Orlov -- Five Stages of Collapse Updated

Energy Bulletin | In January of 2008, I published an article on "The Five Stages of Collapse," in which I defined the five stages, and then bravely stated that we are in the midst of a financial collapse. And ten months later it doesn't seem that I went too far out on a limb this time. If the US government has to lend banks over 200 billion dollars a day just to keep the whole system from imploding, then the term "crisis" probably doesn't do justice to the situation. To keep this game going, the US government has to be able to sell the debt it is taking on, and what do you think the chances are that the world at large will be snapping up trillions of dollars of new debt, knowing that it is being used to prop up a shrinking economy? And if the debt can't be sold, then it has to be monetized, by printing money. And that will trigger hyperinflation. So, let's not quibble, and let us call what's happening what it looks like: "financial collapse".

So here are the five stages as I defined them almost a year ago. The little check-mark next to "financial collapse" is there to remind us that we are not here to quibble or equivocate, because Stage 1 is pretty far along. Stages 2 and 3 - commercial and political collapse, are driven by financial collapse, and will overlap each other. Right now, it is unclear which one is farther along. On the one hand, there are signs that global shipping is grinding to a halt, and that big box retailers are in for a very bad time, with many stores likely to close following a disastrous Christmas season. On the other hand, states are already experiencing massive budget shortfalls, laying off state workers, cutting back on programs, and are starting to beg the federal government for bail-out money.

Even though the various stages of collapse drive each other in a variety of ways, I think that it makes sense to keep them apart conceptually. This is because their effects on our daily life are quite different. Whatever constructive ways we may find of dodging these effects are also going to be different. Lastly, some stages of collapse seem unavoidable, while others may be avoided if we put up enough of a fight.

Onward Christian Soldiers

Don't miss Preznit Bush's cameo at ~4.5 minute mark. German with subtitles. American Missionaries and Generals in the American Military are working together in order to convert Helpless Muslims in Iraq to Christianity. Many of these Missionaries which are Supported by the Bush Administration are from Evangelical Christian Groups Such as Southern Baptist Convention, World Help and other Evangelical Christian Organizations. They go into Iraq as aid workers in Disguise or as American Private Contractors working in Iraq. Many of these people have been given support and Protection from American Generals in Iraq by providing them Housings in Americans Bases in Iraq to work from. When ever the American Military goes into a Village or a Town in search and destroy Mission these missionaries follow them and hand out Pamphlets promoting Christianity and also Also Anti-islamic material to the helpless Muslims in Iraq. Many of them follow the American Military as well in their rutine Night raids where the American Soldiers Kills or detains Muslim males from the families, Iraq is a traditional Society and most of the Support a family recieves is from the Male, and once there is no Male gaurdian for the Family the family does not have a chance for survival. Many Muslim Women and families are being taken advantagae of by these American christians, since they provide them with food and Shelter or Money in Exchange for the Bible and Christianity

Inclusion...,

Black Commentator | The present-day contentious debate between black and queer communities, concerning what constitutes a legitimate civil rights issue and which group owns the right to use the term, is both fueled and ignored by systemic efforts by our government that deliberately pit both groups against each other rather than upholding the 13th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution that afford each of these marginal groups their inalienable rights.

While it is true that the white LGBTQ community needs to work on its racism, white privilege, and single-issue platform that thwart all efforts for coalition building with both straight and queer communities of color, the African-American community needs to work on its homophobia.

The blame of the passing of Proposition 8 should not be placed on the shoulders of blacks, Latinos or even religion, but rather the blame should rightly be placed on the shoulders of our government. To have framed our civil rights as a ballot question for a popular vote was both wrong-hearted and wrong-headed. If my enslaved ancestors had waited for their slaveholders to free them, predicated on a ballot vote we all wouldn’t be living in the America we know today.

What Is It To You?

Whistling Past the Graveyard...,

NYTimes | The Treasury Department on Wednesday officially abandoned the original strategy behind its $700 billion effort to rescue the financial system, as administration officials acknowledged that banks and financial institutions were as unwilling as ever to lend to consumers.

But with a little more than two months left before President Bush leaves office, Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. is hoping to put in place a major new lending program that would be run by the Federal Reserve and aimed at unlocking the frozen consumer credit market.

Washington Post |

In the six weeks since lawmakers approved the Treasury's massive bailout of financial firms, the government has poured money into the country's largest banks, recruited smaller banks into the program and repeatedly widened its scope to cover yet other types of businesses, from insurers to consumer lenders.

Along the way, the Bush administration has committed $290 billion of the $700 billion rescue package.

Yet for all this activity, no formal action has been taken to fill the independent oversight posts established by Congress when it approved the bailout to prevent corruption and government waste. Nor has the first monitoring report required by lawmakers been completed, though the initial deadline has passed.

"It's a mess," said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

No defined direction, no oversight or accountability, and in the midst of a transition looking to maintain collegiality and bipartisanship by not holding the suspect accountable for their misdeeds. Your institutions of federal and fiduciary governance are just whistling past the graveyard. Remember people, you.are.on.your.own.....,

Oil War...,

During WW2 the US military consumed one gallon of oil per soldier per day. During the Gulf War (1990-91) that grew to 4 gallons per soldier per day. During Bush's war against Iraq and Afghanistan the rate grew to 16 gallons per soldier per day.

The Military Cost of Securing Energy report provides a critical analysis of the military cost of defending U.S.energy concerns overseas. The report estimates that the military spends up to 30 percent of its annual budget to secure access to energy resources internationally.

In 2009 alone, U.S. taxpayers will spend $103.5 billion on military resources used to secure access to petroleum, while investing only $1.26 billion in renewable energy sources. Including Iraq War-related costs doubles this figure to $215.4 billion dollars.

