President George Bush has made another comment from foreign soil (Egypt) that doesn’t specify who he’s criticizing but it’s again clear who he means: he says don’t blame Saudi Arabia for America’s oil problems, blame Congress (which just happens to be controlled by the opposition party):
US President George W. Bush said on Saturday that a hike in oil output by Saudi Arabia would not solve American energy problems.
“It’s not enough, it’s something but it doesn’t solve our problem,” Bush told reporters in Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
Bush said he was “pleased” with a Saudi decision taken on May 10 to increase its oil production by 300,000 barrels per day in response to customers, but said that he was “also realistic” about what the Americans should do.
“Our problem in America gets solved when we aggressively go for domestic exploration. Our problem in America gets solved if we expand our refining capacity, promote nuclear energy and continue our strategy for the advancing of alternative energies as well as conservation,” he said.
Fair enough. And how could he open himself to criticism for that? It’s what comes next that could cause some ripples, although not as much as earlier in the week when he used the same rhetorical technique to swipe at Democratic Senator Barack Obama from Israel:
“One interesting thing about American politics these days is those who are screaming the loudest for increased production from Saudi Arabia are the very same people who are fighting the fiercest against domestic exploration, against the development of nuclear power and against expanding refining capacity.”
Who do “those” refer to? Bush often uses this rhetorical device (which Richard Nixon used quite frequently) of saying “there are those” without naming them.
What’s notable about Bush is that he is one of the few Presidents in American history who seemingly rejects the idea of the virtue of seriously working to build genuine bipartisan consensus on solving national problems. It’s almost as if he views bipartisan consensus and problem solving as weakness. It’s all divide and rule hot-button politics.
In fact, BOTH parties are to blame for not coming together over the years and putting aside differences and hammering out a short term plan and a long term strategy. Just insisting that ANWAR must be drilled doesn’t cut it.
Government’s Economic Misinformation Campaign Peaks
Americans are pretty used to getting bogus economic information from their government and the barons of Wall Street. But today, May 14, 2008, this misinformation campaign may well have peaked. We were informed that inflation during April was “modest,” and only increased a piddling .02 percent.
How is this possible, you might ask? Or at least, you might ask that if you lived in the real world rather than Economist Land. Here’s the answer. A truly incredible one.
Food prices went up more than at any time in the last 18 years during April. Housing, medical care and clothing costs were also all up substantially. Natural gas prices shot up, too. But gasoline, according to the number crunchers charged with feeding us economic data, gasoline prices dropped by a hefty 2 percent during April and that was the prime cause of the overall modest inflation increase for the month.
Gas dropped 2 percent, you exclaim? Are they nuts. It was way up. Anyone who bought gas during April knows that.
Well, yes. The average price of gas did, in fact, increase by a whopping 5.6 percent during April. But, according to the Commerce Department, which is charged with fudging numbers in this realm, on a seasonal basis it really dropped 2 percent. Got that?
Far be it from me to gainsay the wisdom in this statistical approach. Personally, I don’t know anyone who buys gas on a seasonal basis, only on a daily basis. It might be worth noting, however, that this kind of thing makes the people playing so very, very cute with official numbers look like con artists. And generally speaking, this is not a good way for supposedly professional economists to look.
Or Americans will begin taking them even less seriously than is already the case.
Is it possible that in the midst of the most grueling political ordeal of his life, Barack Obama took time out last week to negotiate with Nigerian Militants?
“The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta command is seriously considering a temporary ceasefire appeal by Senator Barack Obama. Obama is someone we respect and hold in high esteem.”
As we all know, this is the country with the largest reserves of drinking water in the world. And where is the water? In the Amazon! Read the rest of this entry »
April 16th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Much talk recently about the administration wanting to block any number of measures in Congress that are rowing against the President’s mindset on what will and what work re the environment… The President has characterized all measures there as ‘a regulatory trainwreck.’
