Reporters do us (another) disservice by alluding to the idea that the energy wars will be conducted solely on the National level when they will not; it will be much finer than that.
Worse, they often predict these conflicts will erupt in the murky future, instead of today. How they can ‘ignore’ the near tripling of energy prices over the past five years boggles the mind.
Except people don’t commonly connect the two. The sky-high price of energy is being viewed as the end result of manipulation by speculators (with nothing better to do with their money…how sad is THAT?)
If we are to consider that our ENTIRE SOCIAL STRUCTURE is based on CHEAP AND ABUNDANT energy, then the following is ‘Pollyannaish’ at best:
Were I to wager a guess, I might place my bet on energy systems that were decentralized, easy to make and install, and required relatively modest levels of up-front investment. For an analogy, think of the laptop computer of 2011 versus the giant mainframes of the 1960s and 1970s. The closer that an energy supplier gets to the laptop model (or so I suspect), the more success will follow.
From this perspective, giant nuclear reactors and coal-fired plants are, in the long run, less likely to thrive, except in places like China where authoritarian governments still call the shots. Far more promising, once the necessary breakthroughs come, will be renewable sources of energy and advanced biofuels that can be produced on a smaller scale with less up-front investment, and so possibly incorporated into daily life even at a community or neighborhood level.
Whichever countries move most swiftly to embrace these or similar energy possibilities will be the likeliest to emerge in 2041 with vibrant economies -- and given the state of the planet, if luck holds, just in the nick of time.
As the last line implies, the writer is throwing out the ‘technology will save us’ card when this, er, ‘problem’ has been on radar for the past 50 years and we got nuthin’!
Then there’s the ‘quaint’ anecdote in the close about ‘authoritarian governments’ like China being willing to, er, ‘abuse’ international environmental legislation because they are ‘authoritarian’.
If communist China is ‘authoritarian’ then what does that make us? (Considering the US is directly responsible for what has become ‘modern China’…)
But wait, there’s more misdirection from the corporate owned media
U.S. Markets Edge Ahead on Greek Optimism
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 27, 2011
Stocks on Wall Street rose in early trading after encouraging signs about Europe’s debt crisis overshadowed a dismal report about spending by American consumers.
Greece’s parliament was debating an austerity package that must pass for that nation to receive a second bailout and avoid defaulting on its debt. European markets rose Monday after French banks agreed to let Greece repay some of its debt more slowly.
The first thing to get straight here good citizen is that Greece is NOT capable of paying back the billions it owes ‘at all’.
It doesn’t have the money and it has no way of getting the money…
So why would idiotic US investors be ‘optimistic’ that Greece will be ‘bailed out’ with loans it CANNOT repay?
Sort of redefines the term ‘stupid’ but there it is.
How much ‘bullshit’ are you willing to swallow good citizen? (Because they sure are feeding it to you by the bucketful!)
Optimism is one thing but if you turn a nation into a desert expecting a garden to bloom, it takes more than a ‘positive outlook’.
But you’re supposed to think,’great, the French are willing to let the Greeks ‘float a little’ so they can pay back what they owe’ (when it is debatable that they actually ‘owe’ anything.)
In case you haven’t caught on good citizen, the, er, ‘turmoil’ being experienced by the world’s financial markets was created by the same people who ‘own’ those financial markets.
And they should all be told to ‘go pound’ but they have no problem getting their ‘pet politicians’ to pick the public’s pocket for them.
Understand good citizen our ENTIRE CIVILIZATION is going to collapse over some stupid banker trying to cover their ‘bad bets’ (with public funds.)
Left to our imagination is why NOBODY is lifting a finger to put a stop to this nonsense?
Totally fucked up is the idea that our politicians are powerless to stop the reckless bankers.
They have the power, they simply don’t have the necessary ‘backbone’ to use it!
Which brings us (once again) to the ‘hell of it all’.
Um, I was going to wrap this up but I noticed today’s
lead story in the NY Times has a direct relation to today’s Alternet story.
Likeminded cities welcome new shopping malls and apartment buildings but severely restrict the allowable number of parking spaces. On-street parking is vanishing. In recent years, even former car capitals like Munich have evolved into “walkers’ paradises,” said Lee Schipper, a senior research engineer at Stanford University who specializes in sustainable transportation.
“In the United States, there has been much more of a tendency to adapt cities to accommodate driving,” said Peder Jensen, head of the Energy and Transport Group at the European Environment Agency. “Here there has been more movement to make cities more livable for people, to get cities relatively free of cars.”
As I commented earlier, this is happening TODAY, so the ‘energy war’ is being fought…today too!
And again we see the ‘misdirection’ at work once again.
How much of our economy is dedicated to ‘personal transportation?’
Not as much as it used to be and that accounts for a big part of the most recent ‘dent’ put in our workforce.
It has become increasingly apparent that our politicians can’t be trusted and will soon need to be forcibly removed from office.
Which is to point out you don’t NEED a representative if you are capable of representing yourself.
And the ones who say it is ‘too messy’ are the ones who need to be lynched because they don’t want you capable of defending your rights!
So good citizen, whose ‘side’ are you on?
They’re ‘winning’ now but it is unlikely to be the case in the future.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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