America's tarred future

U.S. gasoline prices have climbed comfortably over the $3/gal. range as oil prices in the recent past have continued to approach the $100/bbl mark.  This rise in gasoline prices is forecast to continue throughout 2011 as the economy continues to recover, and in some places will top $4/gal. this year. 

We have seemingly got ourselves trapped in a cycle of recessions, an eddy of stagnation, spiraling like we are circling the drain as a nation.  In order to create jobs, the economy needs to recover; but if the economy recovers, the price of oil will top $100/bbl and the conditions for another spike the likes of 2008's ripens, making an economic recovery improbable and increased unemployment more likely.  Round and round we go with ever increasing velocity.

It would appear as though our global economy, based upon a limited resource such as oil, has reached its peak sometime in the past few years.  2008 was the beginning of the slide down the long slippery slope of oil addiction, and conditions for another commodity price explosion have already produced record food prices this year.

Commodity markets are not necessarily based upon current conditions, rather present prices are based more on future speculations than on day-to-day realities.  In most markets, perception is reality.

U.S. politicians know this, and concerning oil, have to make plans to ensure an increase of supply in the future in order to keep prices stable in the present.  Currently, OPEC seems to want to keep production rates stable even as oil approaches $100/bbl; whether this is because their estimates of proven reserves is fake or because they profit considerably from $100+/bbl oil is anyone's guess, but the reality is that 2011 has the potential to bring another oil shock (if the economy continues to recover) like the one in 2008.  Is the U.S. economy, or the global one for that matter, capable of handling another massive shock focused around its core building block?  Will investors panic again?

Republicans seem to think that developing a clean energy economy is about climate change.  They spend time and resources attacking climate science because they are certain that the economy will recover if we could only get rid of regulations that will limit toxic chemicals in our air, water, and soil.  According to this line of reasoning, fossil fuels are our only way out of our current economic predicament.  They do this while they all but ignore the reality of the instability of oil prices and risks associated with not developing a national energy policy based upon sustainable energy in the near future.

Conservative logic is faulty is faulty in this regard.  Even after securing Iraq's massive oil fields and spending hundreds of billions of dollars on a war to do so, the price of oil has only continued to rise; even after the realities of searching for oil in high risk locations came home to roost via the BP Oil Spill in the Gulf, conservatives stick to their guns.  ...drill baby drill seems like it is poised to make a comeback in 2011.

There simply is not enough oil left in the world to satiate the rate of growth that predominated the 20th Century, but American politicians (Republicans and Democrats alike) seem not ready yet to accept that reality.  The reasoning that says we can drill and deregulate our way out of our current economic problem does not take into account the very simple fact that demand for oil is outstripping supply and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

Instead of realizing the nature of our oil addiction as a nation, America has started looking to Canada to become the new Saudi Arabia.  If OPEC is going to control production in such a way that prices remain above $100/bbl into the future with price spikes based upon fear and speculation riding the tide, or if political instability an hostile relations with the U.S. in places like Nigeria, Iran, and Venezuela continue, then adding some oil from the Canadian tar sands might add some stability into the mix.  There is only one problem with this line of reasoning: What if there simply is not enough oil left to meet the demands of rising developing nations AND developed nations like the U.S.?  900,000 bbl/day is a drop in the bucket of America's 20 million bbl/day consumption habit.

Canadian bitumen extraction and processing (oil sands, tar sands) is some of the dirtiest oil on the planet requiring intense amounts of energy and water to remove the bitumen from the sand and process it into usable oil.  In addition to the incredible amounts of natural gas and water that is needed to run oil sands' operations, emissions for these kinds of facilities are significantly higher than for straight crude.  If the link between emissions and climate change continues to be made, or if oil sands development continues to be tied to environmental destruction in Canada, then Canadian oil will wind up being considerably more expensive in the future.