Today, in a news conference, the President said he had not signed the Kyoto agreement because
– it did not bring all players to the table
– it would have interfered with growing the USA economy, requiring the USA to do what others who were polluters were not doing.
He said he had hope for the future of ‘cellulosic’ fuels, and that the USA economy would grow as “a new generation of nuclear plants” were built with responsible putting away of dead fuels, and responsible oversight in running nuclear plants
and
that the economy would grow as a result of building infrastructure (roads and all attendant small businesses and jobs that come with new spurs, etc) to now narrowly or non-populated places, “sparse land” in the USA where such structures would be built and have to be connected with large city centers.
He said “the G8 has now embraced” bringing together all parties (meaning other nations such as India, China and certain African nations, in particular, who are thought to be growing the most economically –and also creating more greenhouse gases– to plan forward from Kyoto Treaty’s expiration in 2012– so that “none are given a free ride.”
President Bush also offered the idea of 35mpg for cars in the USA by 2020, (no specifics)
that we’re making progress as planned on reduction of greenhouse gases in the USA by 1212 (no specifics)
and billions of gallons of renewable fuel be available by then (a useful wish)
and to ’stop growth’ of greenhouse gas emissions 2025, (which is far beyond the deadline of many other countries)
and to capture carbon, to expand storage (good idea, but without funding or specifics)
and to “decrease dependency on foreign oil”…
Well.
And I don’t mean oil.
What does this all mean? Again.
WAR AND SCARCE RESOURCES
I don’t know all that it affects. But, one thing it means, is that the ties to warring endlessly about environmental resources is not well understood or meaningfully intervened in by our administration. The connection between oil and death. Ongoing oil. Ongoing death.
There are no doubt other meanings, and the pragmatics of not being able to stop by tonight the dependence on foreign oil. But is enough being done to develop any other ways and means? Is enough being done as priority? Is enough being done in a timely way? Is it writ large enough, clear enough in the sky for all to see yet, that death and dependence have married each other?
KING MIDAS
There is a connection between ongoing war and scarce domestic environmental resources, no matter where in the world those two polarities exist… a domestic scarcity such as oil, yes, ‘black gold’. It seems more and more apparent that the quest for ‘ever more of what we don’t have that we say we must have,’ puts endless numbers of innocent souls in the path of sure death.
That wake up call has apparently not yet dawned on various ones in charge. Or not knelled loudly and relentlessly enough.
King Midas wished for gold too; black gold, green gold, yellow gold, no matter which.
Maybe George Bush remembers the end of the story.
Midas’s wish was granted. And he was delirious that everything he touched turned to gold; golden chair, golden doors, golden carpets, the finest filigree of raindrops that fell onto his face turned to gold too, his footprints in the sand turned to gold …
he was awash in gold and happy until…
he touched something he loved more than anything;
he touched his own child, who immediately fell dead
and turned to gold.
Then Midas lay weeping with his child stiff in his arms.
He had only wanted gold, but instead, had killed the innocent Life Force of his own young.
Black gold, green gold, yellow gold, no matter which.
What if there’s no way to cut greenhouse emissions enough to make a real difference?
That’s the question raised by a commentary in Nature arguing that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been too optimistic in its projections for the technological possibilities of reducing greenhouse emissions. Their calculations are called “a bombshell” in a separate news article in Nature about the paper. My colleague Andy Revkin analyzes it at DotEarth. The commentary was written by the political scientist Roger Pielke Jr., the climatologist Tom Wigley, and the economist Christopher Green.
Ah yes… the lovely sounds of spring. There are birds a-chirpin’, bees a-buzzin’, blossoms a-burstin’, and the biannual bonus display: Big Oil a-squirmin’.
Executives from San Ramon’s Chevron Corp. and four other major oil companies defended their record profits Tuesday before a hostile Congress, led by Democrats who criticized the oil giants for doing little to cut gas prices or invest in renewable energy.
It would be funny, if it were… well… funny. (Though it is slightly amusing that the Democrats weren’t chirping this song while campaigning in Texas).
