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Gas prices: we're to blame
Jan Frel, AlterNet
With gas prices at an all-time high, Democrats, Republicans and President Bush are all quick to point blame. But they're ignoring the biggest offender: all of us.

As the price of gas hovers in the mid-$3 range across the country, and the price of gas rising on the poll charts as an issue of concern for American citizens, out come a series of dueling calls for federal investigations, tax cuts and trust-busting from the political leadership in Washington.

Leading the Democrats' charge has been New York senator and serial grandstander Chuck Schumer who called for a study to consider the break up of the oil industry and a federal investigation into price gouging on the part of oil companies.

...The problem with media and political responses like the ones we've heard so far is that they don't even begin to address the central reason why gas prices are going through the roof -- the global supply of oil is having a hard time meeting demand, and the United States is built to consume a quarter of all of it -- on a daily basis.

Not only this, Schumer's complaint about an unexplained 5 percent production margin and Bush's move to divert oil from the strategic reserve to gas stations displays how narrow the gap has become between full supply and fuel shortages. Seventy thousand barrels pumped into the American oil supply isn't going to do much for gas prices when you take into account that the United States consumes more than 20 million each day. Those are tinkering solutions at best, and they are a massive distraction from any kind of serious approach to the scale of what we're facing.

It may well be a fine thing for our politicians to break up the big oil companies, establish a windfall profits tax on them, open federal investigations into price gouging, and fund incentives for alternative fuels and lithium batteries, but none of them address the principal cause of all this demand for oil: the average car-driving American citizen.
(26 April 2006)
Related:
Gas price rant by David Roberts at Gristmill.
Might as well face it: We're addicted to oil (Portland Oregonian)

A socialist response to the massive rise in fuel prices
Socialist Equality Party, World Socialist Web Site
The staggering increase in gasoline prices is taking an enormous toll on working families in the US...

Some 70 percent of US adults recently polled said gas prices—which are up 31 percent since last year—were causing them financial hardship. Tens of millions of people in America forced to drive long distances to work, as well as elderly people on fixed incomes, rural residents and small business owners are being devastated, and the crisis could lead to mass layoffs in the airline and trucking industries and throughout the economy.

Underlying this crisis is the fundamental contradiction between the development of the productive forces and the social relations of the capitalist profit system....

...While the oil companies and their apologists in Washington have blamed world crude oil prices and environmental regulations for the price hikes, the chief cause is profiteering by oil companies, which are posting record windfalls.

...That the present reliance on petroleum is both unsustainable and a deadly threat is indisputable. The world’s crude oil reserves are finite and will only disappear all the more rapidly to the extent that steps are taken to expand production. At the same time, the burning of these fossil fuels is the central cause of global warming, which—the Bush administration’s suppression of science notwithstanding—threatens to make Earth uninhabitable.

Moreover, the pursuit of this finite resource has given rise to the catastrophic growth of militarism.

... Neither a short-term answer to the present crisis over gas prices, nor the longer-term solution to replacing an unsustainable petroleum-based economy is possible outside of a direct assault on the capitalist profit system and the powerful social, financial and political interests that are behind the policies of Big Oil.

The Socialist Equality Party advances a policy that places social needs before profit interests. We call for an immediate capping of gas prices for individual consumers and small to medium-sized businesses at $1.50 per gallon.
(26 April 2006)
As rising oil prices exert hardship on working and middle classes, I think we can expect a resurgence of leftist and populist politics.

In my opinion, no Marxist group has ever been very good on resource and environment issues - witness the call to cap gas prices in the above article. In recent years, some independent Marxists have been attempting to combine Marxist and green ideas, for example, the late Mark Jones and John Bellamy Foster.
-BA

An overdose of pessimism
David Biello, Scientific American blog
According to James Lovelock, father of the Gaia hypothesis that the Earth is one giant living organism, we're doomed. In recent writings, including his book "The Revenge of Gaia", he explains: "We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable."

He is referring, of course, to global warming, which he likens to an eon's long fever for the planet. Because humanity is responsible for this warming that makes us the pathogen, a bleak take on our role in the wider world. And for Lovelock, it is probably too late for us to do much about it (except by a rapid and complete switch to nuclear power).