Full report:

The Summers Conundrum

The Nation | We all know in the backs of our minds that Barack Obama's incredible victory will eventually be followed by disappointment. But does it have to come so soon, and hit so hard? The answer will be yes, if Lawrence Summers is named treasury secretary in the president-elect's cabinet, as many observers believe will be the case. Summers was one of the key architects of our financial crisis--hiring him to fix the economy makes as much sense as appointing Paul Wolfowitz to oversee the Iraq withdrawal. And when you look at the trail of economic destruction Summers left behind in other crisis-stricken countries who sought his advice in the past, then "terror" might be a more appropriate word than "disappointment."

In light of all of the corruption, cronyism and devastation that have marked his career, Summers' statements about an under-polluted Africa or intellectually-inferior women no longer seem like provocative eccentricities but part and parcel of the Summers shtick. And now there's talk that President-elect Obama may hand the keys to national treasury to Summers--meaning that he'll be in charge of overseeing a trillion-dollar taxpayer bailout of the entire financial industry, a process already rife with conflicts of interest, cronyism and corruption--as detailed by Naomi Klein.

The bailout, as currently implemented, threatens to devastate America's economy much as Russia's and Lithuania's were devastated before. The idea that this is exactly the right time and place to put Larry Summers in charge of our economy's future is so frightening that it makes the Sarah Palin vice presidential choice seem almost quaint by comparison. Let's hope the rumors are wrong.

Psychology and Torture

NYTimes Think Again | The moment psychological knowledge of causes and effects is put into strategic action is the moment when psychology ceases to be a science and becomes an extension of someone’s agenda. Employing psychological skills in the course of any verbal interaction -– be it a domestic conversation, classroom teaching, a performance in a law court, or an interrogation -– will always have the effect of subordinating the facts and the truth of the matter to the desire for an outcome.

This is precisely the accusation traditionally made against the ancient discipline of which psychology is the heir -– rhetoric, or the art of persuasion. The earliest rhetorical manuals were handbooks for lawyers; they taught the tricks of the trade: how to make an argument, how to disguise the weakness of an argument; what to do when the facts are not on your side; how to turn a negative into a positive; how to modulate your voice; how to position your body; how to flatter, pander, intimidate and obfuscate; in short, how to play the jurors and the judge so that they will dance to your tune.

The emphasis is not on what is true, but on what works, what gets results even if the results are obtained by torture. If the testimony you are citing has been elicited by torture, just say that “it was in order to discover the truth that our ancestors wished to make use of torture” (”Rhetorica ad Herennium“). That is, first torture and then defend the practice with any argument that can give it “an appearance of plausibility.” Physical manipulation and verbal manipulation bleed into one another; they are only slightly different ways of clouding minds.

In his “Rhetoric,” Aristotle acknowledges that it would be better if we could make our case without either browbeating or flattering the audience; nothing should matter except “the bare facts.” Yet he laments, “other things affect the result considerably, owing to the defects of our hearers.” And since our hearers are defective it is incumbent upon us to suit our methods to those defects. The ancient art of rhetoric comes into being because men and women are susceptible to base appeals; that susceptibility has been mapped and scientifically described by the modern art of psychology.

The Gene - In an Identity Crisis

NYTimes Science | New large-scale studies of DNA are causing researchers to rethink the very nature of genes. They no longer conceive of a typical gene as a single chunk of DNA encoding a single protein. “It cannot work that way,” There are simply too many exceptions to the conventional rules for genes.

It turns out, for example, that several different proteins may be produced from a single stretch of DNA. Most of the molecules produced from DNA may not even be proteins, but another chemical known as RNA. The familiar double helix of DNA no longer has a monopoly on heredity. Other molecules clinging to DNA can produce striking differences between two organisms with the same genes. And those molecules can be inherited along with DNA.

The gene, in other words, is in an identity crisis.

Obama Faces Hard Political Decisions on Oil Depletion

Market Oracle | Washington insiders are well aware of oil depletion. It has been the subject of at least four reports funded by the United States Government, more than a dozen books, and multiple independent reports. Congress has taken testimony. Key figures in Washington have made speeches. Although there are some differences in the details, they are trivial in comparison with the broader perspective.

If you buy heating oil, propane, gasoline, or diesel fuel, you have already become a victim of oil depletion. Fuel prices are up. And they are up because the supply of oil failed to keep up with the growing demand for oil. That led to greed driven speculation. Oil prices over $140 a barrel. Then speculators discovered recessionary forces were driving down the demand for oil. Fear immediately replaced greed. The price of oil declined. Fast.

But do not be fooled by this temporary decline in the price you pay for fuels. OPEC will curtail production until demand picks up again. The fundamental trends have not changed. The supply of oil will not keep up with the demand for oil. Higher prices and shortages are in your future.

The Washington establishment's failure to acknowledge oil depletion is not one of ignorance. It has been a matter of political expediency. Politicians prefer to avoid bad news. Depletion means higher prices and possible shortages. Depletion adds confusion to the problems of global warming. Depletion lends support to America's presence in Iraq. Acknowledging oil depletion creates additional stress for our political system.

Yes. Oil depletion creates a real political dilemma for Barack Obama. If he acknowledges oil depletion – Peak Oil – then he will be expected to do something about it. Barack will have to challenge embedded political philosophy. He will have to find a way to change public opinion without causing a political crisis for the Democrats.

It will not be easy. Acknowledging oil depletion means finding more oil resources to keep our economy going. Shortages must be avoided. Put a lid on prices. Drill everywhere. No sacred environmental cows such as ANWR or the Santa Barbra channel. Make deals for oil with whomever is in charge of the big oil nations. Control the political outcome in the Middle East. Stay in Iraq to protect America's interests. Tough choices. High political risk.

But if Barack ignores oil depletion, then what? He runs the risk of cataclysmic failure . Because it is highly likely that sometime – during his administration - shortages and high prices will decimate America's economy. That means high unemployment. Out of control inflation. Voters will be mad as hell. Why – they will ask – did you let this happen to us?

