In this series we have been focusing on the foreign policy considerations, as well as other aspects, of the peak oil reality.In one previous post on this subject matter, The Peak Of The Oil Wars - 2, we noted how strange it would be if Iraq became the number one producer of oil in the world, as expected by Lloyd's of London and others.
That eventuality was especially interesting when considered while looking back at the anti-war left research and subsequent assertions that the Iraq war was actually preplanned as an oil war.
That is, beginning from Vice President Dick Cheney's secret meetings with oil barons, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars never were wars based on the foreign policy considerations publicly stated by the U.S. government.
Instead, these were wars based upon imperialistic notions to militarily control the basic oil supplies in the middle east that were in the gun sights of oil barons.
We have also taken a look at Afghanistan in the context of that imperialistic struggle to control oil, which we see as civilization's drug of choice.
War is only one aspect of the future for world civilization as oil production reaches the peak, then begins to diminish as a viable source of energy because such hydrocarbons simply will no longer be available.
So we focus in this post on some of the other eventualities moving toward us rapidly in the wake of the years following "peak oil".
I found a white paper concerning the entire issue, from beginning to end so to speak, which has some monumental statements in it:
The rise of modern western civilization is not merely a product of human ingenuity and free-market principles ... The industrial revolution, and all the things it brought, is little more than a tale of mankind's taming of the dark flames of fossil fuels.(Coal & Oil: The Dark Monarchs, page 40, PDF, emphasis added). This led to the old "military industrial complex" which alarmed some American leaders, but never-the-less it became the essence of civilization as we know it anyway.
The future of civilization as we know it, then, likewise does not turn on the mastery of machines of technology alone, which will die out or run out of gas too as the hydrocarbon remains of ancient life forms becomes unobtainium.
Instead, the future turns on the ability to convert machines so they will be able to use renewable energy (the replacements for oil, coal, and other derivative fuels we call hydrocarbons).
This reality can be grasped by recalling the behavior of addicts who are cut off from their drug, then extrapolating that singular behavior into the group behavior of civilization as we know it (an oil addict):
The present dominance and dependence on coal and oil along with natural gas will also make the issue of resource depletion strongly connected to energy security. Globalization has been fuelled by cheap and abundant energy, traded as a commodity in a free market. Increasing conflict over scarce energy would undermine the very foundations of the world-wide social, economic, and political normalization processes that have been observed over the past few centuries. It is not surprising that concern has been expressed regarding potential energy shortages, insecurity of supply and price volatility by various researchers, agencies and organizations. The Lloyd's insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs (often better known as Chatham House) recently said that business is underestimating the catastrophic consequences of declining oil supply ... An industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security, consisting of six UK companies, also concluded that peak oil was an urgent, clear, and present challenge ... The US military also foresee a massive oil crunch is inevitable without massive expansion of production and refining capacity ... By 2012 ... surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in oil output could reach nearly 10 Mb/d.(ibid, page 87, emphasis added). Civilization became a military industrial complex at first, but it morphed from there.
Dredd Blog readers know that this blog replaced the older term military industrial complex with a more modern descriptive term "military oil media complex", or MOMCOM.
Dredd Blog sees that imperialistic oil addiction is taking over policy as America's industries are "shipped overseas".
Dredd Blog sees that the media became a business of keeping the public deceived about the realities around them, as it morphed away from real news information into consumer entertainment providers.
In short, civilization has been sold a bill of goods which ended up being a bill of bads so addictive that there seems to be no way out, what with the current state of ineptness in government.
Even if we found a new source of oil with the "drill baby drill" ideology of those who are criminally insane, civilization as we know it would still be destroyed, because global warming will have the same effects that peak oil will have.
The only way out is to master one of the renewable energy solutions we have been aware of for these many years.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