America has committed to building a network of pipelines to bring Canadian oil from the tar sands (around 900,000 bbls/day) over 2,000 miles long through Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, and then another 1600 miles pipelines in order to facilitate the delivery of the oil to refineries on the Gulf Coast.  The recent leak in the TransAlaskan pipeline should stand as a warning. 

The leak that shut down the TransAlaska pipeline this week shows the condition that America's most prominent oil pipleine is in.  While the pipeline in Alaska traverses mostly wilderness, the Canadian oil sands pipeline is slate to be cut directly across the center of the U.S. over farmland, through towns, and above the most valuable resource that America owns, the Ogallala aquifer.

The Ogallala aquifer is what the entire U.S. Midwest agriculture industry is based upon; without it, agriculture production in the U.S. plummets.  A leak in the Canadian oil pipeline, once it is built, has the potential to poison the aquifer and send food prices across the world skyrocketing.  Are we really willing to risk the future of our food supply over our stubbornness to see fossil fuels for what they really are.?

Oil is a toxic substance when it is extracted, transported, and burned; it is also in considerably short supply.  To base our future economic and environmental stability on the dirtiest oil on planet is fool's play.  Science is telling us that emissions are destabilizing the climate; Economics is telling us that limited supply of oil is destabilizing global markets.  Betting on Canadian tar sands is betting against Science and Economics.

There is only so much head-in-the-sand stuffing that Americans will tolerate.  At some point the reality of our ongoing environmental collapse in relation to skyrocketing commodity prices will sink in, and the choices that our current generation of politicians are making will seem idiotic at best.  American politicians will have to continue their assault on climate science and peak oil so as to defend their expensive piece of infrastructure; not necessarily decisions that are good for the nation or for the larger humanity.

We are losing the very things that we as a species depend upon for survival, namely, air, water, and soil.  There are alternatives to oil.  The recent rise in epic floods, increased drought, spreading biodiversity loss, and general environmental collapse associated with our collective energy strategy of the past 150 years or so is just the tip of the iceberg.  The permanent economic depression that goes along with pushing oil dependence into the future has the potential to come about much more swiftly than nature's slow march toward collapse.

The rest of the world is moving quickly toward a clean energy economy.  China is speeding toward it, trying to use the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy as a mechanism to overtake America and become the dominant world superpower.  American politicians, though, seem content to remain in the past, trying to hold onto their glory days of unregulated fossil fuels in the hopes that Science and Reality will go away.

News Flash:  Science is not going away!  ...nor is Reality for that matter.  Our environment is collapsing around us, and our economy will follow suit unless we begin to transition off of fossil fuels that are not only economically unstable, but are also causing the toxic poisoning of our air, water, and soil.

The Chamber of Commerce, Hilary Clinton, or the Oil Spill Commission are not doing the American public any favors by arguing (respectively) against the science of climate change and advocating increased fossil fuel use, approving the construction of over 3000 miles of pipelines to import the dirtiest oil on the planet, and failing to hold the parties responsible for the worst oil spill in history accountable.  All three are simply trying to protect American GDP growth so as to give the impression that America is not in the throes of collapse.  We are!  Holding on to a false sense of wealth based upon ethical and moral poverty is not going to help in the recovery.

It is way past time to incorporate environmental and social factors into the financial accounting of Americans' prosperity.  This is not some kind of New Age thinking; this is the fundamental reality of economics; it is a form of economics that is sustainable. 

Oil will not be able to sustain our global society; those nations that are still relying on it in 10-20 years' time will ultimately collapse.  Building an infrastructure for clean energy will take about that long.  If we wait for the onset of the collapse to begin transitioning to another energy source, it will be too late.  All of our available resources should be directed toward stabilizing the environment, and by association, our economy.  Building a new oil pipeline to import the dirtiest oil in the world is about as foolish as building a new coal-fired power plant or expanding natural gas hydraulic fracturing.  The money being spent on such ventures only tars America's future and ultimately limits our economic growth.

Read more @ EarthPulseDaily.

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