Would Barack be less popular than George Bush? Doing nothing also means political risk.

Millions 'plan heating cutbacks'

BBC News |More than 4.5 million elderly people in the UK will heat just one room in their home this winter to try to reduce their energy bills, a survey suggests.

The survey of 1,263 adults aged over 60 by the British Gas Help the Aged Partnership found one in four would stay warm by getting into bed.

The organisations are urging the government to do more to cut the number of those living in fuel poverty.

The government said the issue was a priority it had started to tackle.

The partnership said its survey suggested that two million more people would warm only one of their rooms this winter compared with last year.

'Eat or heat'

Pollsters ICM interviewed a random sample of 1,263 adults aged 60 and above over a two-week period in October for the survey.

The campaigners estimate that one in four older people is "fuel poor" - meaning they are spending more than 10% of their disposable income in a bid to keep warm.

Mini nuclear plants to power 20,000 homes

UK Guardian Observer | Exactly eight months ago, I opined that the commercial release of compact nuclear reactor technology would signal the onset of very serious engagement by TPTB with the energy crisis. While I was of the opinion that this highly privileged technology would see deployment in the areas of fossil fuel search and extraction, as it turns out, it's going to go directly into baseload power generation.

Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. 'Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,' said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. 'They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $2,500 per home.'

Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. 'It's leapfrog technology,' he said.

The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. 'We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.'

Though this could be a question of pure economics, I think it means that the global energy crisis is even more acute than I have previously suspected.

China - "Ditch Unsustainable Lifestyles"

BEIJING (AFP) – Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and a top UN official urged industrialised nations Friday to alter their lifestyles and not let the global financial crisis hamper climate change efforts.

Industrialised nations should also help developing countries respond to climate change, Wen said at the opening of a two-day international meeting on global warming in Beijing.

"The developed countries have a responsibility and an obligation to respond to global climate change by altering their unsustainable way of life," the state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying.

"As the global financial crisis spreads and worsens, and the world economy slows down, the international community must not waver in its determination to tackle climate change."

The gathering in Beijing is focused on the development and transfer of technology that can help tackle climate change ahead of next month's talks on creating a new global treaty on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Representatives from 76 nations are attending.

China proposed last week that rich nations devote one percent of their economic output to helping poor countries fight global warming. "Given their historical responsibility for the problem, it is essential that industrialised countries take the lead in reducing emissions and that they show real leadership (in climate change negotiations)."

A New Scapegoat?

UK Guardian | Fear of deadly attack by lone maverick as officers alert major firms to danger of green extremism.

Police have warned of the growing threat of eco-terrorism after revealing they are investigating a group which has supporters who believe that reducing the Earth's population by four-fifths will help to protect the planet.

Officers from a specialist unit dedicated to tackling domestic terrorism are monitoring an eco-movement called Earth First! which has advocates who state that cutting the Earth's population by 80 per cent will ease pressure on other species. Officers are concerned a 'lone maverick' eco-extremist may attempt a terrorist attack aimed at killing large numbers of Britons.

The National Extremism Tactical Co-ordination Unit, which collates intelligence and advice to police forces, has revealed that eco-activists are researching a list of target companies which they believe are major polluters or are exacerbating the threat of climate change.

The unit is currently monitoring blogs and internet traffic connected to a network of UK climate camps and radical environmental movements under the umbrella of Earth First!, which has claimed responsibility for a series of criminal acts in recent months.

A senior source at the unit said it had growing evidence of a threat from eco-activists. 'We have found statements that four-fifths of the human population has to die for other species in the world to survive.

'There are a number of very dedicated individuals out there and they could be dangerous to other people.'

Earth First! says its mission is 'about direct action to halt the destruction of the Earth' and advocates 'civil disobedience and monkeywrenching', tactics that include sabotage and disruptive behaviour. The movement has links to US environmental extremists which have waged a campaign of violence in America, including the firebombing of a string of 4x4 car dealerships in California in 2003 and alleged arson attacks on other property.

So-called "eco-terrorists" have been narratized as an up-and-coming threat by officials in the US and Great Britain.

Aside from the alleged Humvee wreckers mentioned in this article from four years ago, I haven't seen any news reports validating the existence of such people. I have, on the other hand, provided comprehensive documentation from the old pentagon operations analysts who were planning such die-offs decades ago along about the time the Club of Rome was writing about the necessity of such a thing, as well. However, the narrative profile being crafted for these folks is too useful to current governments NOT to be promoted into propagandistic prominence. If you think of the desirable characteristics of a straw-man scapegoat in upcoming times of scarcity, just think how useful it could be to demonize
environmentalists.

For instance, Al Quaeda was nurtured into major existence by neoconservative story-tellers since they needed an excuse to launch a global discretionary war. If they hadn't been elevated in importance by being attributed as the master planners we all had to fear, what excuse would there have been to commence attack and invasion activities?

Al Gore's Five Point Plan

NYTimes | What follows is a five-part plan to repower America with a commitment to producing 100 percent of our electricity from carbon-free sources within 10 years. It is a plan that would simultaneously move us toward solutions to the climate crisis and the economic crisis — and create millions of new jobs that cannot be outsourced.

First, the new president and the new Congress should offer large-scale investment in incentives for the construction of concentrated solar thermal plants in the Southwestern deserts, wind farms in the corridor stretching from Texas to the Dakotas and advanced plants in geothermal hot spots that could produce large amounts of electricity.

Second, we should begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used. New high-voltage, low-loss underground lines can be designed with “smart” features that provide consumers with sophisticated information and easy-to-use tools for conserving electricity, eliminating inefficiency and reducing their energy bills. The cost of this modern grid — $400 billion over 10 years — pales in comparison with the annual loss to American business of $120 billion due to the cascading failures that are endemic to our current balkanized and antiquated electricity lines.

