The American Way of Life is Not Negotiable

we've heard this said by bush and others 4 a while now as the reason 4 refusing to sign the kyoto protocols on global warming and also as a justification 4 refusing to introduce measures that would help 2 conserve the most limited of energy resources: oil.

if 2morrow it was announced that the situation was so critical that the world would run out of oil if urgent measures were not introduced 2 conserve supplies, would u prepared to use less oil?

in other words, what will it take to make the american way of life negotiable...

 

First of all, I don't believe we are running out of oil. If you look where most of this hype is coming from, it's the oil companies themselves, who are using "peak oil" to justify elevated oil prices, which rob the average American while lining the coffers of the oil industry.

At the same time, alternative sources of energy are being supressed by the powers that be.

 

i've heard this mentioned be4, that oil supplies are plentiful, but that's a familiar line coming from from the oil industry or their supporters usually to keep share prices afloat. i've yet 2 see much from the oil industry hyping up peak oil. the lisbon conference on peak oil this year had reps from the oil industry who came for the first time (reported in last month's from the wildnerness). this would seem 2 indicate that they are now starting 2 take it seriously. that's what i know about it. however, i would be interested 2 know more about your pov...

 

The reason mass transit hasn't really caught on in America is becuase a large portion of our population is from rural areas. What needs to be done is a return to railways.

 

for mor information about the peak oil conference held in lisbon see:
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061705_lisban_ASPO.shtml

 

during the oil "crisis" of the 70's a friend in the upper management at Tessoro Petroleum said then that there was enough oil in capped oil wells in the US to supply oil for us at 20 times our usage (in 1970's) to last 100 years .. remember this is in capped wells. He said that "Our intent is to suck the A-rabs dry and we'll have the corner on oil production. After that, all them A-rabs would have then is sand and that won't grow shit. Then we can sell them food at the same kind of high price as they sold us oil and they can't do squat about it because they won't have anything to hold over our heads."

so, are we running out of fossil fuels ? no. should we conserve ? abso-fucking-lutely. why ? because that is what is best in the long run. will we ? no, at least not in the US

 

apart from the anecdotal evidence that there's enough oil in capped wells in the us to supply oil for many years, what other evidence do u have to support this view?

 

hello? so it looks like there is no evidence that peak oil is a con and the oil corporations are really secretly hoarding enough oil to last the world 4 eternity (apart from 2 posters stating their unsubstantiated opinions). that sounds 2 me like a convenient fairy tale spoilt americans would dearly love to tell themselves so they don't have to give up their big fat fuck suvs and the rest of the gas guzzlin' crap they go on with. oh well, once a selfish psychopath ...

 

Well what do you expect? People blame their favorite enemy the same as they do any other issue.

The American way of life is negotiable. If it wasn't, we wouldn't have catalytic converters and fuel economy standards.

Anyway, I think peak oil is hype. People do not understand what an elastic concept oil reserves is.

1. Railways don't work in rural areas. They work in densely populated areas.
2. Oil companies aren't hyping "peak oil", they obviously don't want people considering alternative forms of energy.
3. The idea that we make a killing selling food to oil-less arabs is ridiculous. Does this person think America is the only place that grows food? No, obviously someone else can sell them food. And some major oil producers - Mexico, Venezuala, Russia, Norway, Canada, etc. have food AND oil.
4. The idea that oil companies are trying to rob the "average american" is equally ridiculous as #3. It sees America as the cente of the world and everything that happens is made to happen specifically to "get" average Americans. Well oil is the same price the world over and American oil companies do not control the worlds oil or dictate its price. And how are Americans being "robbed" at gas prices less than half of what people in poorer countries pay? Similarly, if alternative energy were being surpressed "by the powers that be", how come it isn't springing up in some other country? China and Japan obviously depend on imported energy, and are large powerful countries. Why don't they reap the benefits of these supposedly surpressed wonders of alternative energy?

 

Burning 'fossil fuels' is adding to 'global warming' & ozone depletion.I have read comments on other topics denying that even this is occuring.


We cannot go on living like this indefinitely .
To access the oil we are having to go deeper & deeper into the Earth's crust.

There are probably more Automobiles in the World than Humans!!!.

Do you need 3 Cars instead of 2 ? - Must you have the latest model?.

Save the Planet: - Limit Worldwide Production of Automobiles.

 

interesting post pb. when u say that oil reserves are an elastic concept, what do u mean? surely oil like everything else is a finite thing. some think we have reached the peak already, some like yourself say not. the point is tho that sooner or later we will reach the peak. i think that motivates america's invasion of iraq and any future invasions they have planned: they will all be in oil rich states. can't we infer then that peak oil must be on the minds of the us government? whether that day comes sooner or later, that day will come.

