From: Lee Schipper [mailto:schipper@...]

I don't normally follow all of Lundberg's stuff (too little time, too
much to read these days), but this is highly recommended reading.
Pedal Pedal Pedal?

From: culturechange-bounces@...
[mailto:culturechange-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Culture
Change
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 2:02 PM
To: culturechange@...
Subject: "Drill, Baby, Drill" debunked as "Burn, Baby, Burn the Planet"

"Drill, Baby, Drill" debunked as "Burn, Baby, Burn the Planet"
by Jan Lundberg
Culture Change Letter #205
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2
24&Itemid=1

When Republican Sarah Failin and her titular senior running mate McPain
chant "Drill, Baby, Drill," or, for that matter, the wiser and more
honest Barack Obama is in favor of more offshore drilling, there is no
possibility of energy independence through maximizing domestic
petroleum.
The main reason is not the many years' lead time for oil-field
development:

Consumption would continue (assuming the economy still supports it), and
imported oil would keep coming unabated. Why? Because the more efficient
wells of such places as the Persian Gulf would keep providing more oil
far more cheaply than any new wells the U.S. can drill. This would be
true even though Arabs' wells are starting to peak in flow and decline.
As long as we're consuming oil big time, the oil will get over to us.
World trade is the holiest goal of the Republicans and Democrats.

Here's the clincher: Net energy return, or energy profit ratio,
determines greatly the true, full cost (including cost hidden by
subsidies) and availability to the "producer" and the more aptly named
"consumer." And new wells drilled are approaching on average a
net-energy loss. Moreover, the petroleum industry has been seeing fewer
and fewer holes that actually pan out.

A program of mild reduction in oil consumption would work the same way
as going for maximized drilling: cutting back on oil use will result in
the more efficient, high net-energy fields being exploited still, such
that the U.S. would continue getting oil from elsewhere at lower cost
and comparatively greater profit for the chain of oil industry players.

Therefore, the correct approach to cutting oil imports and stop burning
up the atmosphere with this toxic fossil fuel is to have a policy of
completely avoiding oil consumption to the extent possible. Eschewing
oil in its entirety is not feasible now for many reasons, but if the
U.S.
adopted a goal of eliminating oil as a main energy source, we would
achieve the greatest level of energy independence. This is
understandably hard for many of today's lifestyle to imagine calmly.

At the same time, we would have to recognize that alternative energy
sources are not nearly as net-energy desirable or profitable as oil was
in its heyday. So their maximization will be constrained (for various
reasons), and we'll be forced to begin the most meaningful and lasting
work of redeveloping our local economies along the Jeffersonian small
farmer/citizen model.

"Burn, Baby, Burn" was a 1960s slogan reputedly used by Black Power
leader Stokely Carmichael (or was it Rap Brown?), regarding urban ghetto
unrest.
Riots in major cities were over racial discrimination and material
deprivation. A high proportion of black and brown draftees going off to
die and kill yellow people in Vietnam probably added fuel to some ghetto
fires and looting. Malcolm X called it "The chickens coming home to
roost." Such leaders did not want to see more fires or riots, but they
were recognizing inevitable consequences of inequality and oppression.
It is puzzling why riots are rare nowadays, when conditions did not get
better for African Americans (or for whites in general). Could reasons
include the well-paying volunteer military, high incarceration rate, the
preponderance of illegal and legal drugs, and the weakening
family/community structure? At any rate, to borrow from "Burn, Baby,
Burn"
by chanting "Drill, Baby, Drill," is Sarah Failin's irresponsible
reference to inciting -- as most people took it -- riots, fires and
looting, unless she has no clue of the origins of an historic phrase. No
doubt at least one of her handlers must have.

For the Republicans to adopt a slogan "Drill, Baby, Drill" they are
clearly advocating burning -- of oil and of the planet's precious
oxygen, even though the goal is idiotically unfeasible. They pay lip
service to getting alternatives to petroleum in place. The insane choice
of nuclear power is more "burning" than any, if we consider the
inevitable radiation burns that could persist for millennia. Back to
"Burn, Baby, Burn": we'll see riots and cities in flames soon enough,
especially if the foolishness of an energy policy of waste continues,
and basic fundamentals of social equity are ignored through more
attempts at "growth." We are strung out on "cheap" petroleum for our
food supply, and shortages will be devastating on an unprecedented
scale. This can happen soon in these volatile post-cheap oil times.

No substitutes for oil are going to keep our consumer economy going. The
infrastructure is not about electrical energy from just any (less
efficient, mind you) source, but rather about liquid fuels. Nukes, solar
panels, coal -- they don't provide the cheap, energy-packed liquid fuels
and materials we got from cheap oil. Now that the easily produced oil is
clearly drying up, we don't hear from the presidential candidates or the
rest of the Establishment that it's peak oil at play. We get phony
messages of hope for a continuation of the status quo. It's unraveling,
as financial collapse is merely part of general collapse based primarily
on petrocollapse. Can you imagine if oil was priced at under $10 a
barrel -- reflecting low extraction and distribution and refining costs,
as was the case decades ago -- and seeing today's financial collapse?
Possibly. But building our way out of the mess would be possible, as
happened in the 1940s with advantageously lower population size and most
of the farmland intact. Not in today's degraded ecological world.

This is the difference between petroleum-investment banker Matt Simmons'
analysis and mine: we both see the potential for the oil market to bring
about chaos such as speedy, widespread famine, as soon as panic-buying
of escalating-in-cost oil results in hoarding. And my friend Matt is
doing a great job of convincing more audiences than I ever had,
concerning the realities of oil dependence in a peak-oil world. But he
believes that after collapse there remains the necessary and inevitable
job of repairing and rebuilding the whole energy infrastructure again. I
do not believe it is possible or desirable. Goodbye to the Age of Oil.
That means goodbye to cheap energy and materials that we took for
granted as part of technological progress.

One problem in many people's minds is that the price of oil will decline
and remain low, for whatever reasons, such that it's truly competitive
with any other form of energy -- starting the whole cycle of supply and
demand again. The flaw in that assumption is it's lack of understanding
of the meaning of peak and peak's effects. With collapse, Humpty Dumpty
will not be put back together again. But regardless, we need a policy of
getting away from oil and all fossil fuels, and nuclear, now.

The sooner we move on with redesigning society without all that cheap
energy, plastics, pesticides, etc., that we guzzled, we will be saving
lives and our unraveling climate -- not until then. Let it begin.
Redesign, Baby, Redesign. Conserve, Baby, Conserve. Garden, Baby,
Garden.
Depave, Baby, Depave. Pedal, Baby, Pedal. Sail, Baby, Sail. Peace, Baby,
Peace.