Third, we should help America’s automobile industry (not only the Big Three but the innovative new startup companies as well) to convert quickly to plug-in hybrids that can run on the renewable electricity that will be available as the rest of this plan matures. In combination with the unified grid, a nationwide fleet of plug-in hybrids would also help to solve the problem of electricity storage. Think about it: with this sort of grid, cars could be charged during off-peak energy-use hours; during peak hours, when fewer cars are on the road, they could contribute their electricity back into the national grid.

Fourth, we should embark on a nationwide effort to retrofit buildings with better insulation and energy-efficient windows and lighting. Approximately 40 percent of carbon dioxide emissions in the United States come from buildings — and stopping that pollution saves money for homeowners and businesses. This initiative should be coupled with the proposal in Congress to help Americans who are burdened by mortgages that exceed the value of their homes.

Fifth, the United States should lead the way by putting a price on carbon here at home, and by leading the world’s efforts to replace the Kyoto treaty next year in Copenhagen with a more effective treaty that caps global carbon dioxide emissions and encourages nations to invest together in efficient ways to reduce global warming pollution quickly, including by sharply reducing deforestation.

What, if anything, is wrong with this plan? What indispensable elements are lacking?

The Obama Agenda

Paul Krugman in the IHT |Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, is a date that will live in fame (the opposite of infamy) forever. If you're an American and the election of the first African-American president didn't stir you, if it didn't leave you teary-eyed and proud of your country, there's something wrong with you. But will the election also mark a turning point in the actual substance of policy? Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies? Yes, he can. the response to the economic crisis is, in itself, a chance to advance the progressive agenda.

Now, the Obama administration shouldn't emulate the Bush administration's habit of turning anything and everything into an argument for its preferred policies. (Recession? The economy needs help - let's cut taxes on rich people! Recovery? Tax cuts for rich people work - let's do some more!)

But it would be fair for the new administration to point out how conservative ideology, the belief that greed is always good, helped create this crisis. What FDR said in his second inaugural address - "We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics" - has never rung truer.

And right now happens to be one of those times when the converse is also true, and good morals are good economics. Helping the neediest in a time of crisis, through expanded health and unemployment benefits, is the morally right thing to do; it's also a far more effective form of economic stimulus than cutting the capital gains tax. Providing aid to beleaguered state and local governments, so that they can sustain essential public services, is important for those who depend on those services; it's also a way to avoid job losses and limit the depth of the economy's slump.

So a serious progressive agenda - call it a new New Deal - isn't just economically possible, it's exactly what the economy needs.

The bottom line, then, is that Barack Obama shouldn't listen to the people trying to scare him into being a do-nothing president. He has the political mandate; he has good economics on his side. You might say that the only thing he has to fear is fear itself.

Curbing Energy Demand Growth

The Energy Productivity Opportunity - Energy demand growth will accelerate to 2.2 percent, driven mostly by developing markets and consumer uses such as residential, commercial and transportation. Vast opportunities exist to curb demand by improving energy productivity through investments that yield rates of return 10 percent or higher, but targeted interventions will be needed to achieve them. Capturing these opportunities would contribute up to a half of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission abatement required to cap the long-term concentration of GHG in the atmosphere at 450 to 550 parts per million (a range that experts suggest is required to prevent the global mean temperature from increasing more than 2° centigrade).

MGI offers an in-depth look at what's driving soaring global demand for energy in different countries and end users (including commercial and residential buildings, road and air transportation, energy-intensive industries such as chemicals and aluminum, less-energy-intensive ones such as food processing, and electrical generation). Using a proprietary economic model, MGI provides a glimpse into how global energy will grow to 2020 with current policies and sizes the substantial opportunity to curb this growth and, with it, GHGs. It also includes a detailed discussion of the reasons why available opportunities to raise energy productivity are not being captured and what policies are needed to ensure they are.

It’s Not Easy Being Green

If it's not easy for Mayor Bloomberg to implement greening initiatives, then you know it's going to be hell up in Harlem for many of us to navigate the labyrinthine regulatory and technical barriers to implementing increased efficiency both individually, and more importantly, collectively. I see opportunity for the enterprising artful dodger.

When Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his grand plan to make New York City “the first environmentally sustainable 21st-century city,” he offered a banquet of 127 excellent ideas. They included congestion pricing, more parks, windmills to produce energy and a promise to plant one million trees in the next 10 years. But as he has learned since that heady day more than a year ago, greening the apple is not automatic.

New York’s backward State Legislature stepped on his forward-thinking plan for congestion pricing. More recently, a federal judge blocked Mr. Bloomberg’s proposal to replace gas-guzzling taxis with cleaner hybrid cabs by 2012. Congestion pricing is still worth the effort, and we expect Mr. Bloomberg to regroup and move forward on these important initiatives, even if he has to use slightly different methods.

He already has shown that he can come up with inventive ways to outwit Albany. Because it involves a fee and not a tax, his proposal to charge 6 cents for each plastic bag sold in the city would not need state approval. There may be some opposition in the City Council, but this would definitely help not only the budget but the city’s environment, since these dreadful little conveniences can last for hundreds of years, kill wildlife, clog landfills and spread litter across the urban landscape.

He’ll have to be equally creative to achieve his objective of replacing the city’s entire fleet of 13,000 yellow cabs with hybrids. These boxy new vehicles emit far fewer pollutants and use far less gasoline than the lumbering Ford Crown Victorias favored by many taxi owners (and some of their larger customers).

In response to a lawsuit from the taxi companies, Judge Paul Crotty, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, blocked the mayor’s plan. Mr. Bloomberg had sought to impose tougher fuel-efficiency standards as a way to force the owners to buy hybrids, but Judge Crotty ruled, correctly, that only the federal government can set mileage standards.

Congress could solve the problem by amending the law to allow cities to set their own fuel-efficiency standards. But since that is highly unlikely, Mr. Bloomberg will have to come at the problem from a different angle. One possibility worth exploring is to offer special incentives, like lower fees, to owners who adopt hybrids.

