Peak & Prices As Drivers Of Change
Jeff Berg, Canadian Dimension
In 2004 when Post Carbon Toronto was initially formed the data supported scientific theories of peak oil and gas were considered by the media and most economists as only slightly less deranged than a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Today that situation has changed far more quickly than we thought possible, in this we have much company. The reason for this change however has much less to do with the work of groups like ours, PCI, GPM, Parkland and ASPO, than it does with the price of gasoline.
Today it is difficult to believe that $138 a barrel oil, with $150 coming soon to a theatre near you, and the accompanying travails of the big three car makers, and the airline, and trucking industries, not to mention consumer anger, won’t be enough to focus our media and our society’s collective mind on the issue of fossil fuel depletion. Given that our original aim at PCT was to highlight the issue of peak we have in that sense become redundant. With that said there is still important work to do as it is essential that the narrative is properly framed if we are not to move from the frying pan only to land in the fire.
... Even as brilliant an investigative journalist as Greg Palast dismisses the possibility of an early peak. And only last week I had an extended email correspondence/debate with David Smith, Economics editor of the London Times U.K., who is still very sure that any peak is a long way off. Until very recently such like cornucopian beliefs were considered by most in the business and economic communities to be as sound as the law of gravity. Price, and pretty much price alone, has changed this dramatically.
The reason why this factor should have so much influence when science and the marshalling of fact have had so little is not all that difficult to comprehend if one understands one central fact. I.e. Over the last century and a half we in the developed world have raised the fundamental precepts of classical and neo-liberal economics to the level of natural law. As a result pretty much the only effective tool we have been left with for extensive behaviour modification is price.
... Over the next decade the U.S. will not be able to maintain its hegemony and military spending. It’s debt, trade and energy deficits ensure this fact. Gore Vidal was always right about America’s global reach when he said that “It will end because we can no longer afford it.” Chalmers Johnson estimates the real total for America’s military spending is now over $1 trillion a year. (All actual expenditures plus the proper allocation of yearly interest charges to the DoD for its part in creating America’s national debt. Now closing on $10 trillion.)
N.B. The result of America’s return to one of a community of nations will mean that the ‘center’ of the world will move back to where it has been for most of human history, Eurasia. Let us all fervently hope that this inevitability can be adjusted to more peacefully over the next few decades of this new century than it has over its first.
Almost everywhere in the developed world we will be forced to massively scale back our miles traveled, and the number of goods that require energy, and nowhere will this be more true than here in N.A. We quite simply have left things too late, and made too many unwise investments. The Germans and Scandinavians on the other hand will not only continue to enjoy the best standard of living and quality of life anywhere on planet they will also see their relative affluence climb significantly in relation to everyone else. The reason for this is obvious, they saw the future and embraced it.
(9 June 2008)
Contributor Bill Henderson writes:
L-O-N-G but good to the last drop, para by para
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