Oil Is Back! A Global Warming President Presides Over a Drill-Baby-Drill United States

[KoKo]

Thursday, 04 September 2014 13:28 By Michael T Klare, TomDispatch | News Analysis

Considering all the talk about global warming, peak oil, carbon divestment, and renewable energy, you’d think that oil consumption in the United States would be on a downward path. By now, we should certainly be witnessing real progress toward a post-petroleum economy. As it happens, the opposite is occurring. U.S. oil consumption is on an upward trajectory, climbing by 400,000 barrels per day in 2013 alone -- and, if current trends persist, it should rise again both this year and next.

In other words, oil is back. Big time. Signs of its resurgence abound. Despite what you may think, Americans, on average, are driving more miles every day, not fewer, filling ever more fuel tanks with ever more gasoline, and evidently feeling ever less bad about it. The stigma of buying new gas-guzzling SUVs, for instance, seems to have vanished; according to CNN Money, nearly one out of three vehicles sold today is an SUV. As a result of all this, America’s demand for oil grew more than China’s in 2013, the first time that’s happened since 1999.

Accompanying all this is a little noticed but crucial shift in White House rhetoric. While President Obama once spoke of the necessity of eliminating our reliance on petroleum as a major source of energy, he now brags about rising U.S. oil output and touts his efforts to further boost production.

Just five years ago, few would have foreseen such a dramatic oil rebound. Many energy experts were then predicting an imminent “peak” in global oil production, followed by an irreversible decline in output. With supplies constantly shrinking, it was said, oil prices would skyrocket and consumers would turn to hybrid vehicles, electric cars, biofuels, and various transportation alternatives. New government policies would be devised to facilitate this shift, providing tax breaks and other incentives for making the switch to renewables.

At that time, a growing concern over climate change and the prospect of further warming due to increased emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels seemed to dim the long-term prospects for petroleum. After all, oil combustion is this country’s single largest source of carbon emissions. This, in turn, clearly meant that any significant attempt to reduce emissions -- whether through a carbon tax, a carbon cap-and-trade program, or other such measures -- would naturally have to incorporate significant impediments to oil use. President Obama entered the White House promising to enact such a measure, and the House of Representatives passed a modified cap-and-trade bill in 2009. (It failed in the Senate and so never became law.)

The 2008 financial crisis and global economic meltdown only put oil’s future in further doubt. Suddenly cash-conscious Americans began trading in their gas-guzzlers for smaller, more fuel-efficient cars, with the Obama administration adding its encouragement. When agreeing to the bailout of General Motors, for instance, the White House insisted that the reorganized company focus on the production of such vehicles. In a similar spirit, the administration’s $787 billion stimulus package favored investment in electric cars, biofuels, high-speed rail, and other petroleum alternatives.

The president’s comments at the time clearly reflected a belief that oil was an “old” form of energy facing inevitable decline. “The United States of America cannot afford to bet our long-term prosperity, our long-term security on a resource that will eventually run out, and even before it runs out will get more expensive to extract from the ground,” he declared in 2011. “We can’t afford it when the costs to our economy, our country, and our planet are so high.” Not only did the country need to lessen its dangerous reliance on imported oil, he insisted, but on oil altogether. “The only way for America’s energy supply to be truly secure is by permanently reducing our dependence on oil.”

Obama’s Turnaround on Oil

CONTINUED AT:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/25993-oil-is-back-a-global-warming-president-presides-over-a-drill-baby-drill-united-states

[newfie11]

1. I guess hope and change

Doesn't apply to oil.
Yes we can doesn't apply to alternative fuels.

[DCBob]

2. There is a big difference between short-term and long-term oil policy.

Short term we don't have much of a choice but to keep using oil since so much is dependent on it. Until we develop realistic practical alternatives oil will continue to play major role. The administration has been touting clean energy alternatives but clearly we need more because no doubt the effects of peak oil and global warming will eventually hit us hard. I think the President has a good balanced safe approach to this complicated issue but I do wish there was more he could do to push clean energy. If we wait until we have a crisis it will be too late.

[cantbeserious]

3. Some Perspective - Vehicle Miles Traveled - Essentially Flat Since May 2009 - See Link Below

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/M12MTVUSM227NFWA

[cantbeserious]

4. Nice Fictional Account Of How The American Empire Might Finally End Over Oil - Worth The Read

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-one-hubris.html

How It Could Happen, Part One: Hubris

" The news of the latest Tanzanian deepwater oil discovery broke on an otherwise sleepy Saturday in March. Thirty years before, a find of the same size might have gotten two column inches somewhere in the back pages of a few newspapers of record, but this was not thirty years ago. In a world starved for oil, what might once have been considered a modest find earned banner headlines.

It certainly loomed large in the East Wing of the White House, where the president and his advisers held a hastily called meeting that evening. “The Chinese already have it wrapped up,” said the Secretary of Energy. “Tanzania’s in their pocket, and there are CNOOC people—” CNOOC was the Chinese National Overseas Oil Corporation, the state-owned firm that spearheaded China’s quest for foreign oil. “—all over the place on site and in Dar es Salaam.”

“Is it close enough to Kenyan waters—”

Snip ...

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-two-nemesis.html

How It Could Happen, Part Two: Nemesis

" The missiles and fighter-bombers launched from the fleet were the second wave of the American assault, not the first. Attack helicopters from Kenyan bases took off a few minutes later, but went in ahead to target Tanzania’s air defenses. Their timing was precise; by the time the first US jets crossed into Tanzanian airspace, the four military radar stations that anchored the northern end of Tanzania’s air defense system were smoking rubble. Real-time satellite images brought news of the successful strike to Admiral Deckmann and his staff aboard the USS George Washington, and to President Weed and his advisers in the situation room in the White House.

