Peak Oil (was "petroleum geologist explains US war policy")

[totaladdict]

There's some good stuff on biodiesel here: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=76290&page=1&pp=25&highlight=biodiesel

Backatcha bandit posted this link that might be handy: http://www.vegetableoildiesel.co.uk/fuelsdatabase/database/index.php

There's also some interesting stuff that crops up in this thread: http://www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=76882&highlight=biodiesel

The 'cars and the future of transport' thread is more general but touches on some of the issues that Barking Mad has mentioned (carbon neutral etc).

I'll chuck this link in here in case anyone's interested: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba

Obviously we need to be thinking about how to lessen our dependence on individual transportation systems - at least where it's straightforward (ie cities). Places that are actually doing it are popping up, though not often in "developed" countries. Curitiba looks like an excellent example of what can be achieved: http://www.solutions-site.org/artman/publish/article_62.shtml


One problem I have with biodiesel relates to the "drip drip" that Backatchabandit and others have talked about. It's seen as our "saviour" and leads people away from thinking that more fundamental issues need to be addressed. Though I suppose the same is true of any minor improvements...

 

[totaladdict]

From memory, the 3 is fertiliser, pesticides, irrigation etc. The 7 is everything else, which includes the whole processing (turning meat, wheat, corn, rice and soya beans into 'food') and distribution chain (supermarkets, refrigeration, packaging, etc), not just transport. It also includes the industrial stuff associated with e.g. fertilisers, but not counted directly, like feedstocks. Everything except actually cooking it.

I'll see if I can find a detailed reference for you online, I'm pretty sure I've seen it there someplace. (I don't have his book available to me right now)

This from a few pages back....

I just found some stuff, after reading a link bb gave to Folke's site (on the biodiesel thread):

In the United States, 400 gallons of oil equivalents are expended annually to feed each American (as of data provided in 1994).

Agricultural energy consumption is broken down as follows:
31% for the manufacture of inorganic fertilizer
19% for the operation of field machinery
16% for transportation
13% for irrigation
08% for raising livestock (not including livestock feed)
05% for crop drying
05% for pesticide production
08% miscellaneous

But that doesn't talk about packaging, refrigeration, transport from retail outlets or energy used cooking...

I'm still interested in seeing a really detailed breakdown if anyone's seen one... and also a detailed breakdown of how oil energy is used (food, industry, home, car etc).

 

[kropotkin]

400 gallons per person per year?
That doesn't sound enough.

Are you sure?

 

[totaladdict]

Over a gallon of oil (equivalents) in the food of every person every day? Seems like a bloody lot to me (or are you taking the piss?).

(I took it from an article from the Folke Gunther site that backatchabandit posted on the biodiesel thread.)

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Apologies for not being around to contribute much lately - no time and a mangled right hand making it a real chore to type... (better now, tho)

V. quick note WRT biodiesel use - provided the feedstock is sustainably produced, is the nett effect re carbon sequestration is better than 'neutral', in that the plant absorbs more (some sources suggest 3 x more) than you beltch out of your exhaust pipe? (I'm thinking of the parts of the plant that don't end up in your tank).

As a method of accelerating sequestration, I feel increasing the use of biodiesel is potentially one of the most effective 'realworld' (ie achievable within current 'systems') solutions we have.

In other european countries, biodiesel use is far more widespread - this is basically down to the taxation policies adopted by some of the more 'progressive' governments... In the UK, despite plenty of bullshit from central government, we tax dinodiesel (DERV) and petrol at 46ppl, biofuels at 26ppl and fucking LPG at 9ppl. IIRC Demark and a couple of others even rate it at 0%.

'Cargill' a (German I think) firm currently lobbying the UKG to honour their pledges and drop the biofuels to 9ppl. Cargill apparently have around £20M just waiting for the go-ahead (9ppl on bio) ready to invest in desterfication processing plants.

The thing is, at the current duty of 26ppl, it is not 'economically' (grrr yes I know) viable to produce biofuel from feedstock grown especially for the purpose... as soon as the duty goes 9ppl it suddenly is.