Too bad nobody kept the t-shirt, because it looks as if the stars may have again aligned this year. The combination of a presidential election and cumulative record oil company profits may very well take us down the treacherous but familiar road of windfall profits taxes and pulled incentives.
We never learn… and with the ever-tighter focus on renewable energy and a green economy, there’s an added layer of complexity.
While some folks evidently understand that getting oil out of the ground requires rather more than a spoon, an unfortunate percentage of the population still seems to think crude can just be scooped from puddles. The reasons behind our untenable choices — exploration and drilling in currently protected areas vs our lethally symbiotic relationship with external providers — just aren’t well-understood.
“But Polimom, what about green energy?”
Why… Yes!! There is a third possibility, and it’s definitely the direction we need to go… but there’s a problem (my emphasis):
“Why is Exxon Mobil resisting the renewable revolution?” he asked.
Simon responded that Exxon Mobil had pledged $100 million to Stanford University for a project to study renewable energy and climate change. But he said until renewable sources become more economically competitive, the company will focus on its core oil business.
Right there is the key to understanding the entire equation.
You think $3.287 is high? Sorry, but even factoring in the difficult-to-assess geopolitical and environmental costs, it’s not high enough. Current gas prices (and everything else related) are still lower than current technology can deliver for renewable sources.
The best thing that could happen, strangely enough, is for prices to go higher yet. Until we cross above the point where the cost of renewable energy is less than non-renewable, we’re stuck… and no amount of election year grandstanding will get us out of the spring mud.
A $12 billion judgment on behalf of ExxonMobil against Venezuela’s state oil company has once again set off President Hugo Chavez, who, according to this news account from Venezuela’s leading newspaper El Universal, said, amongst many other things, ‘If you end up freezing (Venezuelan assets) and it harms us, we’re going to do harm to you. Do you know how? We aren’t going to send more oil to the United States. Take note, Mr. Bush, Mr. Danger … We cannot be a government of wimps. No! Our best weapon is to counterattack and begin shooting; we are going to counterattack, and therefore I said to my ministers, come on!’
By Mariemma Ramos Nava
Translated by Miguel Guttierez
February 10, 2008
Venezuela - El Universal - Original Article (Spanish)
Barinas: President Hugo Chavez threatened today to suspend oil exports to the United States if Exxon Mobile manages to seize the assets of Petroleum of Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) through the courts.
[Editor’s Note: Chavez refers to a series of court orders obtained by Exxon Mobil Corp. in Britain, the Netherlands, and the Dutch Antilles, freezing up to $12 billion in assets of Venezuelan state oil firm PDVSA. The injunctions were sought by Exxon in anticipation of an arbitration ruling by the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes over a compensation claim. The rulings mean that Venezuela can’t sell Read the rest of this entry »
January 8th, 2008 by BRIJ KHINDARIA, International Columnist
Climate change has slipped off the radar of both Democrats and Republicans as they enter the Primaries and election year 2008. Al Gore’s tirade against Bush may have delighted delegates at last December’s Climate Conference in Bali, Indonesia, but had little concrete impact on the politics of the US elections.
How we treat Mother Earth, on whose health all of us depend for survival and progress, seems to mean little to Presidential hopefuls. They continue to fight for votes mainly on other platforms such as jobs, the economy, immigration and health care.
This is like burying the head in sand. The issues are not moral but strictly business. The costs of health and absenteeism, which are already very high, will explode uncontrollably through ill-health caused by the unclean use of hydrocarbon fuels and reckless environmental pollution by industrial manufacturing, energy, transport and mining companies.
These cost-raising impacts for American business come against a backdrop of competition from low cost giants like China and India, not to mention the emerging economies of Russia, Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. Read the rest of this entry »
Was Al Gore taking a cheap shot when he criticized his own nation as the primary obstruction to progress on climate change? According to this op-ed article from the Nederlands Dagblad, ‘The proceedings at Bali were taken hostage by Europe’s antagonism toward the U.S., enabling Al Gore to score in an open goal.’