Those images were on the screens when the whole US military satellite system suddenly went dark.

In US bases around the world, baffled technicians tried to reconnect with the satellite network, only to find that there was no network with which to reconnect. NORAD reported that all the satellites were still in their orbits and showed every sign of still being operational, but none would respond to signals from ground stations or send data back down. Analysis quickly ruled out a technical failure, which left only one option; the president’s national security adviser glanced up from a hurriedly compiled briefing paper outlining that one option, to find the Secretary of Defense regarding her with a level gaze. She turned away sharply and snapped an order to one of her aides."

Snip ...

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-three-to-brink.html

How It Could Happen, Part Three: To The Brink

" Back in the United States, few people had any clear sense of how bad the situation had become. The major news media, as they had done for decades, accepted whatever came from the White House and the Pentagon at face value. Internet news sites contradicted the official story in every detail, but the internet’s low signal to noise ratio made an accurate picture hard to assemble. Still, cracks were spreading in the wall of denial. The photo of the USS George Washington wrecked and abandoned on a Kenyan sandbar was an internet sensation; two members of the House of Representatives had called for hearings on the war, though their request was stonewalled by the House leadership; through the sullen air of late summer, a sense was beginning to spread that something had gone very wrong.

In the White House, President Weed did not need to guess. Reports from the US forces in Kenya came in daily via the diplomatic line; when Nairobi fell, after a bitter three-day battle near Konza, a new line was jerry-rigged from Kisumu in the far west of the country. Most of the news was bad. The Chinese had brought in more planes, as well as air-defense systems that were making B-52 raids from Diego Garcia risky—two of the bombers had been shot down by surface-to-air missiles already. Meanwhile, there was no way to get supplies in to the American forces and their Kenyan allies; another fleet could not be sent as long as Chinese cruise missiles might be waiting for them, and the loss of air superiority made airlifts equally problematic.

“We tried to get Predator drones in to hit their air defense radar, but they were spotted and taken out,” the DCI—Director of Central Intelligence, the head of the CIA—was saying. “Chinese technology is, well, as good as ours these days.” What he was not saying, Weed knew, was that Chinese technology was better than its US equivalents these days, and half a dozen other countries had the same advantage. The reason wasn’t a mystery, either; most of the officials in the room, starting with Weed himself, had taken donations now and then in exchange for promoting or approving programs that were far more profitable to their manufacturers than they were useful to the US military."

Snip ...

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-four-crossing.html

How It Could Happen, Part Four: Crossing the Line

" The church bells rang all night; perfect strangers embraced and kissed each other or fell on their knees and prayed together, depending on inclination; a baby boomlet nine months later revealed how many Americans celebrated the sudden discovery that life would go on. Around the world, crews in missile silos, bomber bases and submarines sagged with relief as they got the order to stand down. In the US, the few police and National Guard units still barricading freeways and guarding government assets melted into the cheering crowds. The threat of nuclear war was past.

As a cold gray morning spread over Washington, though, Jameson Weed surveyed what was left of his presidency, and dropped his head into his hands. A negotiation team would soon be its way to Geneva to meet its Chinese and Tanzanian opposite numbers and settle on a peace treaty. No matter how hard the spin doctors worked it, he knew, that treaty would mean a bitter defeat for America, and his solid grasp of the realities of American politics told him exactly who would be blamed for it.

The treaty, as it turned out, was surprisingly generous. No one had to admit fault or pay reparations; the United States simply had to accept the status quo in East Africa and assign its rights over Diego Garcia—which was owned by Great Britain anyway—to the Peoples Republic of China. Since the United States had no effective way to contest either demand, there was clearly no point in quibbling. The treaty was signed at the beginning of October, and ratified by a glum Congress three days later."

Snip ...

http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-it-could-happen-part-five.html

How It Could Happen, Part Five: Dissolution

" Within hours, thanks to news media reporting minute-by-minute from St. Louis, word of the proposal to dissolve the Union circled the globe. The most common reaction was to dismiss it as an edgy joke. One pundit wrote hopefully that the prank might finally bring the convention to its senses. A few articles profiled the two delegates who had written the measure, giving them their first fifteen minutes of fame—they were back in the news two years later, on the occasion of their wedding—and then the media tried to move on to what it considered important news.

Over the days that followed, however, the proposal took on a life of its own. Across the country, in bars and living rooms and grange halls, people talked about little else; public meetings and rallies drew huge crowds, and with each passing day more of them backed the proposal. Meanwhile the online forum set up for comment on the convention’s debates crashed three times in as many hours, flooded by posts about dissolving the Union. By October 4th, the day that the proposal was scheduled for a vote on the convention floor, comments on the forum were running ten to one in favor of dissolution.

Politicians and pundits were discovering to their horror what more perceptive observers had noticed long before—that the United States had long since broken apart culturally, and stayed together only because the power of the federal government put disunion out of reach. Now, though, the unthinkable was an option. Every region saw a chance to get what it wanted without wrestling with the country’s yawning cultural chasms; western states in which up to 90% of the land was owned by the federal government, and thus exempt from state taxes and fees, ran the numbers and saw how easily they could balance their budgets once all that real estate fell into their hands; ambitious politicians on the state level began to dream of leading new nations; and the thought of getting out from under the massive Federal debt, by the simple expedient of dissolving the government that owed it, was on many minds. For them and many other Americans, dissolution seemed to offer dazzling possibilities, and few considered the massive downsides."

Snip ...