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Where’s It Going to Come From?

Moratoriums, schmoritoriums… the oil has to come from somewhere, doesn’t it?

The T-Ridge project is somewhat complicated – a few environmentalists in the Santa Barbara area actually support it – but when asked if an oil spill the likes of what is happening in the Gulf could take place in California, Schwarzenegger said “That will not happen”. Asked why he is withdrawing his support of the project, he said simply, “why would we want to take that risk?”

Why, indeed. The storm continues to build, but do we do, or plan to do, anything differently? Is this massive oil dump just one of those things that happens in the background and meanwhile, we just keep on doing the same things in the same ways? It’s a full-blown catastrophe in just its sixth day and already the States’ Rights Brigade is calling for the Federal government to do something(!). While not exactly hopeful for their redemption, I’m always open to it. But they’ll have to take a moment and reload something other than their fancy store-bought weaponry.

Our energy conundrum is made up of exactly the sort of complexity that the right wing conveniently dismisses. Maybe this is one thing that happens when you ignore implications and complex systems. But still, will they get it? How does it get played on Fox?

This will be more difficult than you might think, especially considering the awful power of an oily coastline to focus the mind. There is a mountain of cognitive dissonance intellectual and ethical incoherence that’s actually a volcano. And it’s rumbling.

Krugman’s column today is a reminder of what it took to bring about the first wave of environmentalism. And this, sadly, might be reminiscent. It’s pathetic that it takes this kind of disaster to allow people to visualize the effects of our crazy, laissez-faire rhetoric. It abets nothing so much as poisoned wells, tainted toys, contaminated foods, financial crises and this is no different.

And if you haven’t read Juan Cole on BP… well, you might want to pour yourself a scotch first.

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en-Gulf

29spill

Are they burning oil, money, their public image, a political rationale? All four? Let’s hope.

The burn operation began at 4:45 p.m. Central time Wednesday. “They have lit off the burn,” Coast Guard Petty Officer David Mosley said.

The process consists of corralling concentrated parts of the spill in a 500 foot long fireproof boom, moving the oil to another location and burning it. While the process has been tested effectively on other spills, it is complicated by weather and concerns over ecological impact.

The generous version: When these kinds of events (corporate environmental pillage, war, financial crises that enrich single entities at the expense of millions) creep up and in on us, it’s possible not to think so much of them; not saying they’re normal/natural but the precipitous slopes of their peril fit in somewhat with other elements of our, um, progress.

But if this was an opening sequence to a film or a novel that we walked into or opened up and suddenly were encountered with the Gulf of Mexico on fire on purpose, it would be obvious that it was a dystopian setting, foreshadowing further suffering and annihilation to come. We would brace ourselves, even in the context of art, for further destruction. What are we doing as the sea burns now?

Even if you’ve only noticed [or tied to ignore] this casually, it’s hard not to find it unreal, bizarre.

We’re stupid if we don’t see this for what it is.

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Disarmament, Revolution-style

But whose?

It seems we are going force Iran to go nukuler, or insure they do, by instituting a sanctions regime. All this while effectively defanging whatever is left of that nation’s Green Revolution from last spring. Nice going.

In a 90-minute conversation here before the opening of a summit meeting on nuclear security, Mr. Obama sought to win more cooperation from China by directly addressing one of the main issues behind Beijing’s reluctance to confront Iran: its concern that Iran could retaliate by cutting off oil shipments to China. The Chinese import nearly 12 percent of their oil from Iran.

This oil dependency thing is just not going away on its own. Are we going to be where we were a couple of years ago again this summer, only a little worse, with the cyclical oil shocks rocking the fragile ‘recovering’ economy? That should be one of the real fears of the energy wall as we hit it, that instead of some sudden catastrophe it unwinds slowly at a pace that should give us plenty of time to make a shift, but we still don’t.

It’s amazing that people wonder why the leaders of Iran, or Venezuela for that matter, think they need the bomb. Do we ever send them any other signal?

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When I see you, I See Red

Sticking with the X theme, and why not. Today’s Pigment of the Day: Madder lake.

So… positive words from Big Oil and their patsies political allies on the heels of efforts by Sens. Kerry, Graham and Lieberman to put together legislation capping global warming pollution. I guess ‘positive’ isn’t quite the right word – it’s kinda like the line in Raising Arizona:

Evelle: [about the balloons he just bought] These blow up into funny shapes and all?
Grocer: Well no… unless round is funny.

Ha. Ha.

Industry officials said they too welcome the discussions of a carbon fee as part of the Kerry-Graham-Lieberman effort.

“Clearly it softens the reaction and increases the likelihood that a number of people who’ve been forced to push back will be much more cooperative in the dialogue,” said Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute.

