Willful Blindness

March 7, 2005
      Last Thursday the price of oil inched above $55 dollar a barrel, which is at least $15 barrel more than it was a year ago. On Friday, the oil story was buried on page six of the New York Times business section. Apparently the price of of oil is not considered significant news, even when it goes up five dollars a barrel in the span of ten days.

      On Friday evening, CNN reported that the Dow shot up over one hundred points because of favorable employment numbers issued by the government and also because there were no signs of inflation in government-reported price data.

      Stock markets are generally understood to behave on the basis of a consensus among traders about future prospects. Apparently stock traders in America think there is no connection between the price of oil shooting up ten percent in little more than a week, and the price of things that depend on oil for their manufacture or distribution -- which is to say, virtually everything.

      Our inability to process information is reaching an impressive level.

      I, for one, would be concerned about the price of oil and inflation -- that is the loss of purchasing power in the dollar. The recent price jump in oil is happening in March, you see, a couple of months shy of the so-called spring driving season. Typically, in recent years, oil prices have seen their biggest bumps around Memorial Day, when Americans resume long-distance motoring in earnest after staying close to home all winter. If oil stays in the low to mid $50 range for a while, it would not be unreasonable to expect $60 a barrel oil in May. And that is assuming that no untoward geopolitical shock will occur, say the assassination of a Saudi prince, or an attack on an oil installation.

     On Sunday, the New York Times ran a roundtable discussion (in the Book Review) between three prominent young "liberal" intellectuals (Katrina vanden Heuvel, Michael Tomasky, and Peter Beinhart) about what the Democratic Left can do to reclaim its place as a credible opposition. None of these hotshots mentioned the fact that the nation faces a defining crisis over our energy supplies. I don't think the word "oil" was even mentioned by this clueless trio. They have no idea what kind of convulsion we are heading into.

     Somebody ought to bring this to the Democrat's attention. America has a problem bigger than social security, or the price of prescription drugs, or gay marriage. America is heading into a situation in which it will no longer have an economy. The Republicans at least have an excuse for their willful blindness -- they've already taken the position that the life of extreme car-dependency and everything it implies is not negotiable. They are committed to defending that position, no matter how foolish it may be.

      The Republicans will certainly be disgraced by the coming vicissitudes that they allowed the nation to sleepwalk into. But the Democrats may have less credibility in the future because they were not obligated to defend a foolish status quo, and they did anyway.
      I wonder if Howard Dean ever thinks about these things.

Comments

[Dennis Lytton]

Good points.

"I wonder if Howard Dean ever thinks about these things."

That's a question for the former and current Dean-iacs out there. What was Dean's position on energy during the campaign? What has he said recently?

Dennis Lytton
Hollywood, California, USA

[Rodrigo]

BookTV on C-Span this weekend had Peter Huber, author of The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy. He had some interesting theories that will turn faces red on some of the Kunstlerites. What IF the fear mongering over oil supplies is only hyperbole like Huber says? He would have us believe oil in one form or another is plentiful, it's just efficient technology to get it that's the problem. He says hybrid cars will survive and flourish not because they are fuel efficient but because the electric engines they have are so much more efficient than gasoline engines. I wonder what folks here think of his ideas. I have to get the book.

[aj]

Huber is a "cornucopian" -- one who believes that technology will solve all our ills, even if that technology is very far-off, improbable, or flat-out science fiction.

What's more, he is a proponent of the Abiotic Oil theory, proposed by some oil scientists in the former Soviet Union, and pushed by microbiologist Thomas Gold.

The theory is that petroleum is not a fossil fuel with limited supply, but constantly created in the earth itself, "cooked" out of carbons in the earth's crust by high-temperature geo-chemical processes.

Technically, yes, it *could* happen, in the same way that technically, I *could* move objects with my mind -- but the probability of this happening is extremely low.

Even if we accept it as a possibility, the likelihood of such processes "refilling" oil provinces from below at a rate anywhere near what we currently pump it out is "slim to none." If it does work as advertised, then in reality it would take hundreds of thousands, to millions of years at least for it to generate a useful amount of oil again.

