to about 2010/2011 based on that revision. Deepwater probably peaks at about 2011 to 2013 based on what I've seen though there are technical challenges (as well as hurricanes) that make all this risky to predict.
We could really do very nicely talking about peak oil without this hysterical hyperbole.
ianqui on Wed Oct 05 at 11:08 PM EDT | Comments top
Like I said, please don't shoot the messenger! (Not that you were, I'm just reiterating.) But here's another reason why I think it's valuable to post about this on TOD: there aren't a lot of forums (fora?) out there where people can respond to Ruppert's claims. If TOD readers can give specific reasons why Ruppert's statements are unfounded, the relevant information will get out there. Otherwise, people will read From the Wilderness and never get to see specific refutations of his comments.
[ Parent ]
peakguy on Wed Oct 05 at 11:20 PM EDT | Comments top
In fact, many of the people that I spoke to today had actually first heard of Peak Oil through "from the Wilderness" and many of those folks had never heard of TOD. We need to expose folks to the diversity of opinions and backgrounds we have collected here at TOD.
[ Parent ]
Dave on Wed Oct 05 at 11:35 PM EDT | Comments top
Not shooting the messenger, Ianqui...
Re: "diversity of opinions"
There is no significant diversity of opinions as far as expected outcomes goes from deepwater oil. What I don't want to see is for us to look like fools as far as CERA, Michael Lynch and some others think. I don't want to be associated with statements like the one I referenced above.
[ Parent ]
TRE on Wed Oct 05 at 10:59 PM EDT | Comments top
Here's my read on Ruppert and Kunstler. Ruppert is a Tom Clancy who can't write fiction so he works in this other conspiratorial newsletter public speaker realm. And Kunstler is a comedian like Bill Hicks. A social commentator who is amusing to listen to.
I imagine both are very good speakers. I was impressed with both of them in the movie End of Suburbia, which I found a very professional documentary.
But they are both stuck clocks. They are entertaining and amusing. But I really don't see either as harboring a great respect for truth. They produce the results they want to produce irrespective of the input data. Therefore I think, over time, they should be ignored. They are dead weights that will become more of a burden than a benefit.
panarchist on Wed Oct 05 at 11:15 PM EDT | Comments top
Just this week President Bush suggested Congress should give him the power to activate the military in a law enforcement role to deal with disasters such as the avian flu.
Here's one example story about this:
edition.cnn.com
At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist or totally falling in line with Mike Ruppert's comments, it sure sounds an awful lot like what Ruppert is talking about. Unfortunately, this type of thing is not unprecedented (i.e. Germany pre-WWII).
The slow but steady march that this Presidential administration has been making away from our hard won democratic freedoms, and their sheer lack of respect for real science worries me greatly.
In light of the fact that this administration is more connected to the oil industry than any other in history would lead me to believe that they know more about the Peak Oil situation than any of us bloggers do. There have also been some excellent and very reputable news publications that have detailed how the US military is realigning itself around the world and building "enduring" bases in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
Who knows what to think anymore in this time of information overload. All I know is I don't have a real good feeling in my gut when I think about how our national leaders appear to be reacting to the growing uncertainties around the world.
clifman on Thu Oct 06 at 10:13 AM EDT | Comments top
I agree that while Ruppert has weaknesses, the gist of what he is saying regarding the way things really are is pretty accurate. We have such a concentration of corporate/gov't/media power in this country that it's hardly surprising, really. Policies are promulgated for the benefit of the top 1%. The rest of us are just labor, consumers and soldiers. There are two media outlets that provide a non-corporate viewpoint - LINK TV and FSTV. They're available on Dish Network and DirecTV (at least for now...) Some specific programs I recommend are Orwell Rolls in His Grave, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (yes, I know Palast is a bit like Ruppert, but again, he raises the right issues, even if in a self-promoting manner) and Liberty Bound, which is a low-budget doc done by a recent grad type who just travels the country revealing instances of the creeping police state. Right here in my area - Chapel Hill, NC - we've had college and HS students questioned by FBI and Homeland Security because of the posters they had in their rooms! Even RFK Jr. can be heard speaking about the Bush Administration and fascism in the same speech - very carefully not calling them fascists, but providing the evidence and letting you make your own conclusions. Any useful, sustainable response we have to PO is clearly going to have to be on the local, community level, because TPTB are doing nothing but building a fortress to protect their own interests.
