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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (5239)	12/4/2006 10:59:51 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24225

Environmentalist Amory Lovins from Rocky Mountain Institute on Energy Alternatives (transcript) Charlie Rose Show ... Rose: A couple of questions about [U.S. dependence on oil]. One is, when you go to talk to the - your friends at the Pentagon or at the White House or Commerce or Energy or wherever they are, they - does it resonate with them? Do they say to you, God, it’s great to here - to have you here and let’s get started? Lovins: Well, in the Pentagon, we do hear that. And I think they’re emerging as the leader in the federal government in leading the nation off oil so we don’t need to fight… Rose: More so than the Energy Department? Lovins: …[Yes, the Energy Department] is more captive of - of its energy industry constituencies historically. But the Pentagon is a bunch of war fighters. And they would - they would love the idea of having "nega-missions" in the Persian Gulf: Mission Unnecessary. ...Rose: You used that nice expression about taking away their need to go fight wars for oil in the Persian Gulf. And is it your political belief that we went there for - in the interest of protecting oil sources or trying to guarantee an oil source? Lovins: I don’t think you can untangle it that neatly, but I think it’s fair to say even going back to the ‘91 operations when Iraq invaded Kuwait that we wouldn’t have put half a million troops there if Kuwait just grew broccoli. ...Lovins: This is also I think relevant to the peak oil argument.... When does production start to go down and price zoom up? Well, nobody knows. 94 percent of the oil you see is owned by governments, which either don’t know or won’t honestly say what they’ve got. ... But it doesn’t matter that you can’t tell who is right, because we ought to do all the same things anyway just to save money. Rose: Is there any major oil producer nation that has not since owned its oil or taken it over? Most of them have. Saudi Arabia, Iran. Lovins: I think in the U.S., it’s still largely a private function. Rose: But how much do we produce in contrast to everybody else? Lovins: Let’s see. We own two or three percent of the world’s oil. We produce nine percent - and we use - or extract nine percent, and we use about 26 percent. ... So, obviously we can’t drill our way out of this one. (28 Nov 2006) Online video of the interview. Lovins has a gift for the catchy phrase. In the above excerpt, note "[the Pentagon] would love the idea of having "nega-missions" in the Persian Gulf: Mission Unnecessary. For climate change, Lovins apparently uses the phrases "climate weirding," which is actually more appropriate than "global warming." -BAhttp://www.rmi.org/images/other/Energy/E06-07_TransCharlieRoseShow.pdf