By Jan van Benthem
Translated By Meta Mertens
December 17, 2007
The Netherlands - Nederlands Dagblad - Original Article (Dutch)
At the Climate Conference in Bali, the two Nobel Peace Prize winners stood on opposite sides. Al Gore opted to discuss the obvious truth: The U.S. is blocking every solution, so go ahead without America until a little over a year goes by and there is a more judicious U.S. president WATCH .
Thundering applause was the response. And the behavior of the U.S. over the following days as Washington torpedoed global limits on greenhouse gasses appeared to prove him right. Disappointed, the first delegates packed their suitcases for home on Saturday.
Fortunately, there were a sufficient number of people present who had listened to Gore’s Nobel Prize co-winners, the U.N. Climate Panel. Chairperson Rajendra Pachauri didn’t pin everything on an agreement concerning percentages. More important, he said, was to come to an agreement about where to begin. The percentages will be part of the two-years of talks leading to the Copenhagen Climate Conference, where a successor to the Kyoto Protocols must be agreed to.
Earlier, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned that an agreement on numbers wasn’t realistic at this stage. When some, particularly the E.U., decided to do so anyway, the proceedings at Bali were taken hostage by its antagonism toward the U.S., enabling Al Gore to score in an open goal.
But in spite of the picture drawn by the outside world, it wasn’t just America acting as an obstacle. Japan and Canada share the same point of view as the United States, while at this moment, neither China - which is the largest polluter - nor rapidly-growing India - will accept greenhouse emission limits. And neither has the U.S. rejected all restrictions. Even while the Bali conference was taking place, the U.S. Senate approved a law that was earlier accepted by President Bush, which obligates the American automobile industry to build cars that are forty percent more fuel efficient - the first law of this kind in more than thirty years.
Is the United States missing a chance to redeem its global reputation by obstructing a climate deal at a U.N. conference in Bali? Along with Al Gore, the editorial board of Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Gazette certainly thinks so.
“Of course, Bush was bought and paid for by the time he was elected President in 2000 … when it comes to the Bush Administration, the word ‘moral’ is one that doesn’t exist in its vocabulary.”
EDITORIAL
December 14, 2007
Saudi Arabia - The Saudi Gazzette - Home Page (English)
The United States has the world’s largest economy, the world’s mightiest military and the world’s largest media machine. It is also the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. And now, it’s the world’s greatest impediment to reaching agreements on stemming the increasingly frightening decline of the world’s environment.
Reports coming out of the U.N. climate conference in Bali are disturbing, to say the least WATCH . Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, fresh from his visit to Sweden to accept the Nobel Prize for his work on the environment, stated categorically in a speech delivered to delegates that, “My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali WATCH .”
And the European Union is threatening to pull out of U.S.- sponsored climate change talks unless the Bush Administration agrees to specific emissions targets, something it currently refuses to do. Such targets, the Bush minions say, would necessarily limit the scope of future talks and, incidentally, wreak havoc on the U.S. economy.
Of course, Bush was bought and paid for by the time he was elected President in 2000, and the secret meeting his Vice President, Dick Cheney, held with U.S. energy moguls at the start of the Bush presidency was further proof that profits - not the health of the planet - are the main focus of this administration.
The Bush Administration has been clueless on virtually every issue the country and the wider world have faced over the past seven years. From Iraq to stem cell research to health care to the environment, George Bush has shown the sensitivity and insight that only a person who has lived his life in affluent isolation could. In other words, he has the capacity for neither.
The problem here is that personal wealth will do little to save anyone from what could be a true environmental disaster lurking just around the corner.
September 27th, 2007 by BRIJ KHINDARIA, International Columnist
Iraq is not the only oil war at this time. New political battles for oil and gas are emerging as tensions rise between Western oil and gas conglomerates and the governments of non-Western countries, which are major future suppliers of these vital resources.