 

you are all wrong. the raelian aliens who came to this planet 5,000 years ago have supplied us with enough oil to last a lifetime. it is up to us to realize the magnificent potential of our creation---our dna---to evolve and to learn to live without oil. if we do not, we won't die. but the raelians will now know that we have not fulfilled their dreams for us a humankind.

 

apollo darling, i have thought of u as many things, a fag hag, an agent provocateur, a funny all-round good bloke, but one thing i never thought was that u were a raelian. personally i'm not a raelian, but my drag name is raylene.

 

Reserves is an elastic concept because it is based on the technology available to find, measure, and extract them, and at what price reserves are economically useful. This explains why as time passes, world reserves increase despite rising consumption.

http://www.energybulletin.net/761.html

As an example of the difficulty of calculating reserves, look at the tar sands of Alberta - do they represent 300 billion barrels or 1.6 trillion barrels in reserves? That's a matter of opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athabasca_Tar_Sands

And have we reached peak gas? Converting oil/gasoline burning engines into natural gas burning engines is easy. Gas will become increasingly important. Oil is not the only fossil fuel on the planet.

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3712621

But America is an equal opportunity invader. We have had military interventions in lots of non-oil producing countries (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, Vietnam, etc etc). And after 9/11, did we invade oil rich Saudi Arabia, home to most of the hijackers, or oil-free Afghanistan? (Not that I buy the logic that we should have invaded Saudi Arabia, its just one of those meaningless arguments often repeated by the antiwar groups). After we liberated Kuwait, did we keep the oil? And if we were after Iraqi oil, why did we turn back and go home in 1991? Didn't we need oil then too?

Countries the US is supposed to be "planning" to invade include Syria and Iran, although there sure isn't much evidence of it. Syria has no useful oil reserves. Iran does, but what good would it do us? They already sell us oil. I have asked time and time again for someone to explain to me the difference between the US relationship with Iraq's oil now and before the war. The relationship is the same: they sell it and we buy it.

 

ta 4 the links which i'm only just now working my through. i'll try 2 respond to ur post later. i would say tho that i noticed energybulletin.net are theorising that oil is behind the tensions between us and iran: not ownership but rather a scheme iran is mooting for 'petroeuros'. http://www.energybulletin.net/7707.html
also it's been fairly widely reported that the us has been conducting covert raids in2 iran 4 a while now. it seems me that the us is building up to the same kind of public campaign 4 war like they did with saddam.
http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/01/16/hersh.iran/

 

crazy

 

that's an eye opener. i'm surprised there are so many poofters (11%). not that that's a bad thing.

 

I think Hersh is a great journalist, i'm sure he's got good information. But the US is not going to invade Iran. They may be getting information so they can do airstrikes and raids on nuclear facilities, but an invasion of the country is never going to happen.

As for "petroeuros", i think this is simply a backup theory for people who think there must be some kind of conspiracy but admit that the war for oil argument has some serious flaws.

This is just ignorant. The oil price is the oil price. It doesn't matter what currency it is denominated in. The relative values of the currencies could not possibly have any impact on proceeds to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.

The complete absence of news stories shows that the press understands currencies better than this guy. Whether people exchange their dollars for euros or euros for dollars before they pay for their oil shipments means nothing. Personally, I would expect an Iranian bourse to fail because owning the oil doesn't logically mean oil futures should be traded there. London is a major trader of Euro financial futures yet the UK doesn't use the Euro. Its just not how financial markets work.

So have you read my links?

 

yes, ive been reading them this afternoon. the energy bulletin i particularly like. one good link leads 2 another as it often does with these things and be4 u know it i have 14 ie windows open! and probably no closer to having an opinion about anything other than i didn't realise just how little i knew on the subject. but it seems that opinions vary widely on the spectre of peak oil. i came upon one link to the peak oil council i think they're called (hubbert's crowd) and they reckon that 2020 is the likely time when we'll feel the crunch, while someone like michael ruppert thinks 18 months. i cant see how it would happen that quickly myself but i do think we should be making plans now, not later, for some kind of transition to a post-oil society. but of course if there's no profit in it then nobody'll do it. that's what i dont like about capitalism. anyway, i continue to read...

 

btw, i wish i shared ur optimism about iran. i've just heard bush on the radio sabre rattling. i'll be honest, it gives me 2002 deja vu and the heebie-jeebies.