Gerard said that the carbon fee approach would yield net environmental benefits, while giving consumers the most transparent signal they can get about what the costs are from the program. Unlike the House bill’s cap-and-trade system, oil companies would pass through the costs with signs at the gas pump letting people know they’re paying more because of U.S. efforts to deal with climate change.

As Grist reports, the energy companies like the fee because they’ll be able to complain about it as a tax ‘Americans cannot afford’. Actually, re-setting a highly mobile bar, they will be decrying the removal of $80 billion in loopholes and oil company subsidies as an “unprecedentled tax.” Dig it.

I mean, drill… or whatever. The oil companies see the handwriting on the wall. We can’t change underwear without taking off our pants – and they know what a zipper sounds like, as much as they will spend spin like crazy to try and tell you it’s bubbling brook.

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Going Away

Not me, this time – malheureusement. But oil refineries. They’re going away. They’re not leaving today. But they’re going away. The article makes for an almost wistful, Christmas Eve nostalgia for how, pretty soon, we’re not going to have them to kick around any more. And boy will we regret that. Except we won’t.

Gasoline demand, which many analysts had long expected to keep rising for decades, is down sharply in the recession. And refiners are increasingly convinced that even after the economy recovers, demand will not grow much in coming years because of the rise of alternative fuel supplies and the advent of tougher efficiency standards for automobiles.

…

Plagued by boom-and-bust cycles of rapid expansion followed by sharp belt-tightening, refining companies have often struggled to operate at a profit. That is a contrast to the production side of the oil business, long a road to riches.

“Oil production creates wealth, but oil refining has often destroyed it,” said Costanza Jacazio, an analyst at Barclays Capital in New York.

Even so, these are unusually harsh times for oil refiners. The recent drop in gasoline demand could result in more refineries being closed in the coming year.

Talk about shock and… aw. But this has very little to do with eco-anything, really. It’s just an economic situation, itself in transition, and away from where the fossil fuel industry thought they would ever go or be, which is not far from here – or actually about 2007. This is itself a problem with the imagination of your average B-school go-getter, seeing just far enough to be able to carve out their own little piece of the bottom line as it exists as the status quo. Then having the proclivity to channel all remaining energy into protecting that little slice of heaven. Instead of being able to recognize the shortcomings even of a system beneficial to them and foresee workable, if not equitable, adjustments to that system. Imagination fail, like a tractor beam. Like a circle, baby.

And this is transferrable to many issues and realms, including the political and HCR. If you doubt that, check out another op piece today, and witness the depravity that was Phil Gramm circa 1993. Hunted with dogs, indeed.

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Are We There Yet?

When we realize that something is not sustainable, part of that is knowing that it is, not would be but is, impossible to make it so. So, instead of trying to make our fossil fuel use more sustainable, we transition to a form of energy on which we can rely. Neat.

How long will this take? Everyone wants to know, and to the extent we set about reducing our dependence on the unsustainable, we set in motion all sorts of other activities which in turn effect the overall duration of the transition. With lifestyle changes and altering the modes of transportation in service of the former, we induce, and thus shorten, the latter. To the extent that halfway there may begin to resemble being there, simply because of what else can be sensed, seen or acknowledged from certain vantage points, the transition will appear to have become increasingly easier or less difficult from some points along the way, when in fact it may have always been so. It’s just at the beginning, from here – this point of realizing the unsustainability of our position – the whole idea of doing/living/powering/growing any other way seems so daunting and impossible. When, really, the impossible thing is to continue in this way.

Now, one might think that there would be a distinctly non-ideological flavor to this whole discussion. And one would of course be wrong. Because the transition to other energy sources [on which we can rely] is somehow liberal socialist and must be opposed by the other side. Who is the other side? The suppliers? Well, that makes sense. But so much of the opposition to change comes from those who would ostensibly benefit from the transition, who are, effectively, home grown; what’s their angle, beyond the unsustainable status quo?

In a kind of truth, not having to worry about how long the transition will take, how much it will cost and how much it might disrupt the way things are is a great and wonderful luxury, for as long as it lasts, which is also its major downfall, which is really the point of the conversation. From here, any change looks like the downfall of western society, and will until we begin the transition, which is the only thing that will make the view different. The Saudis know it and also know our transition will destroy their economy. That’s why they counsel against it, even though they know it makes no sense [for us] whatsoever. The strains on all the rationales are showing. Maybe that’s what the beginning of the transition looks like.

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So You Don’t Have To

Clamoring for a worldwide tracking survey on consumer choice and the environment? National Geographic sort’ve answers the bell with their Greendex. This kind of fix offers the needed splitting of the hair that at once tells who is ‘out front’ on being green and makes a mockery out of the entire endeavor. The more Going Green plays itself out, the more it looks like an utter construct of the planetary forces of pillage.