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Rajiv on Thu Oct 06 at 10:53 AM EDT | Comments top
There was an interesting article by Lewis Lapham in the Harper's Magazine on Umberto Eco's analysis of fascism. It can be found here. The entire article is worth a read, but a small extract is below.
In 1938 the word "fascism" hadn't yet been transferred into an abridged metaphor for all the world's unspeakable evil and monstrous crime, and on coming across President Roosevelt's prescient remark in one of Umberto Eco's essays, I could read it as prose instead of poetry - a reference not to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or the pit of Hell but to the political theories that regard individual citizens as the property of the government, happy villagers glad to wave the flags and wage the wars, grateful for the good fortune that placed them in the care of a sublime leader. Or, more emphatically, as Benito Mussolini liked to say, "Everything in the state. Nothing outside the state. Nothing against the state."
The theories were popular in Europe in the 1930s (cheering crowds, rousing band music, splendid military uniforms), and in the United States they numbered among their admirers a good many important people who believed that a somewhat modified form of fascism (power vested in the banks and business corporations instead of with the army) would lead the country out of the wilderness of the Great Depression - put an end to the Pennsylvania labor troubles, silence the voices of socialist heresy and democratic dissent.
Roosevelt appreciated the extent of fascism's popularity at the political box office; so does Eco, who takes pains in the essay "Ur-Fascism", published in The New York Review of Books in 1995, to suggest that it's a mistake to translate fascism into a figure of literary speech. By retrieving from our historical memory only the vivid and familiar images of fascist tyranny (Gestapo firing squads, Soviet labor camps, the chimneys at Treblinka), we lose sight of the faith-based initiatives that sustained the tyrant's rise to glory. The several experiments with fascist government, in Russia and Spain as well as in Italy and Germany, didn't depend on a single portfolio of dogma, and so Eco, in search of their common ground, doesn't look for a unifying principle or a standard text. He attempts to describe a way of thinking and a habit of mind, and on sifting through the assortment of fantastic and often contradictory notions - Nazi paganism, Franco's National Catholicism, Mussolini's corporatism, et cetera - he finds a set of axioms on which all the fascisms agree. Among the most notable:
* The truth is revealed once and only once.
* Parliamentary democracy is by definition rotten because it doesn't represent the voice of the people, which is that of the sublime leader.
* Doctrine outpoints reason, and science is always suspect.
* Critical thought is the province of degenerate intellectuals, who betray the culture and subvert traditional values.
* The national identity is provided by the nation's enemies.
* Argument is tantamount to treason.
* Perpetually at war, the state must govern with the instruments of fear.
* Citizens do not act; they play the supporting role of "the people" in the grand opera that is the state.
[ Parent ]
waxwing on Thu Oct 06 at 11:51 AM EDT | Comments top
And yet, having learned my lesson from S.J. Gould (the lesson being: pay no attention to anything written by a bad writer), I cannot take Eco's analysis of fascism seriously. Roger Griffin defines fascism as "palingenetic ultranationalist populism". (Palingenesis = rebirth, ie the nation as phoenix.) Which is useful. In any case, let us cease bickering over the wellknown excesses of the previous millenium. We have a new page to scribble on.
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odograph on Thu Oct 06 at 4:05 PM EDT | Comments top
I think the Bush administration is toast ... a dead man walking, politically.
If we were going to make this movie (my term for a semi-plausible alternate reality), we'd do it with a President who was still believed when he talked about bogey men.
[ Parent ]
Gryphon on Thu Oct 06 at 12:18 AM EDT | Comments top
Nutty? Hardly. I've been following FTW & Ruppert for a number of years, and the scary part is how much of what he's helped to bring to the fore on FTW is so front and center in the public's consciousness now a'days.
I don't mean to give him credit for ideas he didn't invent, but Mike does have an amazing way of plucking seemingly inconsequestial news items from the chaff of the MSM and making people notice them. I think part of that ability comes from his years as a detective with the LAPD -- an experince which I'm sure helped him finely attune his bullsh*t detector to get to the bottom of the important stuff.