It is, however, currently (26ppl) just about 'economically' viable to make biodiesel from locally collected WASTE veg oil (WVO), (in that you can get feedstock, chems and pay the duty for less than the pump price of dinodiesel) but not really worth investing in for big biz as the WVO prices would instantly rise - we have to compete with animal feed manufacturers for WVO (there is a whole other argument to be made for taking WVO out of the human food chain, espesh as IIRC it was cited as a possible route for BSE contamination. Yum yum.)

As far as I can see - and help me out here please if you can - one reason that the duty won't drop is that if we start growing feedstock (agribusinesstastic-choker-of-children 'canola' - luvverly GM monoculture?) for biofuel production, one of the by products is basically 'cattlecake'.

The UK - as I understand it - imports shitloads of cattlecake from the US and I've heard the odd thing about not wanting to upset some trade agreement or other... any info in this regard most welcome.

UKG also reckon on losing £70m (after 3rd yr) a year in revenue if they go for 9ppl on bio...

We can't put a 'price' on the air... but we could put a tax on aviation fuel. A simpol solution?

-

Personal preference - Straight WVO (heated lines, retard pump timing - poss modify impeller) through large paper element (used ones make good stove lighters! ) filters with a small start up / rundown tank of biodiesel. Less expensive scarey chemicals and less time slaving over a hot oil drum dressed like a gimp.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

A couple of quick comments if I may (maxed out busy this week so apologies for not contributing more)

There's a lot to be said for biofuels as per BB's post above. There are some issues though. The main one is that assuming demand for fuel continues to rise, the land required competes with land required for growing food. So I'd say that it's vital to reduce demand somehow. Assuming we can do that, then the next problem is to maximise efficiency. For example, as BB points out, you can make this stuff by recycling used veg oil and probably can reclaim it from other waste products if you try hard enough. The process isn't likely to appeal to industrial giants, but seems potentially workable done on a local and distributed scale. That's interesting because generally doing stuff on a local and distributed scale is a fundamental enabler for reduced demand.

I haven't tried to model this properly, but my guess is that due to the energy and land area required for production, if you assume a maximally efficient sustainable process based on solar flows only, both for creating the oil source and processing it, modest amounts of local biofuel could be viable as a way to concentrate the available solar energy, but its nothing that would conceivably allow for business as usual.

PS Cargill are a multinational agricorp, I think the biggest of the lot, currently involved in promoting GMOs etc.

 

[laptop]

Not sure who's arguing about what over the oil input to food supply...

1 gallon pppd sounds low, even excluding packaging & processing and transport thereof...

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Here's a site with some helpful data for the UK, which looks like it's based on credible references and which has some discussion on the breakdown and details of each stage link

Representative (ie may vary) proportions of energy by stage in food system

Sector %
Agriculture 23
Food Industry 14
Food packaging 18
Food Distribution 8
Consumer Household 37

So assuming that the 400 gal figure corresponds roughly to the farm bit, we're talking something more like 2000 gallons overall. A couple of caveats though. We don't know exactly how these figures were calculated, for example I recall from Pimentel's book that it makes a big difference how far up the industrial production chain you go when calculating fertiliser costs. Also, these figures may not account 'hidden costs' such as soil erosion etc.

An interesting question is obviously where the potentials for increasing efficiencies lie. In agriculture, the obvious route is the use of a combination of traditional and modern organic methods, something like an updated version of 19thC 'High Farming' for rural areas and e.g. 'French intensive', 'Biointensive' or the various Cuban models for urban areas. Those kinds of models don't reduce yield over industrial agriculture all that much, I think it's about -20% at worst for bog-standard commercial organic farming and some of the more intensive urban models actually increase yield per hectare quite substantially, but it does reduce productivity, being significantly more labour intensive than industrial agriculture based on cheap oil. The implication here being that a lot more people might need to get involved in growing their food, whether it's in part-time in their back gardens, or perhaps allotments or community gardens, or maybe full-time in Cuban style urban farms and in rural agriculture, in order to produce enough to feed the UK population sustainably.I'm pretty sure you can't do it with just the arable land available in the UK, you either have to import substantially, which is obviously not appealing in the absence of cheap oil, or you need to start finding lots more places to grow stuff. (the detailed figures UK arable land etc are way back in this thread someplace)

Processing, packaging and distribution can all be substantially improved by a localisation or ruralisation approach, as described by Folke in various places. A good deal of current processing and packaging is mandated by the need to transport food and display it on supermarket shelves. So localising food production tends to address all of these inter-related items at the same time.