Most Abiotic Oil theory is a lot of conjecture and assertions; there has been very little accepted, peer-reviewed study on the matter, and even less in the way of experimental proof.

http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=41614&page=3

Some view the controversy as a "turf war" between biologists and geologists, but geologists - like Hubbert, Deffeyes, Laherrere, and Campbell -- have the evidence on their side, and, even though oil companies have been suspect in providing accurate reserve data, the models have been spot on in predicting the current peak and decline in oil discovery.

It is pretty unarguable that we now consume 4 barrels for every 1 discovered. In another decade, will it be 7? 10?

In addition to peak oil, it is clear that we can't keep burning fossil fuels forever without significantly tipping the climate balance. Industrial agriculture is imperilled as well, without the inputs of natural-gas derived fertilizers and petroleum-derived pesticides.

I personally think that cornucopian thinking like Huber's is extremely dangerous for our society because it encourages more wasteful consumption, and a degraded social realm -- more big-box / low density sprawl, more highways, more commuting, more eating up of valuable agricultural land and wilderness for tract housing.

[Jussi Hämäläinen]

Richard Heinberg has a good article on the pros and cons of the abiotic oil theory here:

http://www.museletter.com/archive/150b.html

Basically,for a variety of reasons,the abiotic theory of the origin of oil is very unlikely to be true;even if it were,the rate of replenishment would be too slow to be of any use to humanity.

[JLA]

I'm curious to see just how high oil prices will have to go to destroy a significant amount of demand for gas and other petroleum products, and/or to tip us into recession. We're still pretty far from 1981 prices in real dollars, and Americans consume a lot more in general than we did 24 years ago. It sounds like we'll start seeing the results of $50+ oil at the pump within a month.

As for this Huber fellow, he sounds rather silly to me.

[Weaseldog]

When we run out of oil, God will send tiny angels down to push the pistons in our cars up and down. Only a conspiracy nut would believe otherwise. After all Jesus would never force us to walk from town to town. Who ever heard of such a thing?

$50 -> $60 dollar oil is only 17% drop in purchasing power. How bad can it be? So people who can barely make rent, will not be able to make car payments. The resulting demand destruction created when these folks lose their jobs, will only make oil cheaper, right?

[Weaseldog]

Just saw on the news.

Halliburton signed a stack of new lucrative contracts with Iran.

Now that Iran's given in, Bush can congratulate them on giving in on their nuclear weapons program.

[Andy R]

weaseldog,
The Halliburton story reminds me of Chairman Mao's assertion that we will sell the rope they will hang us with for a profit.

[Wyse]

I suppose I believe technology will solve most of our ills, but I don't believe it will solve them tomorrow, the day after or even in this century.

I truly believe that one day (should we not all die in a mass explosion), there will be nanorobots scouring the old landfills, slowly erasing the evidence of how wasteful and greedy we had allowed ourselves to become. But I don't believe we can get there from here, as it were. And even if we could, that wouldn't mean we should.

[chrispy]

Those who believe technology will solve our current problem fail to use both qualitative and quantitative reasoning. Yes, many interesting possibilities are emerging, but it is silly to rest on those happy thoughts, while ignoring the enormous entropic chasm we approach. I worry that few or any of us will reach the other side, and then have any chance of starting anew.

[BD]

FWIW- I sent the Dean campaign an email regarding peak oil last year. They replied-and it was not one of those standard template replies thanking me for my interest. It was a reply from one of his staffers who directed me toward a forum on his campaign website where they were discussing the oil peak.

Nonetheless- not a peep from old Howie. I bet he might take the gloves off this year as we head into the 2006 election cycle. Does it really matter anyway?

Retreat. Retreat. Retreat.

[Rob]

Why we WILL run out of Energy:

Peak Oil is fairly simple, and incorporates technology improvements, at least the realistic ones that occur over time, as opposed to "insert miracle here".

Technology improvements have all served to suck out the easy oil faster, and this does nothing to change the fact that an oil field has a (realistically) limited supply of oil. In some cases, technology can even limit the amount of oil. There is talk that the Saudis have corrupted their ability to pump out oil over the long term. By using water injection to goose their short term production they may have stranded a lot of oil that could have been obtained (although at a slower pace).

