I wasn't joking about higher prices, and neither is this guy. Read carefully as indications are that Canada's natural gas exports to the USA may seriously drop by 2010. That's only 3 years away. Tell me again how you heat your residence? And you spend how much? Ready to spend more?
The American Petroleum Institute conducted a conference call with several high profile bloggers regarding energy and the environment. Go here for the transcript (PDF warning). They were asked about Peak Oil, and said the usual expected stuff. Worth reading to get a feel for what the blogosphere is interested in and how API approaches the issues. Robert Rapier, who participated, analyzes the responses to the questions he asked. The questions were voted on by the Drum's netizens, and he got a few in. His analysis is easy reading and to the point.
Finally, Khebab provides yet another analysis that supports his contention that crude and condensate peak occurred in May 2005. Scary thing here is that he foresees a possible sharp dropoff once the plateau ends, which could be fairly soon (a couple of years). Read airdale's comments regarding agriculture and the reaction of other posters who are also trying to grow their own food. I think airdale is a doomer, but I do take his point and I hope he is wrong about the future.
3 comments:
The information available could turn anyone into a "doomer", which is probably why you hear none of our politicians or industry leaders, or at least very few of them, talk about peak oil.
I read the American Petroleum Institute conference call transcript to which you supplied a link, and couldn't bring myself to read past the discussion of government subsidies for ethonal.
I mean, get this, ethanol is, even after the subsidies, much more expensive and less efficient than gasoline, and it takes more oil imputs to make the ethanol.
Worst of all, though, it becomes clear that most people will be pushed into poverty and starvation to pay for ethanol for the future car-owning minority. Food production takes a backseat to fuel production. Corn prices are going out the roof, while subsidies that could be directed to public transportation for everyone is instead diverted to fuel production.
This is only one more example of how the non-rich will be forced, through taxation, to subsidize their own destruction, and mass famines as well.
I see a massive economic disaster setting up in this country, driven by bad policy and our determination to keep the cars running at all cost. We are naive if we think our leaders are really so blind that they cannot see that at least half of the population will be driven to destitution and starvation by the decision to fund alternative fuels AND expensive, fuel-guzzling air transportation, while continuing to regulate passenger rail out of existance and starving urban public transit.
Believe me, they see. They know. Cheney knows and has always known, and so do people like Gov. Blago, and President Bush, and Hillary Clinton. These people mostly don't care if 80% of the population out here is reduced to the lifestyle prevalent in the shantytown slums of other parts of the world, as long as they have their cars, their private plains, and their guarded compounds, where they will have no shortage of extremely cheap labor available to clean, garden, babysit their kids, and in general, live the life of a 12th century peasant.
And people wonder why I so disapprove of large families.
Even at three dollars a gallon, gas is cheaper than bottled water. Americans will not give up their addiction to crude oil without a significant price increase and no politician wants to be the bearer of that news. Talk about a one way ticket to unemployment! It's far easier to talk about insulation or energy efficient light bulbs.
If we do not as a country demand that every available dollar be channeled into resolutions and solutions to the Peak Oil crisis, we will experience a crisis and depression beyond most people's wildest dreams.
I am so glad I ditched my car 5 years ago, even if it has been more difficult to shop or do anything of an impulsive nature. I am more fit than I have ever been and I feel I am doing my part. Not to say that I don't need to take a harder look at my home energy consumption.
Here's the rub. No politician is going to touch this problem with a ten foot pole without the pleas and promise of support from their constituency. Major urban centers, where public transportaion is, at least, a viable option is the best place to start.
Chicago, who wants desperately to host the 2016 Olympic games, is a very good place to start. We are promising absurd amounts of money to host a game that will never occur, if the latest predictions are true.
We need to let our elected officials know that we will not support them if they do not take address this crisis proactively and with the utmost urgency.
Margot, I wrote a post on my own blog a couple of months back about the total blindness and denial of our "GReat Green Augustus" of a mayor, who does not want to fund CTA daily operations but DOES want to spend $200+ million on a pharoanic showcase glitzo el station, yet he wants this town to be known as the "greenest" in the nation, which is laughable.
I ditched my car 20 years ago upon moving here, and find it pretty easy to shop. Almost everything a person could want or need is to be had along the Red and Purple lines together. I quickly learned that the best and cheapest way to deal with grocery shopping is to hit Dominique's once per month and have them deliver my stuff for about $10. I buy a monthly transit pass for $75 which takes me everywhere I need to go. This is cheaper than car sharing. I personally find life more comfortable and convenient without a car than with it, if only because I will never again have to deal with towyard trolls and sleazy mechanics and salesment.
However, I am cut out of many jobs in the farflung suburbs. More and more of the population of this area is subjected to hellish commutes because they must commute for 30, 40, or more miles each direction between far-flung suburbs. I have been asking myself for 30 years why we have done this to our country, why we have paved the whole place over and made life IMPOSSIBLE for most people who do not drive. That's right, a low-wage worker living in Omaha or Sacremento or just about anywhere outside a few major cities MUST pay $4000 a year or more to own, fuel, repair, and hopefully insure a car, and figure out how he will pay rent, eat, and clothe himself after paying all this.
However, we are being set up for the nastiest burn of all with "alternative" fuels. The sheeple out here are all gulled into thinking that biomass and ethanol will be the "magic bullet" that enables us to just keep truckin'. This is the cruelest fraud of all, and those who see through this fraud will starve like everyone else when the market for fuel crowds out the market for food. We can't both feed ourselves and grow the vegetable matter we need for fuel, given 200 MM cars and trucks on the road.
We are in bad, bad trouble, and the longer most of the population remains in frantic denial, the uglier it is going to get.
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