Lovelock is not alone. A host of doomsayers--from James Kunstler in his "The Long Emergency" to Matt Savinar on his blog "Life After the Oil Crash"--predict the end of civilization as we know it with the end of our culture's life blood: oil. Not unlike Thomas Malthus predicting mass starvation based on an imbalance between population and food production in the 19th century, they believe that humanity cannot surmount its present addiction to oil.

They may be right. Just because humanity invented its way out of a food crisis to prove Malthus wrong is no reason to think that we can do it again when so much of our lives--the fuel to run our transportation, the electricity to power the computers that dominate our lives (and on which I am writing and posting this screed), and yes, our food production--rely on ever-diminishing and ever-polluting fossil fuel resources, primarily oil.

In essence, humanity is in a race against time. We need new, cleaner energies to power our modern lives. We will either solve the problem or, as Lovelock points out, the problem will solve us. As others like the Apollo Alliance have pointed out, it will take the financial commitment and persistence of the U.S. Apollo Project to reach the moon--and more. Thus far, that commitment seems to be lacking from the U.S. government.

Or is it?
(24 April 2006)

It ain't just the oil you use, it's the way that you use it
Elliot Fishman, The Age (Australia)
[Overview of peak oil]

...The Australian Government has set up an inquiry, Australia's Future Oil Supply and Alternative Transport Fuels. One of the 176 submissions received was from Peter Newman, chairman of the West Australian Sustainability Roundtable. Professor Newman notes: "Some households are using 40 per cent of their income just to travel around to jobs and services. This will become intolerable after peak oil."

The problem is magnified in the outer suburbs. With smaller average incomes, longer trip distances and fewer alternatives to the car, outer-suburban communities are highly vulnerable to rising petrol prices.

...Our present living pattern relies on large amounts of cheap oil. The oil is running out and becoming more expensive. Technology can help to develop more sustainable patterns of energy consumption. However, the key to the problem is to reduce energy use. Reducing our reliance on oil will depend upon reduced car use. Car use and associated infrastructure accounts for more than a third of global oil consumption.

It is essential that we reduce the need to travel great distances and make non-car alternatives more attractive. Our cities have a built-in dependence on the car. Designing urban developments to facilitate higher densities and better conditions for walking and cycling is essential. A reallocation of road space is necessary for this to occur.

Extending public transport to all areas of the city is vital, as is increasing the frequency and reliability of public transport. Dedicated tram and bus routes must be created to increase the relative speed of public transport over the private car.

...Reducing car use will help our oil problem and improve our general quality of life.

Elliot Fishman is director of the Institute for Sensible Transport.
(27 April 2006)

Oil minister asserts Iran won't cut exports despite nuclear standoff
Wall Stret Journal
In the past decade, Iranian output has stagnated at about four million barrels a day with the involvement in recent years of a handful of foreign oil companies. Meanwhile, Iran's domestic consumption has soared, reducing crude-oil exports, now about 2.5 million barrels a day. Domestic gasoline use has significantly outstripped domestic refining capacity, forcing Iran to import large volumes.

... Already, [capacity expansion] efforts are being slowed by sharply declining output at its existing fields. ... Mr. Vaziri said the country needs the big, new investment to create fresh crude-oil production capacity of some 1.3 million barrels a day by 2010. But with average output-decline rates of some 6% to 7% a year from existing fields, those new fields would only bring a net addition of some 500,000 barrels a day in the time period, he said.

That plan doesn't account for another problem: soaring domestic consumption, which is eating into the amount of Iranian oil available for export. Mr. Vaziri said his country's gasoline use is growing at an eye-popping rate of 10% a year. Already, Iran is importing 25 million liters a day of gasoline, equivalent to nearly 160,000 barrels a day. Plans to add new refining capacity could gobble up another 500,000 barrels a day of Iranian crude production -- leaving no new crude to export to the rest of the world.

"We have a problem in the use of gasoline," Mr. Vaziri said.

Analysts say Iran's oil output prospects are dimmer. The decline rates cited by Mr. Vaziri add up to a loss of at least one million barrels a day by 2010. Just to keep its output steady, Iran would have to add that much in new production. With rising gasoline use, Iran's oil exports could slip, even without the impact of any sanctions.
(26 April 2006)
Submitter Cal writes:

This is a front page (below the fold) article in today's WSJ (paid subscription required). It may be posted for free at www.post-gazette.com/businessnews in a day or two.

The article is quite supportive of Jeffrey J. Brown's theory about declining net export capability [What the mainstream media are not telling you about the run up in oil prices]