This is to say that, despite the colorful graphics and trappings of informing us, sustainability issues are better laid out between the lines. Because as a matter of scorecards that presuppose how we can/will maintain what we are doing with little tweaks here and there, the issue is a non-starter. Because we can’t.

Take, for example this article from Harper’s, on the life of an oil fixer. When you realize the energy conundrum as a puzzle the key to which is hiding or losing a few integral pieces, then the puzzle can come to make some sense.

Africa has remained the main focus of Calil’s operations, but he now does business around the globe. In addition to operations in Russia and the Middle East, he owned a Houston-based firm called Nautilus, which obtained oil and gas concessions in South America and Central Asia. He sold Nautilus to Ocean Energy, which subsequently was bought by Devon Energy, now the largest U.S.-based independent oil and gas producer. Calil also won a gas concession in Brazil, which he later sold to Enron. “When buying and selling oil concessions, you’re dependent on your skills and knowledge, but you’re also very much dependent on the goodwill of the local government, from presidents to ministers,” Calil told me. “You end up building a political network to a) build up the business and b) protect it.”

But this isn’t about accrued personal wealth, conspiracy theories or geo-political middlemen. It’s primarily about a $2 trillion dollar-a-year industry that has a few good years left in it, that fully expects us all to play out the string right up until then end. The place that we’re left then is really of no concern to the countries, companies and individuals involved. They know we’re afraid of the dark, much less walking in it and God forbid bumping into each other, and so don’t need to do much to frighten us – just offer a bit of increasingly expensive relief from perceived oppressions upon our time, livelihoods and general ability to move about freely. These sacred activities uninfringed is precisely where we have agreed the bar should be set.

Just try to eat well or lower your carbon footprint within that set of constraints. And one odd thing: with consuming personal space set as your idea of freedom, anything else will feel like prison. To think/act otherwise, you’d need to being playing by a completely different set of rules, with a different ball, even.

And if/when you hear any mishigas about who killed the electric car or canned the trolley, just remember the suspects are playing a completely different game than anyone concerned about a sustainable, blue planet.

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Ongoing Investigation

So, it’s funny how this oil derrick just looks like an I-beam with a few other chunks of steel welded to it, connected by a hinge to a sort of gallows. If you spend any time at all examining the picture for its constituent parts, it almost begins to break itself down. What other kinds of things might be made with these materials?

Many more pictures here of what happens to a place when a boom goes bust, especially one based on oil production. The sociological connection to everything required for extraction is not far removed from this idea; but neither is the way we shield ourselves and our tender sensibilities from the extraction costs when they include exploding bodies and flag-draped coffins. It’s scandalous how we permitted the government to ban photographs of soldiers returning home in cargo planes. That’s the extent of our honor right there. Look away, indeed. These are the costs of our dependence strategies, the further externalities, if you will, and if we can’t handle them then we should perhaps think twice about tying our liberty and freedom to gassing up.

These are among the cautionary guidelines we should consult in our decision-making. Without them, we’re just walking in front of cartoon scenery. You can’t section off moral hazard as though it’s a completely separate consideration. Unless you’re able to do that. Then, you’re all set!

I hope they’re making this up. According to wikipedia, the derrick device was named for its resemblance to a hangman’s gallows; the derrick-type gallows was itself named for an Elizabethan Era executioner.

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Watch the birdy

It’s no stretch to say that a controversy might erupt were the consensus theories about peak oil production or climate change shown to be misstated or, worse, wrong. Green would be the new red, as in red-faced, and yet another potential crisis ( Y2K) will have been proven to be a marketing construct. As much as there are deniers and refusniks of climate change and peak oil, these folks are generally construed to be shills, or worse.

But, s’up with gas prices dropping? What’s that all about? OPEC is not going to stand around and do nothing as prices fall. But it gets complicated in a stagnant economy, and their options are limited. Will low(er) gas prices kill the electric car again? All of these are related and work together: the limited supply of oil, the oversupply of housing and the widespread accumulation of bad, bad debt. The “deterioration” of prices is all that concerns the oil producers. With all the upturns and the downturns, we need to worry about how it all works together. For instance, will the nascent and baby-teeny-weeny progress on alternative energy initiatives be snuffed out by world economic turmoil?

It is important to unpack and disconnect some of these issues, otherwise we will never escape the way we have been driven by them and them alone onto hyper-consumptive paths of lease resistance and their ecological consequences. Can we continue to use less oil/gas even if the price drops back into the neighborhoods we grew up in? What about the infrastructure and economic development plans based on reduced carbon footprints and homegrown renewable energy? There were are many more reasons than running out of gas to change the way we’ve been doing things.

The question is whether we will have enough discipline toward the self-preservation instinct, even if it’s not immediately cheaper. Green is all about keeping your eye on the ball – the big blue one we’re living on.