I believe one of the keys will be getting people to think about and become engaged with actually quantifying the amount of energy that they personally use. Kind of like calorie counting....,

Efficiency Is Still a Sound Investment

So, puttering around the NYTimes this morning, I stumbled upon the Green Inc. blog which is a continuing item in the business section. This article quickly caught my eye.

Does the financial crisis and reduced investment in transformational green technologies put energy efficiency back in vogue?

That is what a new report by McKinsey Global Institute suggests.

In the report, “Fueling Sustainable Development: The Energy Productivity Solution,” to be published Wednesday, the institute says the uncertain economic outlook and the recent period of record-high oil prices could push governments and businesses to invest more in energy productivity.

In the developed world, that could mean more money for energy-saving equipment in manufacturing and energy-saving devices when buildings are remodeled, like improved insulation and lower-energy-consuming lighting.

In the developing world — where energy demand is expected to increase by 65 percent by 2020 — these sorts of investments could be even more important. These countries already account for more than half of global energy demand, and this share is on course to rise to 60 percent over the next decade. China alone is expected to account for 34 percent of the growth in global energy demand over that period.

Interestingly, the article concludes thus - the political and economic challenges facing efficiency investments are at least equal to those confronting transformative technologies like solar and wind power.

Memo to President-Elect Obama

Falls Church News Press | Sometime during your first year in office, your new Secretary of Energy is likely to come by and lay out the problem for you - world oil production is going down - perhaps faster than imagined; world oil exports are dropping even faster; prices are rising; and new domestic supplies will never make up the difference. The bottom line will be that the country is going to have to get along with steadily decreasing amounts of oil each year for the foreseeable future and that much will have to change if the economy is to continue to function.

It may take some time before you appreciate all the consequences of oil depletion. They will be everywhere. Transportation costs will go much higher. The GDP will slide. Jobs will disappear, and shortages will develop. At some point there will be a general agreement that looking for more fossil fuels or that a large scale effort to convert coal to liquid fuel is hopeless. A massive overhaul of the U.S. economy including transportation, lifestyles, jobs, agriculture, and industrial production will be necessary if we are going to continue running a civilization with declining quantities of fossil fuel.

This national epiphany will be the beginning of the great transition that will dominate the U.S. government and the world for many decades. New governmental organizations, policies, and procedures will be necessary to effect the transition for it will involve nearly every aspect of modern life. Do not be tempted by the notion that the markets alone can deal with this transition. A few minutes' reflection on what will be involved in forced reductions in the use of fossil fuels while still maintaining social order and some semblance of 20th century lifestyles will lead to the realization that this can only be accomplished by government coordination. We are no longer in the 19th century living on scattered self-sufficient farms. There are 300 million of us in the United States today, and we are totally, utterly, completely dependent on fossil fuels for our being.

The challenge just ahead is going to be the greatest since the Republic was founded. It will dwarf the challenges of the War Between the States, the Great Depression and World War II and will test your leadership to the utmost.

What is Peak Oil?

Peak Oil is the term given for the point of maximum global production of oil, after which oil production will decline over a period of years until all recoverable oil is depleted. Peak Oil is a geological reality that is recognized by U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Engineering, U.S. General Accountability Office, U.S. Congressional Budget Office, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, National Petroleum Council, and the major oil companies. Although there is uncertainty about when Peak Oil production will occur, most independent studies conclude that oil production peaked in 2006, or that it will peak within a few years. Because the global demand for oil is increasing rapidly, a decline in oil production will generate sharp increases in the price of oil as buyers compete for decreasing oil supplies. Because oil under girds the economy, oil price increases will cause price inflation in most products and services. Due to higher prices, consumers will reduce their purchases of products and services. Unemployment and economic depression will follow. As oil production declines, the global economy will stagnate and collapse. Because the U.S. is highly dependent on imported oil, the U.S. faces severe Peak Oil impacts. This explanation is continued at Peak Oil Report.

Energy Security-11 Key Challenges

Smart Economy | President elect Barack Obama has repeatedly said that energy security is at the center of his presidential campaign and platform. However the public has been promised change. Everybody is counting on change-- change right now!!

The media today is even seriously asking: What can Congress do in the next 100 days? How naive!!!

Obama last night showed that he is not just hope-inspiring but that he’s also a realist, but I’m not sure if the jubilant crowd in Grant Park in Chicago or across the nation picked up on Obama’s insight and foresight. Here's one of the eleven challenges;

The hard truth that Obama will have to sell to the US public is that Americans are energy hogs and that they will have to learn to live with less..the era of cheap oil is over. As Vaclav Smil from the University of Manitoba has said:”….Americans, who consume twice as much energy per capita as rich Europeans (and have nothing to show for it, as they are not richer, do not live longer, are not better educated and do not work less) should embark on a long road of trying to live within some sensible limits, which means less and not more. Everything else is quite secondary.”

You really should go read them all.

Something Collective...,

Huffington Post | The debates unnerved both candidates. When he was preparing for them during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying, "I don't consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, 'You know, this is a stupid question, but let me ... answer it.' So when Brian Williams is asking me about what's a personal thing that you've done [that's green], and I say, you know, 'Well, I planted a bunch of trees.' And he says, 'I'm talking about personal.' What I'm thinking in my head is, 'Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f---ing changed light bulbs in my house. It's because of something collective'."

Hat tip to Submariner

Top Priority Is Stabilizing the Patient

NYTimes | “Unfortunately, the next president’s No. 1 priority is going to be preventing the biggest financial crisis in possibly the last century from turning into the next Great Depression,” says Austan Goolsbee, an Obama adviser. “That has to be No. 1. Nobody ever wanted that to be the priority. But that’s clearly where we are.”

Throughout the campaign, whenever Mr. Obama was asked about the financial crisis, he liked to turn the conversation back to his long-term plans, by saying that they were meant to solve the very problems that had caused the crisis in the first place. Back in January, he predicted to me that the financial troubles would probably get significantly worse in 2008. They had their roots in middle-class income stagnation, which helped cause an explosion in debt, and the mortgage meltdown was likely to be just the beginning, he said then.

