You must have written this blog before you saw that our government wants to give each taxpayer a $100 tax rebate check to buy gas. Problem solved, I'm filling up my tank and going to Wal-Mart when I get my rebate.

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Is that a word? Anyhow, the message of peak oil (and the rest of the sustainability crisis) is that the economy as a whole will need to be transformed. This will happen whether we consent to it or not. However, if we act rationally, we can influence the economic transformation in a way to make it less painful.

For example: Large sectors of the economy that depend on plentiful cheap oil will collapse. People who depend for their livlihoods on jobs in those sectors will be in trouble. We need an effective social safety net for those people. If people know that their essential survival needs will be met and their essential human dignity respected, there will be less panic in the face of the necessary and inevitable economic changes. Less panic means greater opportunity for rational choices.

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On the one hand, it would be a good thing to eliminate the US dependence on foreign oil imports. It would be wise to stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as well. It would be a good idea to establish a multi-billion dollar fund that would serve as a pool to fund, or at least provide governmental support to, a wide variety of renewable energy development programs (solar cell manufacturing plants cost about $100 million up front, for example). That would be a better use of money then the approximately $10 billion a month spent in Iraq.

Note that Iraq has ~100 billion barrels of high grade crude; at future prices of $100/barrel that's $10 trillion in oil, for the cheap price of $10 billion a month - never mind the geopolitical power factor. From the oil sector's perspective, that's like spending $1 a month for an eventual payoff of $1000. Even better, it isn't their money - and this is what Bush means when he talks about the 'value of government-business partnerships'.

To have any hope of changing things, one must attempt to understand the structural nature of entrenched economic systems involving an interlocked web of 'interests': oil and gas producers, energy companies, investment banks, media/information corporations, pharmaceutical, agribusiness, engineering of all sorts, insurance and a whole host of associated 'service' companies - all interlocked with government agencies via the 'revolving door' exchange system (politicians become lobbyists; bureaucrats become executives). The specific identity of individual relationships is not very important; what matters are the structural economic features that make the overall system so resistant to change. These systems tend not to conform to Adam Smith rules of supply and demand, and instead make major attempts to control sources and markets. Central features of all these systems are their inability to make long-term plans and the interchangeability of 'human capital'; the individual becomes faceless and replaceable...oddly like the effects of the communist and fascist regimes of the past century. We can thank Orwell for illustrating the underlying similarities in the ideologies of the 'right' and the 'left'.

Historically, oil markets have been threatened by floods of new discoveries: the East Texas oilfields, the Middle East discoveries, and so on. This would cause sharp drops in the price of oil, translating into 'pain' for the oil industry. The oil industry developed a mentality of control of supply (leading to many covert and military interventions in countries that tried to nationalize oil supplies) and simultaneous stimulation of markets (freeway and suburbia construction, building massive engine blocks that sucked gas at astonishing rates, ripping up railways and getting cities to invest in fleets of diesel buses, promoting the SUV, etc.). Public relations (or psyops, if you like) has been important for control of markets; US military force, covert intervention and economic loan-sharking has formed the basis of control of supply. This is a very consistent historical pattern of behavior, regardless of the PR stance of the time.

Essentially, to make progress on the renewable energy front you have to get the system to voluntarily give up the massive profits they are currently 'earning' on fossil fuels. The system must become less interconnected in order to adapt. The current situation, if not altered, will give rise to violence on a new scale - the fire in the Middle East will turn into a global war. The fact that the systems of economic power are using fundamentalist religious forces as their political support base could also have bad consequences, particularly when coupled to modern means of destruction.

We should all keep a basic biological concept in mind: in the long run, the only survivors are those that adapt successfully to their local environments.

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