Yeah, NOW Bush is talking about Avian Flu, Quarantines, mobilizing the military for domestic response. This is all stuff Ruppert started talking about a LONG time ago. Next we'll be hearing how FEMA (or some revamped version of it) will divide the country up into 10 more-easily governed regions as the case warrants. Mike's got his finger on the pulse of how this Government operates, so I wouldn't write him off as "nutty" so quickly. (I'm not so convinced with claims of gov complicity in 9/11, but at the same time, I also do recogize the need for the gov to find a new enemy in the post-Soviet/Cold War era -- so maybe he's not entirely off-base in this regard).
In the end, what it comes down to is the proverbial 'canary in the coal mine'. Will you act on that warning when you hear it by preparing... or just go about business as usual and find out the hard way?
I'm choosing the former.
geewiz on Thu Oct 06 at 12:21 AM EDT | Comments top
Uhh, I seem to think the President knows far more than we are led to believe.
americas.irc-online.org
It would seem that our border issues are being ignored for a reason, welcome NAFTA PLUS. immigration is one thing. but it's really about securing resouces. esp OIL!
nihilist on Thu Oct 06 at 12:26 AM EDT | Comments top
Nutty? Well then I'm nutty too. After reading about Peak Oil and studying it on my own for 2-3 years now, I've come to most of the same conclusions that Ruppert reached.
I think most folks simply lack understanding of what has happened in the past and therefore discount the possibility of what's going on right in front of our very eyes (Iran 1953, Chile 1973, Operation Northwoods, etc, etc...)
Of course I hope he is wrong but I think everyone should do their own DD and plan accordingly. It's your life.
PhilRelig on Thu Oct 06 at 12:36 AM EDT | Comments top
Ruppert and Kunstler are both highly intelligent and well-informed men. Nevertheless, they are fallible, and I think the nature of their fallibility offers lessons for us all - and may make all of us no less "nutty" than they are in the end, to the extent that this is an apt description of them. I will also include Heinberg in this group, since the remarks I am about to make apply to him as well.
When I read them all (and I do read them all with great respect and attentiveness), I distinctly detect that their prognostications for the future are intimately affected by their underlying value systems. In Kunstler's case, this can be summed up as a hatred of suburbia and an idealization of small-town rural living. In Heinberg's case, this can be summed up as a hatred of 20th century American culture with all of its attendant deceit, brutality, and hypocrisy, and an idealization of a hunter-gatherer's intimate connection to nature. In Ruppert's case (with whom I personally identify most closely in this regard), this can be summed up as a passionate, visceral, bottomless hatred of lies, hypocrisy, brutality, and injustice masquerading as virtue and goodness.
I teach logic, and I have a pretty keen sense for non-sequiturs. I think a close study of the writings of all the aforementioned will reveal significant non-sequiturs, whereby they stretch the evidence that they present to conclusions that extend beyond what is strictly in accord with logic. The purpose of these "stretches," of course, is to bend the data in a plausible yet still inconclusive way to fit their pre-conceived value systems. This tendency emerges most controversially when they prognosticate about the future.
But let's be real here, ladies and gentlemen: Do we not all do this all the time? Is any one of us perfectly logical all the time in our thinking patterns? Is any one of us free from the tendency to impose pre-conceived and inadequately examined value systems on our analysis of the data? Can any one of us really say - with justice - that we are any less prone to this than Kunstler, Ruppert, and Heinberg?
I have already announced what my own pre-conceived interpretive framework and operative value-system is, and I will repeat it here: All of these events, horrific as they may become, are unfolding within the guidance of God's loving Providence; and their purpose is to inaugurate Jesus the Messiah's Glorious Kingdom - which will bring the world to a state of peace and bliss better than any one of us can imagine.
That is my pre-conceived interpretive framework. I think I can ably demonstrate that faith in it is reasonable. All of you who doubt me - or who doubt Ruppert, Heinberg, and Kunstler - I ask you this: Have YOU asssured yourself that the value system that constitutes YOUR interpretive framework is based on anything other than blind faith? And have YOU, who doubt the conclusions that Kunstler, Ruppert, Heinberg, and myself draw by applying these interpretive frameworks assured yourself that you are NEVER guilty of glaring non-sequiturs along the way?
We are all fallible, ladies and gentlemen - Ruppert, Heinberg, Kunstler, myself - and all of you as well. Only God is infallible.
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