His prognosis was right — and the pundits now demanding that he give up major parts of his economic agenda in response to the financial crisis are, for the most part, wrong. When you discover that a patient is in even worse shape than you thought, you don’t become less aggressive about treatment. But you do have to deal with the most acute problems first.

What Now? - Goal State - The 2000 Watt Society

originally posted 11/08/07 - reposted in January 08, and now reposted for the third time with updated links in the context of discussion of "what now?" change agency and coalition building:

The "2000 Watt Society" is a radical model of efficient, high-quality living being pushed by the Swiss Council of the Federal Institute of Technology. Worldwide average energy consumption per capita is about 17,500 kilowatt hours, working out to a continuous consumption of 2000 watts. But as we all know, that per capita consumption is not evenly distributed. Switzerland, efficient for Europe, uses around 5000 watts per capita; Europe as a whole, about 6000 watts per capita. Developing nations use substantially less -- the average for Africa as a whole is about 500 watts per capita. The US, conversely, runs about 12,000 watts per person. The Swiss Council wants to move the nation as a whole towards a 2000 watts per person goal, not by cutting back on the Swiss standard of living, but by dramatically improving the energy efficiency of all aspects of life.

A document entitled "Smarter Living" (PDF) lays out the details of the agenda:

What Now? (Originally Posted as Change What?)

OK, so we've gotten what we asked for and some of the hitters have already been through asking the hard kwestin, what now? I originally posted this in January of this year addressing what specific things would have to be at the top of the new president's agenda. Submitted once again for your consideration and commentary.

Right off the top, this post should not be mistaken as a criticism of Obama. It's not. I sincerely believe that we American people will absolutely elect the leadership that we deserve.

That said, let's be serious as in E.C. Hopkins class seriousness about the scope of what has to be addressed by all levels of leadership at the twilight of industrial civilization. This means not only the elected administrative manager of political governance, but the proprietor class which sets policy, funds, and directs administrative management embodied in the office of the president.

At the beginning of November I tried to enjoin this type of discussion with the post Goal State - How Do We Get There. (I also reposted this article in January) The current uncritical excitement surrounding Obama's win in the Iowa caucus brings me back to the article that inspired that post in early November. Hoping for a New Deal which paints the problem from the perspective that E.C. labored to get us all to consider. In my opinion, this article gives us a very concrete and constructive place to temper our political expectations for Obamian change agency.

Richard Heinberg's current Museletter consists of a thoughtful essay ("Big Melt Meets Big Empty") concerning the alternative realities of science (physical reality) and politics (political reality). Heinberg identifies the opposition between these two as the key cause of the seeming inability of political institutions in the US and elsewhere to constructively respond to the twin threats of climate change and resource depletion. He advocates working toward overcoming this opposition, to whatever degree that is possible. His key suggestion is that interested groups of citizens develop realistic assessments of the efficacy of various potential policy responses, and that they then use these assessments to create an advocacy program to push for the enactment of desired policies.

Looming in the background for Heinberg, however, are two critical and related specters, either of which would likely doom any constructive initiatives that might be developed: 1) resource wars; and 2) implacable opposition on the part of elites. It seems to me that a fruitful way of looking at these twin threats, is to see resource wars as, in a sense, the bitter consequence of elite opposition to ameliorative policies. That is to say, if, faced with energy scarcity, elites succeed in blocking serious consideration of "powerdown" approaches (like the oil depletion protocol), resource wars become the likely outcome - - the "default" option, as it were. Conversely, if ameliorative policy options are viable, resort to "last one standing" warfare can hopefully be avoided. If this is so, then the question of the potential for elite acceptance of some such policies seems to be the key factor in assessing the possibility of a hopeful outcome to energy transition.

Ultimately, power holders must be convinced that [energy transition] policies, if obnoxious to them now, will be far less destructive to their interests than a complete breakdown of society and biosphere - which is the very real alternative. For a historic example of a similar conversion of elites think of the 1930s New Deal: then the titans of industry had to sacrifice some of their financial power in order to keep from losing it all. Many wealthy individuals never forgave Franklin Roosevelt, whom they regarded as a "traitor to his class," but most of them reluctantly agreed that redistribution represented the lesser of evils.

The analysis offered is original, detailed, and very well worth your perusal. Here's the thing, we're not simply talking about temporary wealth redistribution as a stopgap in order to ensure continuity of the governance status quo. Instead, we're talking about what will be required to transition our entire way of life (or more accurately what remains of it) into an entirely new modus operandi. The plans that have been operationalized under the Bush administration for the transition suggest some rather draconian designs on the future of Americaness - frankly at this juncture - I haven't heard any serious counterproposals to those plans and their continuing unfolding.

Atlanta? Drought anybody? - Is there a single candidate who has shown the perspicacity or gumption to even mention the slow motion catastrophe unfolding in the southeastern U.S.? That's pretty much minimum baseline for a serious operator. That said, I don't see a single serious change agent operator on the presidential event horizon. What I see is a collection of opportunistic faces that will be applied to pre-existing plans and narratives much as lipstick might be applied to a pig or frosting to a turd.

What Now? - Systemüberwindung - II

Originally posted in January `08.

"Materialism is to ill-being what smoking is to lung cancer."

To follow James's analogy with smoking: it took roughly 50 years from the first serious evidence of its harm to health to the point last year when smoking in public places was banned in the whole of the United Kingdom. We are now at the beginning of the cycle and James has played a major part in popularising vital ideas; but ahead lies a long, slow slog against powerful vested interests to win the battle.