Goodstein flagged Saudi production data as the key to the end of the cartel. If/when SA production (which moves in lockstep with crude prices)fails to ramp up following a crude price jump, fasten your seatbelts.

A lot of people have a real hard time imagining something really horrible happening, which is why it helps to be a pessimist. People imagine having to drive a hybrid car instead of an SUV, when the reality might be that you won't be able to afford toilet paper.

[Andy R]

Folks!
Stop and think - when's the last time a politician got elected to anything by preaching of imminent hardship or impending disaster?
Not gonna happen - at least not until or unless one is proven right by events.

[lisa]

who needs toilet paper? i'm worried about maintaining the clean water, with pressure enough to power my Biffy (tm):

www.biffy.com

...not to mention the lead in our soil, where i'd otherwise maybe like to grow some edibles. so cancer'll probably take me out before i get to see the end of the auto age, not to mention a politician who recognizes that it may be imminent -- damn!

[Jim Kunstler]

Peter Huber is a notorious ass. If the earth does contain a creamy nougat center of oil constantly replenishing the known fields up in the earth's crust, then why has there been no evidence whatsoever that the oil fields of the United States are being replenished? In fact, US production of conventional crude oil is less than half of what it was in 1970 and continues to decline steadily every year.

[aj]

Hey Jim, good to see you engaging in the comments at last... :)

By the way -- i think it would be a great idea to put a link in your sidebar here to the End Of Suburbia DVD page...i just bought the DVD and we're planning on holding a screening in Montreal in tandem with the launch of a new blog called YUL2105. (YUL is the airport code for Montreal) It's going to focus on the next century, and how the city and region can become green, sustainable, and transit-centric to meet the challenges of Peak Oil / carfree cities.

For Canadian viewers, by the way, the End of Suburbia documentary airs on VisionTV tomorrow night, March 9th.

[Stranger]

The reason the democrats won't touch peak oil is rather simple - there is no positive side to the message. You don't win voters by telling them they are inescapably screwed, you win voters by telling them that they are inescapably screwed UNLESS they vote for you. Peak oil doesn't have that, or at least its not percieved to have that. Hence, the average American would rather bury their heads in the sand than deal with it. Remember, it took 9/11 to make us deal with terrorism.

Additionally, as I'm sure your aware if you live in America, there is the eternal optimism and faith in progress/science/technology that has become such an integral part of the character of the mainstream American. This has been pointed out dozens of times by dozens and dozens of authors. In the past 60 years we have seen miracle after miracle. We have seen a bomb that can destroy an entire city. We have seen treatments and cures to diseases once thought incurable. We have seen the wonders of the computer age.

This has given the average Joe on the street the frankly bizarre belief that we are invincible. They want to believe, its almost treason in the minds of many to think we might run into a problem we can't solve. You aren't a patriot, how dare you have such little faith in America! If you want to suceed in modern politics you have to have the same faith and optimism in America, even when that faith and optimism are unfounded.

Our current president won on a message of such faith. The American people have made their choice, they would rather have someone blow sunshine up where the sun don't shine rather than face reality. That is why the Democrats are ignoring peak oil. It will just get them labeled as even more out of touch with reality (if you call the mindset the mainstream American is living in reality) or as a dying party; it will gain them nothing.

Of course, one only need to look at the history of LBJ's administration in regards to Vietnam to see what unfounded optimism gets you. What will happen is no one will do a damn thing, the status quo will remain the status quo, everyone will wait until ten minutes before the catastrophe, and then both parties will shout each other into oblivion as both attempt to blame the other for the disaster while the American people search for a scapegoat. Kunstler's Nazi, you're on in five!

[DA]

Yo' "Stranger",

I don't know what "Joe on the street" types you're hangin' out with but, I don't believe ANYTHING anymore.

Especially, not when "ANYTHING" originates from ANY politician, on any side of the "aisle".

What I DO believe is that if we threw half the amount of coin at developing alternative energy resources as we do building new nations in the freakin' sand we could likely come up with enough fuel for this planet and a few we don't know about yet.

