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A lot of readers are
twanging on me for refraining to castigate President-elect Obama for deeds
yet undone. They're discouraged by the advisors and cabinet sectetaries he's
picked, ostensibly because the crew coming in are Washington
"insiders," meaning they can't possibly see or do things
differently.
My
own starting point for this is the belief that in the years just ahead any
sociopolitical entity organized at the giant scale will flounder -- this
includes everything from the federal government to global corporations to
factory farms to centralized high schools to national retail chains. So even
expecting Mr. Obama's government to act effectively may be asking too much in
a situation that will require mostly local action.
The meta-situation will be the overall decline of energy resources and the
necessary downscaling of our activities. We are obviously in a transitional
period between the old profligate energy economy and the new economy of
relative scarcity. We have no idea how disorderly this transition will be,
but there is certainly potential for tremendous instability in daily life.
For
a while, perhaps, the federal government may retain some ability to affect
the way things go, or give the appearance of doing so. This raises the issue
of what Mr. Obama and his team really know about our energy predicament. The
president-elect has made some noises -- recently on the 60 Minutes show -- that he
understands something about the current price dislocations in the oil markets
resulting from the larger financial turmoil. He alluded to the public's
erroneous notion that current low-ish oil prices mean the oil problem is
over. But does the incoming president know some of the following details?
For
instance, does Mr. O know that global oil production appears to have peaked
at around 85 million barrels a day, with poor prospects of ever getting
beyond that? This single naked fact has broad ramifications, above all
whether we can continue to think in terms of industrial "growth" as
the benchmark for economic health. There are many interpretations of the
current financial fiasco. Some of them are based on long-term technical wave
theories. A more down-to-earth view suggests the shock of peak oil -- though
it doesn't exclude wave theories.
Does
Mr. O know that world oil discovery has fallen to insignificant levels after
peaking long ago in the 1960s. Does he know we are finding no more
super-giant oil fields on the scale of Arabia's Ghawar or Mexico's Cantarell, which have supplied most of the world's oil for the past forty years
and are now running down? Does he know that you can't produce oil that hasn't
been discovered? Does Mr. O know that virtually all the oil-producing
nations have entered production decline. Surely someone has whispered in his
ear about the IEA's projection that global oil production would fall 9.1
percent in the coming year.
Does
Mr. O know that oil exports have been trending to decline at a steeper rate
than oil depletion? That is, the exporting nations are losing their ability
to send oil to the importers (like us) at a rate mathematically greater than
the run-down in their production.They are using more of their own oil even
while their production is going down. For example, Mexico is depleting
overall at more than 9 percent a year (with the Cantarell field alone running
down at more than 15 percent annually). Does he know Mexico's net exports are crashing? Mexico has been our number three leading source of
imports. In a very few years they will not be able to send us any oil. A
deluded American public has no idea that this is happening. Will Mr. O
explain it to them?
Does
Mr. O know that the "old major" oil companies (Exxon-Mobil, Texaco,
Shell, et al) produce less than 10 percent of the world's oil now -- the
other 90 percent coming from the foreign nationals -- and that blaming them
for the situation is a waste of time. The foreign national companies are
changing the landscape of the oil markets. They're making special contracts
with "favored customers" rather than just putting their oil up for
auction on the futures markets. One thing you can infer from this is that
we're entering a period of national oil hoarding based on coming scarcity. The
futures markets were based on relative abundance, and they will not operate
very well in a climate of scarcity. Consider that the USA will probably not be among the "favored customers" for several oil producing
nations. Figure that in with the coming loss of imports from Mexico (and Venezuela and Nigeria).
Does
Mr. O know that the current drop in oil prices (due to massive financial
deleveraging) has resulted in the cancellation or postponment of the very oil
production projects that were hoped to offset the coming depletions? It's not
worth it for an oil enterprise (private or foreign) to drill in deepwater or
venture into arctic regions when oil is priced at $50-a-barrel -- if it costs
$80 to get the stuff out of the ground. It's not worth digging up tar sands
in Canada at that price. This halt in activity is going to boomerang back on
the US in a year or so, with depletions ongoing everywhere and no new oil to
take its place. Does Mr. O know that we're just as likely to see shortages as
a resuming rise in oil prices here in the US during his coming term?
Does
Mr. O know that the current re-inflation program being run by the Treasury
and the Federal Reserve is so egregious that it may lead to loss of the
dollar's legitimacy, to the renunciation of dollar holdings by other nations,
to the down-rating of US Treasury debt instruments, and finally to an
inability of the US to purchase foreign oil -- which comprises two-thirds of
all the oil we use every day?
Does
Mr. O know that we are not going to run the US automobile and truck fleet on
any combination of alt.fuels? Continuing it by other means is a fantasy that
will only disappoint us. The motoring era is coming to an end. Heroic
investments in highway infrastructure to create jobs will be a tragic waste
of our dwindling capital. The pressure for Mr. O to make these misinvestments
will be enormous, perhaps insurmountable. There are probably not a thousand
people in the US who agree with what I am saying -- meaning the consensus to
keep the cars running at all costs overwhelms reality at the moment. Does Mr.
O's concept of "change" include the possibility that we may have to
live very differently in this society?
Chances
are, if Mr. O knows any of these things he might be crucified in the polls
and the media by acknowledging them. The only "change" that America really wants to hear about is evicting George Bush from the White House. They're
sick of him and all the disturbance he has caused in their financial affairs.
But beyond that, the American public is deathly afraid of the kind of changes
we actually face -- such as, the end of consumer culture, the gross loss of
value in suburban real estate (which forms the bulk of the middle class's
private wealth), the prospect of food and fuel scarcities, the need to
re-localize our lives, the need to physically shape up to stop the costly and
unnecessary drain on our medical resources, to grow more of our own food, to
work harder at things that actually matter, and to save whatever we can for a
difficult future.
If
Mr. O introduces any of these themes into the national discourse, the public
and the media and the bloggers will all dump on him for failing to prop up
the wild party that American life became in recent decades.
James Howard Kunstler
www.kunstler.com/
My new novel of the
post-oil future, World Made By Hand, is
available at all booksellers.
James Kunstler has
worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and
finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone Magazine. In 1975, he dropped out
to write books on a full-time basis.
His latest nonfiction
book, "The Long Emergency," describes the changes that American
society faces in the 21st century. Discerning an imminent future of
protracted socioeconomic crisis, Kunstler foresees the progressive
dilapidation of subdivisions and strip malls, the depopulation of the
American Southwest, and, amid a world at war over oil, military invasions of
the West Coast; when the convulsion subsides, Americans will live in smaller
places and eat locally grown food.
You can purchase your
own copy here : The Long Emergency . You can get
more from James Howard Kunstler - including his artwork, information about
his other novels, and his blog - at his Web site : http://www.kunstler.com/
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