The latest shock to the Western oil majors came from new measures begun this week in Kazakhstan to unilaterally violate international energy contracts, if its government decides that foreign companies are not obeying the rules. In Russia, a new law later this year will disallow companies owned 50% or more by foreigners from bidding in auctions for strategic deposits.
Russia has already forcefully renegotiated almost all foreign oil and gas contracts since 2003. Gazprom, its gas conglomerate, causes fear in Europe because of its bold plans to buy oil and gas distribution and other companies.
The European Union’s executive Commission views this as aggression and is opening investigation of Gazprom for misuse of market power to control segments of Europe’s oil and gas markets. But these are early days and the charges are a long shot.
The trend to contract revisions is spreading among the former Soviet republics, which are likely to be the world’s leading new sources of supply. However, no emerging supplier is likely to nationalize resources or make dramatic demands like Russia has dared with foreign energy investors.
Restrictions on the participation of Western majors in extraction are increasing with news laws in Bolivia and Venezuela, which are also trying to better redistribute oil revenues. Other key producers like Kuwait, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia do not allow foreign participation in oil and gas extraction. Some that do permit foreign investment are under embargo e.g. American companies are not allowed to invest in Iran or Sudan.
The Kazakh move was prompted in part by cost overruns and a five-year delay to late 2010 of a huge contract at Kashagan, run by the Italian major Eni, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell. The government is threatening to impose $10 billion in fines if negotiations due to close on October 22 end in failure.
Some Europeans and American Congressmen are citing security reasons for objecting to Gazprom’s inroads since it is State-owned. In turn, Kazakhstan is citing security reasons to prevent European companies from obtaining lucrative contracts which are then not fully honoured, placing financial strains on the government. Since suppliers like Kazakhstan depend heavily on oil revenues to finance economic development and their hold over power, they do not appreciate delays in obtaining those revenues.
Chevron chief executive David O’Reilly rushed to the Kazakh capital last week to ensure that his company’s huge investments in another Kazakh project at Tengiz would not be touched for “ecological reasonsâ€. This was the argument used by Russia in a dispute with BP in December 2006 to force a cut in its stake in the $20bn Sakhalin-2 scheme in favour of Gazprom.
Russia supplies over one-third of Europe’s natural gas and is expected to become more prominent in coming years. It is already a major supplier to Germany, Central and East Europe, and Britain. Gazprom caused special heartburn earlier this year when it showed interest in buying Centrica, which owns British Gas, a family jewel.
The Russian company has been accused of playing politics by using its market power to intimidate the Ukraine and Belarusse governments and remind European politicians of their electors’ economic dependence on Moscow’s goodwill. Security of energy supply is now a key political issue between the European Union and Moscow.
Despite their political power, Western governments are unable to stall or stop their energy vulnerability. Britain could only stand by as Moscow squeezed BP. Energy economy stresses are reviving plans in Europe and the US to expand nuclear power regardless of anti-nuclear lobbies. That presages some domestic political turmoil.
Whatever happens, none can prevent a loss of bargaining power in oil and gas compared with the new producers over the next 15 years because data comparisons suggest that oil and gas resources in industrialized countries are being depleted ten times faster than in other countries. This growing dependence on imports is bad news with oil prices already well above $70 a barrel.
Industrialized countries consume more than half of global oil and gas output but possess only a quarter of production. They have less than 8% of the world’s remaining proved reserves of oil and gas. In contrast, developing or transition economies were 21 of the top 25 countries ranked in 2005 by total remaining proved reserves.
With a mess in Iraq, quarrel with Iran and the declining political clout of their governments, Western companies are finding it more difficult to access those remaining reserves in countries that have been Russia’s sphere of influence for decades if not centuries.
September 26th, 2007 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Can you imagine 20,000 Rabbi’s taking to the streets of Manhattan to protest the treatment of the poor? How about 20,000 Bishops and Cardinals marching in the streets of say, Venice, holding hands? Could you imagine 20,000 Imams marching in Baghdad protesting the deaths of innocents? It would be awe-striking. Such a searing statement.