Of course, we'd have to rid ourselves of the freakin' corporate obstructionists in order to even get started. And, at this juncture I think that would take violence in the streets to accomplish ... the streets of D.C. for starters. --DA

[Mike Harrington]

Try http://dieoff.org/synopsis.htm

"The fact that our society can not survive on alternative energy should come as no surprise, because only an idiot would believe that windmills and solar panels can run bulldozers, elevators, steel mills, glass factories, electric heat, air conditioning, aircraft, automobiles, etc., AND still have enough energy left over to support a corrupt political system, armies, etc."

I don't think corporate obstructionists have anything to do with it. In the "History of Humble Oil & Refining Company", Larson and Porter, Business History Foundation, 1959, Humble made an effort to harness wind power in Texas in the 1920's for their operations and gave up on the concept in the 1930's. Reason? It wasn't economical.

If an idea works, the economics will take care of themselves. How much public subsidy did the steam engine, the electric streetcar, or the internal combustion engine require to get started? Answer: none.

There's maybe a 25-year time frame between the time that engineers start tinkering with an idea and a successful prototype is developed. There have been vastly more failures than successes. If fuel cells, controlled hydrogen fusion, wind and solar energy, etc., cannot be successful in 25 years, they will never be.

It's all well and good to say that alternative energy sources should be developed, but replacing the nine million barrels per day of gasoline that Americans use is something else again.

[jaimito]

China is siphoning off supplies. Moderate China and the problem is (temporarily) solved.

[Weaseldog]

China needs those supplies to stock Walmart.

[Mike Harrington]

Let's see, China's per capita petroleum consumption is 1.7 barrels per year and US per capita consumption is 25 barrels per year. China is siphoning off supplies? World per capita consumption is something around 4-5 barrels per year. Japanese and western European consumption is about half that of the US. On the US EIA website, per capita consumption in the US is twice what it was 50 years ago, and the US has almost twice as many people now as it did in 1950. In 1940, per capita oil consumption in the US was about 25% of today's. China, India, Pakistan, Brazil, and other industrializing nations are indeed aggravating the problem, but the misallocation of resources occurred first in the US. US oil demand is still growing at an annual rate exceeding 2%. Two percent compounded over 10 years means an absolute increase of 22% inside of a decade. Ain't gonna happen. I'd like to see the consumption get back to the 1940 level. Look at old US photographs and movies from that period, and you'll find that the auto suburb "clusterfuck" that Kunstler rails against didn't exist until starting after 1945. If the US hadn't taken that wrong turn 60 years ago, peak oil would still be decades off now.

[lisa]

"If an idea works, the economics will take care of themselves."

Hilarious! Unless of course there are dozens of lobbyists waiting to smack that idea down every time it dares rear its head...

[hoppingmadbunny]

I'd like to mention the elephant in the room....why does no one ever complain about the ecological damage caused by "war"?

I can't think of a more wasteful, resource-destroying occupation. It probably telescopes decades of civilian oil and resource use into a few years.

Could the rising temperatures of the latter part of the twentieth century been caused by the wars? From all indications, there is even a lag of a few years, which means that we are now being affected by the pollutants spewed into the air in the 1960s.

Does that mean the worst is yet to come?

[Reality Bites]

Mike,
Are you suggesting we shouldn't even try to promote renewables? Most of the world is far wiser than we have been. Japan is more energy efficient, and solar is commercially competitive within the nation. The Netherlands are exporting wind energy. Kyoto protocols signatories are becoming more energy efficient. The R&D for renewable is there internationally, and the US end up in a hybrid passenger seat before long.
That site you sent us to, smelled like bullshit. I didn't have to read too far into it to find a hugely misleading "fact".
Solar power does not "lose a net amount of energy".
Yeah, okay, maybe initially.
You must realize that the oil industry is one of the largest cash cows in the world. Read "The Heat is On", by Ross Gelbspan. I am very suspicious of the "hard science" sites like this.
The newborn automobile industry deliberately suppressed the development of national rail. No subsidy didn't start the steam engine, but it definitely killed it.
You state that that it will take that long to develop the alternative energy technology. What if we started a space race style national campaign? What if we made it more of a goal for our great nation to pull together and put the R&D into it? What if people personally became more active and responsible with their energy use? What about breakthroughs in energy efficiency?
We can't predict we can't do it. If only we could convert that hot air into power!