President Peeking at Peak Oil

I keep hearing that Obama hasn’t done enough about the oil spill.

Like when Apollo 13 had that explosion in space, Richard Nixon didn’t sit around the White House. Nixon donned his pressure suit, climbed onto the top of the presidential Saturn 5 rocket and went up there and brought back those three astronauts.

I found one short answer to my question. This from the agency’s Annual Energy Outlook 2000:

“Although global demand for oil is expected to rise from 75 million barrels per day in 1998 to 112 million barrels per day in 2020, the potential for increased production in a number of countries moderates price increases in the long term. The world average per-barrel price for crude oil is expected to reach $22.04 in 2020 (all prices are in inflation-adjusted 1998 dollars). Led by continued growth in transportation, U.S. demand for petroleum is projected to grow 1.3 percent per year. Domestic production continues to decline, by 0.8 percent per year, and the share of total consumption met by net imports reaches 64 percent in 2020. “

Jeez- Cecil is talking to himself in an effort to impress the rest of us.

The oil gusher is a tragedy of porportions we can barely grasp. I know there are limits to what the President can do, but despite his words, I just don’t get the feeling that all hands are on deck that could put some kind of dent in this thing. Yes, BP has to be the one to stop the flow, but the administration should and could certainly be more aggressive in guiding and accelerating the clean up. This is an EMERGENCY- just about the biggest emergency we could have. Our lives will never be the same.

I doubt very much that you guys would be so forgiving if this President were someone in whom you weren’t so personally invested.

When talking about alternative energy v. oil, I don’t hear enough people talking about the true cost of petroleum. If we factor in all the costs of relying on oil, including the massive portions of the defense (wars over oil, portion of the navy budget really dedicated to protecting tanker routes, etc.), intelligence (British Petroleum only exists today thanks to the CIA-funded coup in Iran), & foreign aid (funding for ‘friendly’ governments who guarantee our access to oil) budgets, plus the costs of national infrastructure (pipelines, environmental clean-ups, etc.), health care, etc., that are directly related to accessing, controlling, extracting, transporting, refining, and burning petroleum, you would see how freakishly expensive it really is. If you looked at the pump & saw that you were actually paying $10 – $20 a gallon for gas, people would be scrambling for any viable alternative.

“I doubt very much that you guys would be so forgiving if this President were someone in whom you weren’t so personally invested.”

Exactly right Suetwo.

What’s amazing to me is that this is a repeat from the 70′s as Rachel Maddow was kind enough to point out and the solutions they are trying now did not work back then either, many more month of spillage to look forward to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHmhxpQEGPo

” wager the GOPers who now run public TV put that on there just to shove a pineapple up our arses. Kill it with fire!11!1!!!1!”

Nah…that show has been running for decades. There are actually old fogies who love it.

Lindsey Williams was a chaplain on the Alaska pipeline construction project when he claimed Arco (I think) discovered an estimated 200 year supply of oil under Gull Island which was drilled and capped with no publicity in the 70′s. He even wrote a book about it (back then) called the energy non crisis. Lately he predicted $50 per barrel oil, while oil was near record prices, 3 months before it happened (exactly as predicted) as oil co. insiders revealed to him the plan to reduce the affluence of, and resulting influence of OPEC in world affairs.

people will believe anything– as long as it validates their own world view.

BTW, we have today officially passed the $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) mark for the wars. That’s what they admit to – caring for the wounded for the rest of their lives and replacing the expended military gear (to prepare for the next oil wars) will drive the financial cost well over two trillion, and that’s if they pull out today. What could we accomplish as a nation for $2 trillion?

Tomorrow, we’ll all piously thank the 6000 (and counting) Americans who were sent into the foreign sands by the oil executives to die for their profits…

“I doubt very much that you guys would be so forgiving if this President were someone in whom you weren’t so personally invested.”

Sad, but true.

The flip side is this: if you’re invested in someone, and in the end you become convinced that he was using you in bad faith, your outrage will be multiplied. Pilate, after all, is not considered as much the villain as Judas. Clinton, like Obama, got elected by sounding progressive, but according to Bob Woodward he reamed out his advisers soon afterward, saying “‘We’re all Eisenhower Republicans here, and we are fighting the Reagan Republicans. We stand for lower deficits and free trade and the bond market.” Clinton gave us DADT, hordes of poor thrown off the welfare rolls, weakened regulations in finance and elsewhere, the NAFTA shafta…

I often think of Clinton as a clever general who delighted in humiliating the foe in one minor skirmish after another while blithely letting them set up big guns on strategic high ground, treating anyone who objected as a naive, “unserious” amateur. So it was that the Bush crime family were able to steal the election right out from under the nose of a successor who should have won in a walk, and undid almost every decent thing he may have accomplished in the meantime.

Mr. Obama shows every sign of making all Clinton’s mistakes, except the one with the dress. And I suppose there’s plenty of time for that too. (I know, that’s harsh. But he should really do some of that boot-on-BP’s-throat stuff he’s accused of. He can send you or me to Bagram if he wants, and make us go away without a trial. So why can’t he put the Fear O’ God into the ruling class? Issue an executive order revoking a corporate charter or two, for instance? Oh, because they’re the ruling class. Got it.)