The tough one is probably the household one, although that does include shopping, storage (e.g. refrigeration) as well as preparation, so there is clearly some potential for reductions by localisation and other methods. One issue here is that although the UK has a fairly high proportion of gardeners who could certainly figure out how to 'dig for victory' if pushed, I strongly suspect that the associated food preparation skills are less common. The point here being that if you want to cut farm-to-house, food preparation and storage energy costs, there are ways to do it, but they mostly involve learning techniques that aren't exactly common in our society. Or to put it a little bit more concretely - 'What do you do with a tree full of ripe pears?'

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Just as an aside - anyone here had a look at the Local Communities Sustainability Bill that just had it's second reading on 18/6/04?

Possibly worth a thread of it's own.

 

[Barking_Mad]

For anyone that's interested this months National Geographic has a very long and interesting looking piece on 'The End of Cheap Oil'. Ithought there might be a bit on their website about it, but I cant see anything. Ill buy a copy tomorrow and copy out or highlight any of the interesting pieces in it.

 

[Disjecta Membra]

.............

 

[totaladdict]

For anyone that's interested this months National Geographic has a very long and interesting looking piece on 'The End of Cheap Oil'. Ithought there might be a bit on their website about it, but I cant see anything. Ill buy a copy tomorrow and copy out or highlight any of the interesting pieces in it.

True Story posted a link in post #404 - but it was just to a preview of the article. Don't think they put full articles online....

 

[totaladdict]

Not sure who's arguing about what over the oil input to food supply...

1 gallon pppd sounds low, even excluding packaging & processing and transport thereof...

Do you have a more accurate figure?

Bernie's come up with 2000 gallons per person per year based around the 400 pppy for 'farm stuff' - if you have some more accurate firgures, especially if you have any that show the farm stuff for the UK (as opposed to US as Pimentel does), then, well... cool

 

[Barking_Mad]

Just saw this piece on the BBC site.

Bad winter 'threatens gas supply'

UK gas supplies could be under threat in extreme conditions, according to a House of Lords report.
Despite reassurance from the Energy Minister, Stephen Timms MP, peers have urged the government to examine the gas market's ability to cope. In its report it said pipelines bringing gas into the UK have little spare capacity in the short term. It recommends new procedures for dealing with disruption and speedy re-connection if customers get cut off.

"Ofgem believe supplies are adequate except in extreme conditions - it is the extreme conditions we worry about," said Lord Woolmer of Leeds, chairman of the committee that conducted the inquiry. The report explained that Transco had the physical capacity to transport a high-surge demand for gas, but the pipelines bringing gas into the UK had little spare capacity. New capacity to import more gas is being built but this will not go far enough, the report says.

"Even when new import schemes start operating in 2007, we still question whether a market-based, 'just-in-time' system will provide insurance against the one-in-twenty year peak demand that Transco is legally obliged to meet."

The EU is a net importer of gas and it is expected by 2010 that 60% will come from outside the region.

 

[totaladdict]

Just as an aside - anyone here had a look at the Local Communities Sustainability Bill that just had it's second reading on 18/6/04?

Have now...

Without going in to the act itself, it did remind me of something I came across a while ago - this program was on the radio a while ago (prob more than a year) talking about the provision of local organic food to, for example, schools. These people seem to be doing some really good stuff - and if that act is used to aid similar stuff then it seems bloody positive. Imagine if all local authorities had to have tie-ins with local farms - schools, hospitals, council office canteens... all getting their food from local farms. Farmers with tie-ins to schools so the kids can grow some of the food they consume at school, so (linking to Bernie's point a few posts back) they can learn about preparing food from scratch....

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Talking of efficiency in the domestic use of fuel (see food energy breakdown above), I was just doing some digging on Stirling Engines and ran across this rather interesting new gizmo.