But we don’t need to imagine holy men marching in Burma. This week, 20,000 monks gathered at the Shwe-dagon Pagoda, one of the holiest religious sites in Burma, and a historical rallying point for protests, both political and compassionate. From there, the 20,000 monks took to the streets… to protest the junta government’s cavalier cruelty to the poor… which includes huge fuel price hikes, as well as widespread imprisoning of persons who speak out against the government.
The Burmese monks, thin creatures most of them, many elderly, in maroon robes, one arm bare… walking with purpose, no doubt in some kind of anti-vajra hell meditation…. and following them, many young men in long black wraps, holding hands; their faces deadly serious and poignantly soft-eyed at the same time.
And that is just what the post-British occupation Burmese government wants to eradicate: peaceful determined people with clear minds and compassionate hearts… the most dangerous kind of people on earth… to a dictator; to a corrupt government, to anything or anyone inhumane.
Burma’s governance is more and more influenced by China, as China has pegged Burma to be a supplier of oil and other natural resources for the Chinese people. One wonders if the recent fuel price hike in Burma is tied to China somehow.
It is also being said by sources in Burma, none of whom want to be quoted by name, that thus far the Buddhist monks and those who’ve joined their protest are not being slapped down, arrested and murdered as they were in a similar rising up in 1988… mainly because China does not want civil unrest. It wants to continue to build its roads in Burma to bring out its oil and timber.
However, Burma wants no ‘awe-striking or searing’ revelations about its long term and ongoing injustices toward its own people. Though the Buddhists are pleading for the United Nations to become involved immediately, the Burmese government is reportedly closing down websites and internet access as quickly as it can… sparked by cell-phone films Burmese have taken of violence toward the marchers … showing up on YouTube… thereby ‘letting the world know.’
However, as of this evening the signs in parts of Burma are ominous as tanks and armed soldiers have taken up positions on the streets. The military is beginning to arrest civilians, has called a curfew and also rescinded ‘right of assembly’ limiting meetings to no more than five persons.
Though some accuse the monks of being pawns of extremist groups, and some others accuse the monks of being hypocritical because some of their leaders sometimes ceremonially ’sit in golden chairs’ (each temple often has chairs given by the populace that are anywhere from simple to fancy) it is unlikely that such accusation hold much sway. More sturdy is that this could be China’s chance, despite multiple motives, to show how humane they can be by staying the Burmese government’s violent reactions to the protesters. It could be a chance for the United States to stand up for a people who dearly seem to want a rock-solid democracy instead of a mock democracy…as their government keeps averring they have a stepped plan for a democracy… some day. It would be a chance for the Burmese government to take down its armored bunker mentality and become a governing body instead of an exploitative one.
Meanwhile, 20,000 Buddhist monks with no armor other than their profound belief in compassionate action toward all beings, march in Burma tonight, their faces so deadly serious and their eyes so soft, all at the same time.
The oil used to distill water, make plastic containers and ship them over long distances rivals the energy spent and the pollution caused by gas-guzzling cars.
Americans have to drive to work, take the kids to school and go shopping. They don’t have to drink water out of bottles.
In most places in the U.S., the habit is as necessary for health as strapping on an oxygen tank and breathing your own private air–and just about as cost-effective.
San Francisco, PBS reports, is banning the use of city money for bottled water. It started when an aide brought the Mayor his bottle of Fiji water with a big bag of oil surrounding it, and said, “Here’s what you’re actually consuming”–to produce the bottle and the distribution costs to get it to the United States.
Americans spend almost $100 billion a year for water no better than most tap water and sometimes no different. If they worry about safety, portable home filters can reassure them for pennies a gallon and reusable glass containers can make it as portable as and safer than plastic, which may leach into its contents.
As a still-breathing consumer of tap water for more than eight decades, I’ll drink to that.
