Wiki Leaks is slipping. In a case of stating the obvious, their latest “disclosure” shows the U.S. Government having reached the conclusion that the Saudi’s have been significantly overstating the amount of their oil “reserves,” and that we can expect a shortfall of promised deliveries within a year. Why would they do such a thing? Could it have to do with their certain knowledge that the revelation of their dramatically falling production rates would cause a spike in oil prices, at once causing the world to spiral into a deeper recession while also providing a (late, even belated) effort to develop “alternatives”?
Charmingly, the Yahoo news doesn’t have a clue. They suggest that the upshot of this disclosure reveals that the Saudis will face “peak oil,” missing the point that as go the Saudi’s, so goes the world. And, “Yahoo” draws the conclusion that this will be bad news for SUV drivers. Not to mention industrial civilization.
Yea, this is really news, at least for those who haven’t been paying attention…
To our young people – this is as good a time as any to revisit Wendell Berry’s prescient and sage advice to the graduates of Bellarmine University in May, 2007:
What more than you have so far learned will you need to know in order to live at home? (I don’t mean “home” as a house for sale.) If you decide, or if you are required by circumstances, to live all your life in one place, what will you need to know about it and about yourself? At present our economy and society are founded on the assumption that energy will always be unlimited and cheap; but what will you have to learn to live in a world in which energy is limited and expensive? What will you have to know – and know how to do – when your community can no longer be supplied by cheap transportation? Will you be satisfied to live in a world owned or controlled by a few great corporations? If not, would you consider the alternative: self-employment in a small local enterprise owned by you, offering honest goods or services to your neighbors and responsible stewardship to your community?
Even to ask such questions, let alone answer them, you will have to refuse certain assumptions that the proponents of STEM and the predestinarians of the global economy wish you to take for granted.
Fear not my good people, “science” and good ol’ “human ingenuity” will spare us from the need to make the difficult choices mentioned in professor Deneen’s post.
Who says so? Why no other than Yahoo news, where today it’s possible to find an article describing the way in which crafty oil field geologist are combining the latest in technological advancements with good ol’ American grit to develop a process wherein they hydraulically “frack” oil wells in the American west. This “fracking” process is thought to drastically increase the output of the wells.
The article states that these “advancements” in the fracturing process could increase domestic output by twenty percent over the next twenty years, and cut imports in half in just the next ten years. It then goes on to say that both and American and foreign companies (including state owned ones e.g. China) are rushing to buy leases in the American west.
Of course, there might be a few problems that arise from pumping large amounts of water mixed with noxious chemicals into the ground (i.e. ground water contamination), but the article leads us to believe these problems are small price to pay for “energy independence” and the right to keep on driving.
Fear not my good people, “science” and good ol’ “human ingenuity” will spare us from the need to make the difficult choices mentioned in professor Deneen’s post.
Who says so? Why no other than Yahoo news, where today it’s possible to find an article describing the way in which crafty oil field geologist are combining the latest in technological advancements with good ol’ American grit to develop a process wherein they hydraulically “frack” oil wells in the American west. This “fracking” process is thought to drastically increase the output of the wells.
The article states that these “advancements” in the fracturing process could increase domestic output by twenty percent over the next twenty years, and cut imports in half in just the next ten years. It then goes on to say that both and American and foreign companies (including state owned ones e.g. China) are rushing to buy leases in the American west.
Of course, there might be a few problems that arise from pumping large amounts of water mixed with noxious chemicals into the ground (i.e. ground water contamination), but the article leads us to believe these problems are small price to pay for “energy independence” and the right to keep on driving.
Fear not my good people, “science” and good ol’ “human ingenuity” will spare us from the need to make the difficult choices mentioned in professor Deneen’s post.
Who says so? Why no other than Yahoo news, where today it’s possible to find an article describing the way in which crafty oil field geologist are combining the latest in technological advancements with good ol’ American grit to develop a process wherein they hydraulically “frack” oil wells in the American west. This “fracking” process is thought to drastically increase the output of the wells.
The article states that these “advancements” in the fracturing process could increase domestic output by twenty percent over the next twenty years, and cut imports in half in just the next ten years. It then goes on to say that both and American and foreign companies (including state owned ones e.g. China) are rushing to buy leases in the American west.
Of course, there might be a few problems that arise from pumping large amounts of water mixed with noxious chemicals into the ground (i.e. ground water contamination), but the article leads us to believe these problems are small price to pay for “energy independence” and the right to keep on driving.
Fear not my good people, “science” and good ol’ “human ingenuity” will spare us from the need to make the difficult choices mentioned in professor Deneen’s post.
Who says so? Why no other than Yahoo news, where today it’s possible to find an article describing the way in which crafty oil field geologist are combining the latest in technological advancements with good ol’ American grit to develop a process wherein they hydraulically “frack” oil wells in the American west. This “fracking” process is thought to drastically increase the output of the wells.
The article states that these “advancements” in the fracturing process could increase domestic output by twenty percent over the next twenty years, and cut imports in half in just the next ten years. It then goes on to say that both and American and foreign companies (including state owned ones e.g. China) are rushing to buy leases in the American west.
Of course, there might be a few problems that arise from pumping large amounts of water mixed with noxious chemicals into the ground (i.e. ground water contamination), but the article leads us to believe these problems are small price to pay for “energy independence” and the right to keep on driving.
When you have a big strapping faux Big Ben Condo overlooking the Kaaba to fund and the damned do-gooders have taken all the fun out of strapping young boys to camels for the races, well….one cannot abide the bad news of decreasing yields, it don’t pay the bills in Gstaad. After all, it would appear the strongest currency in America is gullibility. That, and gullibility’s helpmate, fear.
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