The basic idea here is to use a stirling engine to generate electricity as a byproduct of the waste heat from fuel used for central heating, and potentially also that used for cooking (one imagines using something like a bit like Rayburn or similar range to generate power as well as heat a home)

It looks very sweet environmentally and generally, stirling engines tend to be very efficient heat engines, whose disadvantages (slow start-up and relatively high operating temperature) are minimised in this application.

Given that you may end up producing a surplus of electricity, like PV it makes sense to put your surplus into the grid, or more efficiently, into a local grid.

There is also a pdf here which discusses the potential impact of 'home power stations' as a 'disruptive technology' for the major privatised electricity distributors.

I rather fancy one of these

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Just as an aside - anyone here had a look at the Local Communities Sustainability Bill that just had it's second reading on 18/6/04?

Possibly worth a thread of it's own.

Interesting. That link only just started working for me. I think you might be right about it deserving a thread of its own. LA21 might also be a good thing to discuss in that context.

To link this back to what seems to be the current theme on this thread, a lot of the more workable looking mitigations for all of this stuff seem to revolve around localising or otherwise distributing systems that have become very centralised while we have cheap oil.

Food production, power generation etc all seem capable of being made far more efficient and hence more sustainable by various forms of localisation.

In the case of our food, that probably means some combination of Folke's ruralisation, Cuban-style urban farming and a movement towards eco-villages. In the case of domestic power we could consider much better insulation, solar-thermal, PV, wind and other kinds of infrastructure improvements. In the case of transport, again, major investments in new infrastructure for public transport, bio-fuels/hydrogen and structural change to reduce demand.

The interesting question then becomes: how do we in practice make the necessary changes? Especially given that the economic forces which mandate centralisation are still in play while oil remains cheap and that the investment in a more localised approach is likely to become more and more expensive as oil ceases to be cheap.

Another good one is: what forms should that localisation take in practice? Eco-villages are all very well, but most of us aren't in a position to live that way. So what practical steps should be taken now and in the nearish future?

A third one is: what are the obstacles? For example, ruralisation vs property development. Localised power generation cannibalises the revenue of power companies. Localisation of food production affects agribusiness, the food processing industry and supermarket chains. As all of these centralised organisations have much more influence over our government than we do.

Whatever the changes are, they probably won't gain mass acceptance until the problems become severe, and at that point the cost of change will very likely be higher. (I'm assuming the most likely impact of big oil shocks is some form of economic depression accompanied by at least some political turmoil)

I think we've discussed a lot of interesting point solutions on this thread, but what obstacles are there to implementing them, how are they to be tackled and how do these measures become a workable programme for change?

Bandit, toiling over a hot oil drum in his gimp suit, may be a harbinger of the future

 

[TinyCrendon]

i want my car to smell of chips...mmm...chips.

 

[Fruitloop]

From the debates that I've been reading online, it seems like there's likely to be a sharp division between those who are willing to pay the price (probably reckoned up in numbers of lives) that has to be paid for continuing with some semblance of 'business as usual', and those who would rather combine the inevitable technological break with some sort of social restructuring (hopefully towards more equitable and less exploitative models).

It also seems that many people who are aware of the issue are seriously underestimating the likely impact - I was astonished to read comments from a New Zealand source regarding the effects on the tourist industry. Erm, hello? Surely post-peak, the idea of a large body of people being employed simply to service other folk who fly thousands of miles and back in a couple of weeks for a holiday is just going to be out of the question.

 

[moon]

Just as an aside - anyone here had a look at the Local Communities Sustainability Bill that just had it's second reading on 18/6/04?

Possibly worth a thread of it's own.

How can local communities strive to be sustainable when governments and businesses are not.

This looks like the type of bill that will result in a couple of thousand 'Community Sustainability Officers' being employed and achieving nothing.

Much in the same way as Agenda 21 has achieved absolutely nothing, save the planting of a few Oak saplings here and there

 

[moon]

Erm, hello? Surely post-peak, the idea of a large body of people being employed simply to service other folk who fly thousands of miles and back in a couple of weeks for a holiday is just going to be out of the question.