August 30th, 2007 by JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
NOTE: The Moderate Voice runs Guest Voice posts from time to time by readers who don’t have their own websites, or people who have websites but would like to post something for TMV’s diverse and thoughtful readership. Guest Voice posts do not necessarily reflect the opinions of The Moderate Voice or its writers. This Guest Voice is by J. Thomas Andrews, who lives in the Northeast. He writes that he works in venture capital and specializes in energy and natural resources.
Oil Shale to the Rescue?
By J. Thomas Andrews
Let me start by saying that this post is as non-partisan as it gets. I care about America, not political parties. So buckle your seatbelt…
We’re facing an oil crisis. Biofuels and hybrids will not save us in time. But oil shale might.
Let’s start with some hard facts.
America’s domestic petroleum production is in decline. In 2000, America’s domestic oil production was 5.8 million barrels/day. In 2005, even though prices had skyrocketed—a stimulant for production growth— domestic oil production was only 5.2 million barrels/day. In America, oil no longer gushes to the surface like it once did. The days of Spindletop are long over. To make matters worse, petroleum production in many oil exporting countries outside of the Persian Gulf, such as Norway, is also in decline. The only region with significant untapped reserves of conventional oil is the Persian Gulf. That said, America will come to depend on the Persian Gulf for more and more of its crude in the coming years unless things change dramatically.
So will the rest of the world. Global demand for petroleum is surging while the world’s crude supply is being concentrated in the hands of Iran, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, and Kuwait, and Bahrain. This is the ultimate recipe for conflict and the greatest threat to America’s economic security.
In recent years, many people, including our policymakers, have come to believe that biofuels will save us from Persian Gulf petroleum dependence.
But the difficult truth is that neither biofuels nor hybrids will reduce our dependence on Persian Gulf crude anytime soon.
Today, biofuels are not cost-competitive with conventional crude. They only survive with subsidies. Moreover, the potential for biofuels to contribute to our energy recipe is severely limited by their land requirements. Right now, ethanol is produced primarily from corn. According to a 2006 University of Minnesota study, dedicating the entire U.S. corn crop to ethanol production could only offset 12% of our gasoline consumption. According to researchers at the Cato Institute, “For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline consumption in this country, we would need to appropriate all U.S. cropland, turn it completely over to corn-ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land for cultivation on top of that.â€
Perhaps, in the future, more advanced cellulosic ethanol technologies will mature to a point where they will be cost competitive with gasoline. Perhaps then, switchgrass and miscanthus, which have much higher yields than corn, will become the dominant biofuel feedstocks. When that happens, perhaps, as Bruce E. Dale of Michigan State University speculates, under the most optimistic case scenario, the United States could replace 85% of its current gasoline consumption by converting 100 million acres of land to cellulose production. But, cellulosic ethanol technologies are years away from technological and commercial viability. And it will take decades more before America allocates 100 million acres of land—an amount roughly equivalent to ¼ of America’s harvested cropland—to cellulose production.
And, keep in mind that this is an optimistic projection.
According to an article in the Nov-Dec 2006 edition Harvard Magazine by Harvard environmental scientist Michael McElroy, to supplant just 50 percent of America’s current gasoline use with cellulosic ethanol could require as much as 280 million acres of land. As McElroy points out in a supplemental technical discussion of his article, that’s roughly equal to 75 percent of the cropland currently in use or 49 percent of America’s grassland, pasture, and range. Regardless of whose forecast is more accurate—Dr. Dale’s or Dr. McElroy’s—we can be sure that it would take years before enough land could be allocated for cellulosic ethanol production to power any significant percentage of our cars. Can we afford to wait that long?