The Selfish Capitalist: The Origins of Affluenza

The single most important idea to which James needs to apply all his missionary zeal is that mental well-being is a public health issue. Happiness is not a matter of personal performance and effort ("I've achieved it" or "why have I failed?") but a product of a set of environmental - social, economic and cultural - circumstances. The highly unequal, competitive, materialistic and individualistic cultures of neo-liberal economies produce emotional distress; they cultivate the insecurities which drive hyper consumerism ... and thus they make us ill. In the most telling analogy of the book, James argues that materialism is to ill-being what smoking is to lung cancer.

Drawing extensively on the work of American psychologist Tim Kasser, James argues that our recent increased wealth has come at the cost of the emotional well-being of a large proportion of the population; rates of distress among women in the UK almost doubled between 1982 and 2000. This is true of New Zealand and Australia as well as the UK and the US, in striking contrast with more egalitarian and collectivist countries such as Denmark or Germany. He tracks how "selfish capitalism" generates insecurity and inflates comparisons; how a winner-takes-all competitiveness merely creates losers and a pandemic of low self esteem, with its compensatory pathologies around celebrity and status.

Remarkably, Erich Fromm, the Marxist psychoanalyst and Buddhist writer, foresaw much of this half a century ago and James quotes his prescient analysis of the "passive, empty, anxious, isolated person for whom life has no meaning" and who compensates through "compulsive consumption". There are interesting issues to draw out of Fromm's work about how our mass consumer societies, ironically, cripple personal agency despite their avowals of individual choice, but James doesn't dwell on this. In fact, agency remains a confused thread in his argument: exactly who is the selfish capitalist? And is there a hint of a conspiracy theory as to how selfish capitalism has "hijacked" the English-speaking world to establish a political economy which benefits only a wealthy elite? He refers to an "invisible hand" which suppresses those ideas which challenge selfish capitalism, lulling us all into a false consciousness, but one wishes he would come clean, name the culprits and provide an explanation of why and how they hoodwink us.

So now what? Any proposals for system overcoming? (and no, this is not a mean liminal jab at brother Obama's nicotine jones...,)

The Next President

NYTimes | This is one of those moments in history when it is worth pausing to reflect on the basic facts:

An American with the name Barack Hussein Obama, the son of a white woman and a black man he barely knew, raised by his grandparents far outside the stream of American power and wealth, has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Showing extraordinary focus and quiet certainty, Mr. Obama swept away one political presumption after another to defeat first Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be president so badly that she lost her bearings, and then John McCain, who forsook his principles for a campaign built on anger and fear.

His triumph was decisive and sweeping, because he saw what is wrong with this country: the utter failure of government to protect its citizens. He offered a government that does not try to solve every problem but will do those things beyond the power of individual citizens: to regulate the economy fairly, keep the air clean and the food safe, ensure that the sick have access to health care, and educate children to compete in a globalized world.

Mr. Obama spoke candidly of the failure of Republican economic policies that promised to lift all Americans but left so many millions far behind. He committed himself to ending a bloody and pointless war. He promised to restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world.

Get t'Steppin!!!!

A brief musical interlude and well wish for all those who didn't get what they wanted last night.

Electoral Jumbotron

Change Gone Come....,

Christian Science Monitor | The notion of sacrifice – asking Americans to give something up for a greater good – appears to be coming back into political vogue after decades of being seen as a poison pill.

Both major-party presidential candidates are emphasizing the need for individuals to shoulder responsibility for changing the direction of the United States, though they do so in different ways.

Personal sacrifice and service to the nation are central themes of John McCain’s candidacy. His campaign motto sums it up: “Country First.”

On the stump, Barack Obama cites the merits of sacrifice, calling it central to patriotism and urging Americans to help change the country’s direction – whether by turning off the television so children can study or by supporting higher taxes for wealthy corporations and individuals.

Both candidates have also called for expanded national service programs and lamented the Bush administration’s failure to tap the outpouring of civic and patriotic sentiment after the 9/11 attacks.

Not since President John Kennedy urged Americans to “ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country” has the rhetoric of sacrifice sat this well with the public. Concern that the US confronts a huge crisis in the form of a global financial meltdown, plus an untapped desire since 9/11 to help the nation more, makes the public more receptive to the idea that sacrifice can be noble instead of just inconvenient.

What will defeat do to the Republicans?

NYTimes | You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots.

Why will the G.O.P. become more, not less, extreme? For one thing, projections suggest that this election will drive many of the remaining Republican moderates out of Congress, while leaving the hard right in place. [...] But the G.O.P.’s long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries, seems likely to accelerate as a result of the impending defeat.

This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance.

Nationalizing Critical Technologies

Washington Post | In two recent speeches that have attracted little notice, Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, has called for a radical new relationship between government and the private sector to counter what he called the "malicious activity in cyberspace [that] is a growing threat to everyone."

One approach would have the government take equity stakes in companies developing technical products, in effect expanding the practice of In-Q-Tel, the CIA entity that invests in companies.

Another proposal is to provide the same protective capabilities applied to government Web sites, ending in .gov and .mil, to the private industry's sites, ending in .com, which Kerr said have close to 98 percent of the nation's most important information.

He also suggested that the government ask insurers whether they cover "a failure to protect intellectual capital." That way, Kerr said, the insurers, through their premiums, "provide an incentive for companies, in fact, to pay attention to protecting their intellectual property."

In the past, Kerr said, when the director of central intelligence or the FBI chief faced similar problems, they would meet privately with leaders of companies involved in new technologies, seeking cooperation and perhaps access to their products. "What's the modern equivalent of what used to be done?" Kerr asked.

"We have a responsibility . . . to help those companies that we take an equity stake in or those that are just out there in the U.S. economy, to protect the most valuable assets they have, their ideas and the people who create them," he said.

Peak Capitalism

Peak Capitalism: Our Opportunity to Choose Between Survival and Collapse (27-page PDF) Lionel Orford

Our World is beset by a Sustainability Emergency.