Strange you should say that, the United Arab Emirates are slowly restructuring their economies towards tourism due to the decline in oil reserves.

There must be some sense in that somewhere...although i am struggling to find any.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

I think it's difficult to predict exactly what happens post-peak. We aren't talking about oil suddenly running out one day. What seems likely to me is that firstly there will be strong upward pressure on oil prices and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, there will come a perceptual crisis point where widespread awareness of the seriousness of the problem will start to spread.

Take the BSE crisis as a comparison. At first, it's just a few scientific warnings, then a bunch of vested interests and government stooges try to pretend it isn't happening, then finally the system hits the tipping point, there is a sudden cascade of changed perceptions, everybody goes 'oh shit we're fucked' and government tries to act.

One big problem as far as depletion is concerned, I think, is that when we hit the 'oh shit we're fucked' stage, the transition costs of moving to some kind of sustainabilty will already have risen drastically. Every time there is an oil price crisis of any significant size, there seems to be a world-wide recession, so it's reasonable to predict that this will be the case on a larger scale post-peak.

The other big problem is likely to be that of powerful path dependent organisations trying to remain viable whether it makes any sense for them to do so or not.The tourist board case is an illustration of that effect, but the same also applies to the military-industrial complex, which is rather more worrying I think. We can already see corporations involved with industrial agriculture trying to find a way to adapt themselves to the future, as they see it, by their promotion of various GMOs. Government subsidised agribiz in the US has also already made large investments in the promotion of corn and soya biofuels, and have incidentally also funded propaganda attacking scientists for pointing out the flaws in this approach (95% of US surface area required to grow enough to meet current demand, energy cost of making the fuel exceeds energy benefit of the fuel if you exclude the effects of large govt subsidies)

If you're an industrial agriculture corporation it makes total sense to fund propaganda attacking the organic foods movement and inconvenient scientists (and to lobby politicians to allow you to represent any old crap you like as 'organic' to make it saleable) We see very much the same process with oil corporations funding right-wing propaganda mills to attack climate science.

Path dependence in this case, implies well-funded vested interests whose entire existence is predicated on cheap oil, trying to preserve their viability by attacking the positive adaptations to post-oil realities that threaten them.

Meanwhile, the only positive approach I can presently see, is to develop and strengthen viable ways of life at the grass-roots level, in anticipation of that cascade of awareness I mentioned earlier. So the alternatives are at least somewhat developed and the knowledge to make them work somewhat well distributed at the point where panic-stricken governments start trying to act.

 

[atitlan]

One big problem as far as depletion is concerned, I think, is that when we hit the 'oh shit we're fucked' stage, the transition costs of moving to some kind of sustainabilty will already have risen drastically. Every time there is an oil price crisis of any significant size, there seems to be a world-wide recession, so it's reasonable to predict that this will be the case on a larger scale post-peak.

This is where waiting for a market-based solution just isn't viable. To make a gentle transition you need to use oil at a rate that gives you time to put the alternatives in place. You also need to analyse and prioritise your oil needs - it may be that for some oil-based products we simply have no alternative. What has to happen is a rationing of the product on the basis of global need throughout the transistion period.

Given that rationing within a market is price-based and only occurs when there is scarcity, or widespread fear of scarcity, and that rationing is then on the basis of who can afford, rather than need, you have a situation where there is no controlled transition. A market led transistion simply cannot work.

And that's before you consider the effect of vested interests.

 

[TrueStory]

July 2004 ASPO newsletter is online

The July issue of the ASPO Newsletter is not yet available in HTML format but it is available in these formats:

pdf: http://216.187.75.220/newsletter43.pdf
Word: http://216.187.75.220/newsletter43.doc

CONTENTS:

376.Oil effectively traded in Euros
377.Oil,money,and war -the end of the New
American Century?
378.A Most Critical Development
379.Country Assessment -Italy
380.UK Balance of Payments
381.An Oil Enigmaroduction falls as Reserves
rise
382.Tanker shortage
383.Dwindling Exploration
384.BP takes responsibility for false reserve
numbers
385 The Truth about Oil and the Looming World
Energy Crisis

Past issues:
http://asponews.org

 

[Bernie Gunther]

This is where waiting for a market-based solution just isn't viable. To make a gentle transition you need to use oil at a rate that gives you time to put the alternatives in place. You also need to analyse and prioritise your oil needs - it may be that for some oil-based products we simply have no alternative. What has to happen is a rationing of the product on the basis of global need throughout the transistion period.