If you think hybrids will soon serve as our lifeboats out of this mess, you’re wrong. Hybrids will not penetrate the U.S. market in large quantities anytime soon. Consider that the median lifetime of an American automobile is 17 years. According to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, there were 136.6 million passenger cars on America’s roads in 2005, the most recent year for which data has been published. In 2005, though, there were only 7.6 million new car sales and leases in the United States. In other words, new cars make up only 5.6% of cars on the road every year. Even if hybrids were to make up 100% of new cars sold starting tomorrow, it would take a generation before they would replace the entire U.S. fleet. That’s the most optimistic, and totally unrealistic, scenario. In light of Detroit’s resistance thus far to hybrid development, we can be sure that it will take years before hybrids make up any significant fraction of new cars sold, and it will be a generation before hybrids replace our entire fleet. I don’t want to wait that long for energy security.
The only real option America has if it hopes to free itself from the shackles of Middle East petro-politics anytime soon is to find new sources of domestic petroleum. Am I suggesting that we drill ANWR? The truth is that it doesn’t make much of a difference if we do or don’t. ANWR is a red herring—it only has enough petroleum to support America’s domestic needs for just one year—maybe two. However, we have another source of domestic petroleum that has the potential to make a big difference: oil shale.
Oil shale is a type of rock that has a petroleum precursor called kerogen trapped inside of it. Using a variety of mechanical and chemical processes, this kergoen can be extracted and upgraded into liquid fuels like synthetic gasoline and synthetic diesel. The United States has the largest oil shale resources in the world. Most of America’s oil shale deposits are located in the undeveloped Green River Formation, which straddles Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. According to the Rand Corporation, as much as 1.1 trillion—yes, trillion— barrels of synthetic petroleum could be recovered from the Green River Formation. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, that is four times the size of Saudi Arabia’s proved reserves of conventional oil, and approximately equal to all of the proved reserves of conventional oil on earth!
In my annual new years predictions, I said that the most significant, and surprising, development of 2007 would be the collapse of both Mexico’s economy and its very existence as a viable Nation-State. While there hasn’t been a spectacular, single event confirming my prediction, there has been a steady erosion on all fronts—with five months left in the year, I’m not yet willing to push back my prediction of Mexico’s “collapse†to 2008. The decline of the Mexican Nation-State is a bellwether for the massively complex network of geopolitical influences sometimes termed above ground factors. It provides some insight into how symptoms of oil scarcity already being felt in poorer parts of the world will increasingly spill over into our own back yard…
Jeff Vail’s post is detailed and goes into some troubling developments in oil infrastructure, the increase in violence and Mexico’s overall economy.
Read it all.
If there was ever truly bad news for the White House and the Republican party, the latest Gallup poll is definitively it:
A new Gallup Poll will only reinforce those who claim that while the rich get richer most Americans don’t feel they are sharing in the growth in our economy. The stock market may be climbing and the unemployment remains relatively low, but 7 in 10 Americans believe the economy is getting worse — the most negative reading in nearly six years.
Only one in three Americans rate the economy today as either excellent or good, while the percentage saying the economy is getting better fell from 28% to 23% in one month.
You don’t want to overstate a poll and use the word “catastrophic” but this comes close to a required usage. The most fundamental axiom in politics is that people “vote their pocketbooks.” A good economy has sometimes carried a weak or beset President or party through troubled times.
But both the polling results and the trending here suggest that neither optimistic official or party statements about the future or statements about how good things are in the economy are producing desired results where results count — in the attitudes of most voters:
Gallup adds: “For the first time this year, a majority of Americans are negative about the employment market, saying it is a bad time to find a quality job.”
The 70% negative rating is up 10 points since April. Also, just in the past month, there has been a significant five-point drop, from 28% to 23%, in the percentage saying conditions are getting better.
And if you look at the specific areas of dissatisfaction, it further spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e:
“When asked about the most pressing financial problems their family faces today, Americans mention healthcare costs, lack of money or low wages, and oil and gas prices,” Gallup reports. “Healthcare costs are mentioned by 16% of Americans while 13% say low wages and 11% say oil and gas prices. These percentages are virtually unchanged from last month.”
All of this suggests (again) that unless there is some major shift for the better, Democrats will be running on George Bush’s record in 2008 and Republicans will be running away from it. And New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg may have some fun pointing to how both parties have seemingly made a mess of it.
