ARTICLES: Global Peak Oil, Energy Crisis, Middle East
When oil peaks ...
The end of oil is closer than you think
A brighter future?
Thomas Malthus ~ An Essay on the Principle of Population
EU demands answers over French fuel protests
China’s Stranglehold on the Dollar
China’s action signals that we are entering a period of economic instability, where America’s future is largely in the hands of its creditors. Economic policy in China will now determine the interest rates on mortgages in America.
U.S. firms ducking out of promises made on pensions
The death knell for the traditional company pension has been tolling for some time now in the United States. Companies in ailing industries like steel, airlines and auto parts have thrown themselves into bankruptcy and turned over their ruined pension plans to Washington.
Watching as the world vanishes
: This is a crime against nature, and this fanaticism is economic -- the belief that money and profit should outweigh all other considerations, including survival of the species. If we maintain our current rates of consumption and environmental strategies, by the end of this century, one-half of the species now alive on earth may be extinct.
China lays down gauntlet in energy war
The geopolitical chess game for the control of the energy flows of Central Asia and overall of Eurasia from the Atlantic to the China Sea is sharply evident in the latest developments.
We know that our national
leaders are hardly uninformed about this predicament.
President George W. Bush has been briefed on the dangers of
the oil-peak situation as long ago as before the 2000
election and repeatedly since then. In March, the Department
of Energy released a report that officially acknowledges for
the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly
that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without
massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the
problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."
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Gas prices can only go up. Oil production is at or near peak capacity. The U.S. must compete for oil with China, the fastest-growing colossus in history. But the U.S. also must borrow $2 billion a day to remain solvent, nearly half of that from China and her neighbors, while they supply most of our manufacturing ("Benson's Economic and Market Trends," quoted in Asia Times Online) – so we have no cards to play with China, even militarily. (You can't war with the bankers who finance your army and the factories that supply your stores.) China now determines oil demand, and the U.S. has no long-term way to influence prices. That means $4 a gallon by next spring, and rising – $5, then $6, probably $10 by 2010 or thereabouts. Their economy can afford it; ours can't. We may hobble along with more or less the same way of life for the next dollar or so of hikes, but at around $4 America changes. Drastically.
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The Economic Consequences of New Orleans
The imminent effects of the flooding of New Orleans upon America's economy and lifestyle are horrendous: Not only has the refinery that refines about 25% of America's gasoline been destroyed but New Orleans was the only US port capable of offloading imported oil or gasoline from large tanker transports. (And all US refineries are working at capacity and can't produce more gasoline even if they could get the crude oil to do so.)
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