Given that rationing within a market is price-based and only occurs when there is scarcity, or widespread fear of scarcity, and that rationing is then on the basis of who can afford, rather than need, you have a situation where there is no controlled transition. A market led transistion simply cannot work.

And that's before you consider the effect of vested interests.

I think you've summed up the rationale for the Uppsala Protocol quite nicely there.

 

[Barking_Mad]

There's an article here about biodiesel from the BBC web site:

Green fuels set for breakthrough

Biodiesel cuts greenhouse gas emissions by up to 60%. Motorists who feel a pang of guilt every time they fill their tanks with pollutant-laden fossil fuels may soon find that they no longer have an excuse for not switching to cleaner alternatives. Environmentally-friendly substitutes for petrol and diesel, long championed by green campaigners, have been commercially available for years.

But their high price relative to fossil fuels, along with the expense and inconvenience of adapting cars to run on them, has so far prevented them from penetrating the mass market. Now, there are signs that a surge of entrepreneurial activity in the alternative fuels sector, coupled with rising oil prices and ever more strident warnings over climate change, could be about to change all that.

The most striking measure of the new mood of confidence sweeping the industry is that, for the first time, alternative fuel companies are listing on the stock market to fund future expansion. The Biofuels Corporation, based in Teesside, floated on London's AIM market last month, and London-based D1 Oils is scheduled to follow suit in September.....

.......In the UK, biodiesel currently costs about 4 pence more per litre at the pump than regular diesel, despite a 20p per litre tax concession introduced by the government in 2001. Faced with this price premium, British motorists have voted with their wallets, with sales of biodiesel stalling at a paltry 24 million litres a year, compared with annual petrol and diesel consumption of about 20 billion litres.

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

There's an article here about biodiesel from the BBC web site:

I love the way they managed to avoid mentioning that good old fossil fuel LPG currently gets a whopping 37p duty discount.

Also attempt to perpetuate the myth that diesel engines need 'modification' to run biodiesel - utter shit...

Oh, and let's make sure we don't mention carbon sequestration... ffs.

EDIT:

I just re-read that article to check that I hadn't over reacted. I had been mailed the print version this morning:

">Subject: BBC E-mail: Green fuels set for breakthrough
>Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2004 08:51:28 +0000
>
>paul saw this story on BBC News Online and thought you
>should see it."

That's before I had my coffee, mmmkay?

Anyway, I notice in the 'pretty' version with piccies they provide a helpful link to demonstrate my point for me:

New engines threaten petrol's dominance

By Tim Fawcett and Jorn Madslien
BBC News Online business reporters at the Birmingham Motorshow

The Queen is an LPG fan too, though hers is a Rolls-Royce, according to the campaigning group Boost LPG.

Even service station owners are fond of LPG, since it is much more profitable than petrol or diesel.

A litre of petrol sold at more than 80p will earn a service station no more than 23p, while a litre of LPG priced at about 36p will bring in 18p profits to the vendor, The Greenfuel Company's director Noel Lock told BBC News Online.

Hard to find

And yet, many drivers in the UK remain blissfully ignorant about LPG.

You couldn't make it up. You really couldn't.

Anyone who wants to see what happens to an LPG converted SUV that springs a leak in the engine bay, PM me an email addy and I'll send you a couple of pics of one we swept up recently... (It belonged to a fully certified LPG installer, too - who is lucky he ain't charcoal! )

 

[where to]

Westerners Anonymous

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO WHEN THE OIL RUNS OUT???????

