H17561
Headlines : InternationalIs the world about to be running on empty?
Peak oil is going to have a greater direct impact on the rich countries of the north than climate change. The rising cost of oil will increase the cost of everything leading to recession. In any crisis the poorest will be hit hardest. What will our response be?
Will desperation and frustration at our worsening situation be successfully harnessed by the Right and channelled against immigrants, creating a fortress nation? Or will existing communities of resistance be able to grow against capitalism?
What can we learn from history? What steps can we take now?
[Posted By NatterJack]Republished from The Independent
In France, fishermen are blockading oil refineries. In Britain, lorry drivers are planning a day of action. In the US, the car maker Ford is to cut production of gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles and airlines are jacking up ticket prices. Global concerns about fuel prices are reaching fever pitch and the world’s leading energy monitor has issued a disturbing downward revision of the oil industry’s ability to keep pace with soaring demand.
Yesterday’s warning from the International Energy Agency sent the price of a barrel of oil to a new record for the 13th day in a row. The latest high – $135 for a barrel of light sweet crude – was reached in New York barely five months after the price hit $100. Experts in London and on Wall Street predict that prices will rise to $200, regardless of the protests of consumers and the complaints of politicians. It is simple economics, they say: supply and demand. The former is short, the latter growing.
Posted by NatterJack
Natterjack Press publishes and distributes radical books, pamphlets and articles that inspire resistance to the destruction of nature and community and that provide tools to live healthy, sustainable and liberated lives. We are a non-profit collective...
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Posted by mkane on Wednesday, February 15th 2006
FEAR = FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL
Is the world about to be running on empty?
Not me, buddy. I bike and between the beanes and home-brewed beer, I’ll have gas long after yours has all dried up and you’ve got your kids living in a split level Toyota®
What will peak oil and soaring oil prices mean for anti-capitalist struggle?
Guillotines don’t run on gas or oil (except for lubrication, and goosegrease is goode enough for that)
Poore goosie!
Keep up the fear, that way we’ll buy stuff. MOOOOOOOOOOooooo!
Two goode things to buy are protection and insurance.
Want sum?
“FEAR = FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL”
cite plz
Is the world about to be running on empty?
dunno, but it seems to be getting abused like a cheap whore with a retarded pimp
Maybe we’re having an extra amount of earthquakes because someone has been sucking all this shock absorbing liquid from giant caverns in the earth’s crust.
Vrooom vrooom!
“FEAR = FALSE EVIDENCE APPEARING REAL” is the result of a study started in 1843 by world renowned labor consultant Darius von Baronburg and completed in January 1921 by Aaron Shickelgruber of Espion fame. They confirmed the statement by changing the all-caps to a format that even Science could recognize, thusly : F.E.A.R.= False Evidence Appearing Real (isbn. et al.)© 2008
“The high-priced energy environment is being driven by the fact that demand has outstripped supply,” President George Bush’s Energy Secretary, Samuel Bodman, told the US Congress yesterday. “We have sopped up all the available spare oil production capacity in the system … and there is no silver bullet that will immediately solve our energy challenges or drastically reduce costs at the gas pump.”
You know, if you read Nader’s article it’s the speculators on Wall Street jacking the prices up. Peak Oil is of course real but are these fast and furious increases in price really due to demand “outstripping supply”? So soon? Interesting that a Bush lackey says so – makes me immediately distrust the message.
I’m not a Peak Oil guru – has there ever been a prediction that we would go from $50/barrel to $135/barrel in 18 months? Or that drastic a jump anyway…
It seems to me that the problem of Peak Oil is complicated by the financial system that it interacts with. The fact that speculators have been able to bid up the price of oil (and other commodities along with it) is because of an underlying uncertainty about supplies, which is based on the difficulty companies and governments have had in discovering new reserves. Absolute physical shortage might not have yet occurred, but it’s not far off.
Unfortunately for us denizens of a financialized economy, the activities of speculators will generate huge volatility in price as they accentuate the problem of scarcity, reducing demand, and then give the impression of a loosening of supplies when their bubbles burst – but underlying material circumstances mean that the price is trending ever higher…
So we get see-sawed back and forth – although farmers and consumers of fuel in the developing world probably have it much worse. That is, until the bottom falls out of the fossil fuel society, and our lack of coping mechanisms for such an eventuality is exposed – while poorer societies fall back on the knowledge gained through years of poverty about how to live with less of everything.
The elephant-sized bag of hemp seeds in the corner of the room says, “I want to help”
HEMP for Victory !!!
“while poorer societies fall back on the knowledge gained through years of poverty about how to live with less of everything.”
Aaawww, and just when they’ve succeeded in developing a $2500 death-trap on wheels. Q. What’s $2500 in rupees? A. Oh, about 65 years at these wages.
Just does not help to follow the big doofus in the stars n’ bars tophat.
Remember the Edsel? How about Studebaker? Dymaxion?
HEMP:
Plant ‘em if ya got ‘em.