Maintaining Essential Services

Governments throughout the developed world will probably need to directly intervene to create a command economy to ensure that the economic collapse does not cause the breakdown of essential services. It is important to understand that this is a failure of our economic system rather than a failure of the actual means of production of our essential goods and services.

Many millions of people who have lost their incomes will need to be provided with food, water, housing, medical care, electricity and sewage treatment. It is proposed that this be achieved through government issued ration system that provides every person with their essential needs. Such rations would need to be non-transferable so that a no black market in rations is possible.

A system of fuel rationing will be required to ensure that the available fuel is dedicated to the production, processing and distribution of food and other essential services as the supply of oil dwindles. This will entail a progressive shutting down of as many non-essential commercial and private activities as required to reserve sufficient fuel for essential services.

The end of deflationary trade

From the AU Business Spectator;

The global shipping crash continues to get worse and this morning’s GDP data shows the US recession is already deeper than 2001 and probably 1990-91 as well.

Meanwhile the International Monetary Fund seems determined to make the whole thing worse by imposing the most ruinous strictures on supplicant nations.

Yesterday the Baltic Dry freight rate index fell below 1000 for the first time in six years and last night it fell another 40 points to 885. In June the index was 11,900, so it has fallen 93 per cent in a few months – a crash far worse than anything ever seen in the stockmarket.

The spot daily rental for a Capesize ship is now $6365, down from $234,000 per day over the space of a few weeks. Maybe that previous price was absurdly inflated, but at $6365 it is just $365 above the average daily cost of crews and fuel.

As a result the world’s ports are filling with empty ships because shipowners can’t afford to run them, as well as some full ships because the owners of the cargo won’t unload without a bank letter of credit, which banks are refusing to supply.

Shipping companies are starting to file for bankruptcy in increasing numbers as they breach loan covenants, and a shipping researcher, Andreas Vergottis of Tufton Oceanic has told Bloomberg that a fifth of the world’s dry bulk companies may soon have negative net worth because the market for second hand ships has collapsed and the value of their fleets is below outstanding debt.

Like property-based loan agreements, shipping companies’ debt covenants have loan to value ratios that are typically 70 per cent. As the value of their fleets decline, banks are making margin calls.

If you think it's bad for global shipping, (and I know, you weren't thinking about this topic at all, despite what I told you some weeks ago about grain shipments), just think about what a hellified effect the current financial crisis must be having on airlines and air-based cargo transport!!!!

Beyond Voting

From the Bureau of Public Secrets;

THE LIMITS OF ELECTORAL POLITICS

Roughly speaking we can distinguish five degrees of “government”:

(1) Unrestricted freedom
(2) Direct democracy
(3) Delegate democracy
(4) Representative democracy
(5) Overt minority dictatorship

The present society oscillates between (4) and (5), i.e. between overt minority rule and covert minority rule camouflaged by a facade of token
democracy. A liberated society would eliminate (4) and (5) and would progressively reduce the need for (2) and (3). . . .

In representative democracy people abdicate their power to elected officials. The candidates’ stated policies are limited to a few vague generalities, and once they are elected there is little control over their actual decisions on hundreds of issues — apart from the feeble threat of changing one’s vote, a few years later, to some equally uncontrollable rival politician. Representatives are dependent on the wealthy for bribes and campaign contributions; they are subordinate to the owners of the mass media, who decide which issues get the publicity; and they are almost as ignorant and powerless as the general public regarding many important matters that are determined by unelected bureaucrats and independent secret agencies. Overt dictators may sometimes be overthrown, but the real rulers in “democratic” regimes, the tiny minority who own or control virtually everything, are never voted in and never voted out. Most people don’t even know who they are. . . .

In itself, voting is of no great significance one way or the other (those who make a big deal about refusing to vote are only revealing their own fetishism). The problem is that it tends to lull people into relying on others to act for them, distracting them from more significant possibilities. A few people who take some creative initiative (think of the first civil rights sit-ins) may ultimately have a far greater effect than if they had put their energy into campaigning for lesser-evil politicians. At best, legislators rarely do more than what they have been forced to do by popular movements. A conservative regime under pressure from independent radical movements often concedes more than a liberal regime that knows it can count on radical support. (The Vietnam war, for example, was not ended by electing antiwar politicians, but because there was so much pressure from so many different directions that the prowar president Nixon was forced to withdraw.) If people invariably rally to lesser evils, all the rulers have to do in any situation that threatens their power is to conjure up a threat of some greater evil.

Even in the rare case when a “radical” politician has a realistic chance of winning an election, all the tedious campaign efforts of thousands of people may go down the drain in one day because of some trivial scandal discovered in his (or her) personal life, or because he inadvertently says something intelligent. If he manages to avoid these pitfalls and it looks like he might win, he tends to evade controversial issues for fear of antagonizing swing voters. If he actually gets elected he is almost never in a position to implement the reforms he has promised, except perhaps after years of wheeling and dealing with his new colleagues; which gives him a good excuse to see his first priority as making whatever compromises are necessary to keep himself in office indefinitely. Hobnobbing with the rich and powerful, he develops new interests and new tastes, which he justifies by telling himself that he deserves a few perks after all his years of working for good causes. Worst of all, if he does eventually manage to get a few “progressive” measures passed, this exceptional and usually trivial success is held up as evidence of the value of relying on electoral politics, luring many more people into wasting their energy on similar campaigns to come.

As one of the May 1968 graffiti put it, “It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them!”

Can We Save the World Economy?

Can We Save the World Economy? from Earth Institute on Vimeo.

George Soros, global financier and philanthropist, founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute and the Soros foundations network, and chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC.

Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics and international business at the Stern School of Business, New York University.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Moderated by John Roberts of CNN.

An open and frank conversation on the breakdown of financial markets around the world and if we can save the global economy. Will the Wall Street bailout plan work? What steps need to be taken in Europe and Asia to stem the market’s downward spiral? Are we headed for a global recession? Three of the leading minds in global economics will discuss the options.