I really can't see why it's not the biggest question - or in fact the only question - currently on the media's agenda. Because really, we haven't got long. Here in the UK, Alistair Darling has just proposed a transport plan that runs for ten years, and at the end of it - in contrast with the plan it replaced, created by John Prescott - we're not committed to using fewer cars: a case of the regression of ambition to look the problem in the eye. I have read some of the posts above, and I'm interested in particular in the theory that an elite has taken control of certain power structures and is utilizing this control exclusively to protect its own interests. I agree with the pretext of this analysis, and its results do highlight certain transparent shortfalls in the division of social power, however I would like to consider at this juncture some mechanisms that may pertain to the society as a whole, and see if these can be used to explain what is happening with regard to the oil crisis.

The first of these mechanisms could be given any number of names. In British universities and public life, little respect is attached to the non-reductive attempt to explain social patterns. Hence, when I say that an inkling of the existence of the social mechanism is found in the writings of Hegel, among others, some people will tend to frown. Hegel's term for the driving force of Social history is Geist - a word that means many things, including 'spirit' and 'host'. Jung talked of a 'collective unconscious'; the terms may run into eachother, they may be contiguous. It hardly matters. If one constructed a theory of society based solely on the science of 'Tells' one would be contructing a similar model. It is the holistic approach. Since, let us face it, we may talk about the power of the elites; the masses still work the factories and the rigs. They are maybe sleepwalking, but their wills are not completely brainwashed. There is, let us admit it, a degree of collaberation. So, onto the next step: the link between the collective and the particular- this link, I believe, is the body.

The body is a system which sustains itself by capturing energy trapped in other life forms. When we are hungry, a biological drive kicks in and we seek to capture such energy. The body always leaves itself reserves, which can be eaten - literally - into before things become desperate. A safery margin.
Societies, likewise, are systems which are kept going by capturing energy trapped in other life forms. Societies trap our energy, for instance, in that nearly all the work which we carry out has a civic element to it. A gallon of crude can be roughly made to equate to the kinetic capacity of 1000 human slaves.

Napoleon said:

'when I see the congregation at prayer, I think not of the power of faith, but rather of the mysterious power of the social order'.

Likewise, when we go to work and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous management, bad coffee in the canteen and customers who are an absolute nightmare... we are kept going by a mysterious certainty that things are still better 'this way'. The miracle is not that we put up with it, but that we never fully question it. Because really, to what end? Simply: to the end that the system struggles to survive.
I needn't mention that this society has a large reliance on energy from one particular source. What I might mention is that while human beings have a hunger drive (previous posts alluded, vaguely, to the issue of food stocks), and it seems clear that society replicates and harmonizes this drive (certain deep social structures are bound together by a behaviourally imprinted awareness of the significance of collective effort in safeguarding food supplies - I have noticed people call this 'patriotism')- it is not so clear that this sense of hunger extends beyond the sphere of innate biological instinct... in other words, we can be hungry for food, but not for oil. Likewise, society can replicate a biological drive for food but not a biological drive for oil.
So this is a paradox. We wage war with a country in order to capture its oil, but the survival instinct does not seem, here, to govern our actions. This is not to say that other motives can't be found... because they clearly can. But I am looking for a systematic motive, not a Fahrenheit 911 motive - well though this analysis is accurate in other regards.
Well, here is a question: is Iraq's oil part of a solution for the societies bent upon stealing it? One could make a very Machiavellian case for the Iraq war by arguing that the West was merely securing its interests, as would any other organism. But this won't do, since with or without this oil, we have less than 50 years' oil left - much less. What is in the West's interests' is to cut the habit... not add another layer of depravity to it. When a system sets out to destroy itself, one should not be surprized that it does so with the loose attitude of an unreformable drug addict.
So my thesis is that the Iraq war was the act of a being, namely Western Society, which is too far gone to cure itself, addicted as it is to the chemical properties of an unsustainable order. In response, a standard 12 Step program should be concocted and presented to the world.

Any seconds?

 

[Backatcha Bandit]

Aye!

Good post, Where To.

Since you mention it, here is The Future of Transport - Darling's White Paper (just out)

http://www.dft.gov.uk/strategy/futureoftransport/ for the HTML format

http://www.dft.gov.uk/strategy/futureoftransport/TransportStrategy.pdf for the full document as a PDF file (1.4Mb)

138 pages of unmitigated wank (with plenty of pretty pictures - my poor printer is groaning).

Yesterday also saw the publication of Energy Act 2004 c. 20

http://www.hmso.gov.uk/acts/acts2004/20040020.pdf (1.9Mb - 300 pages)

The first chapter regards Civil Nuclear Industry (and how we taxpayers
are bailing out BNFL shareholders again, presumably...)

Part 2 is a little more interesting... (bottom of page 63 onwards):

PART 2
SUSTAINABILITY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY SOURCES
CHAPTER 1
SUSTAINABLE ENERGY
81 Reports under section 1 of Sustainable Energy Act 2003
82 Microgeneration
83 Sustainable development
CHAPTER 2
OFFSHORE PRODUCTION OF ENERGY
Renewable Energy Zones
84 Exploitation of areas outside the territorial sea for energy production
85 Application of criminal law to renewable energy installations etc.
86 Prosecutions
87 Application of civil law to renewable energy installations etc.
88 Orders in Council under ss. 85 and 87
Application of 1989 Act offshore
89 Activities offshore requiring 1989 Act licences
90 Modification of licence conditions for offshore transmission and
distribution
91 Extension of transmission licences offshore
Energy Act 2004 (c. 20) vii
92 Competitive tenders for offshore transmission licences
93 Consents for generating stations offshore
94 Application of regulations under 1989 Act offshore
Safety zones for installations
95 Safety zones around renewable energy installations
96 Prohibited activities in safety zones
97 Offences relating to safety zones
98 Supplementary provisions relating to offences under s. 97
Navigation and civil aviation
99 Navigation
100 Further provision relating to public rights of navigation
101 Application of civil aviation regulations to renewable energy
installations
Supplementary provisions of Chapter 2 of Part 2
102 Amendments of 1989 Act consequential on Chapter 2 of Part 2
103 Other amendments consequential on Chapter 2 of Part 2
104 Interpretation of Chapter 2 of Part 2
CHAPTER 3
DECOMMISSIONING OF OFFSHORE INSTALLATIONS
Decommissioning programmes
105 Requirement to prepare decommissioning programmes
106 Approval of decommissioning programmes
107 Failure to submit or rejection of decommissioning programmes
108 Reviews and revisions of decommissioning programmes
Implementation of decommissioning programmes
109 Carrying out of decommissioning programmes
110 Default in carrying out decommissioning programmes
Decommissioning regulations
111 Regulations about decommissioning
Supplementary provisions of Chapter 3 of Part 2
112 Duty to inform Secretary of State
113 Offences relating to decommissioning programmes
114 Interpretation of Chapter 3 of Part 2
CHAPTER 4
RENEWABLES OBLIGATIONS RELATING TO ELECTRICITY
115 Discharge of renewables obligation in Great Britain by payment
Energy Act 2004 (c. 20) viii
116 Issue of green certificates in Great Britain
117 Use of green certificates issued in Northern Ireland
118 Distributions to Northern Ireland suppliers
119 Supplementary provision relating to renewables obligation in Great
Britain
120 Issue of green certificates in Northern Ireland
121 GEMA's power to act on behalf of Northern Ireland regulator
122 Consultation in relation to Northern Ireland renewables orders
123 Modification of conditions of Northern Ireland electricity licences
CHAPTER 5
RENEWABLE TRANSPORT FUEL OBLIGATIONS
124 Imposition of renewable transport fuel obligations
125 The Administrator
126 Determinations of amounts of transport fuel
127 Renewable transport fuel certificates
128 Discharge of obligation by payment
129 Imposition of civil penalties
130 Objections to civil penalties
131 Appeals against civil penalties
132 Interpretation of Chapter 5 of Part 2


Not exactly light reading! (there goes my sunday...)

 

[sparticus]

More examples of the dash for oil making it into the mainstream press

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1270414,00.html

United States: the new scramble for Africa
By Pierre Abramovici, Le Monde diplomatique, July 2004 http://MondeDiplo.com/2004/07/07usinafrica

Ian