PDA

View Full Version : Arianna Huffington's Anti-SUV piece


bebeto
10-31-2002, 03:07 PM
Arianna Huffington article (http://www.salon.com/news/col/huff/2002/10/22/oil/index.html)

I thought this was pretty funny stuff. Here you go, Mr. and Mrs. America. Now where did I place that bong?

Wouldn't it be something if Bush got off his keister and did like Kennedy did for NASA, a la, "we will be fossil-fuel free in twenty years". Huge science and technology grants for renewable energy research. No grants anymore for fossil fuel research, only fossil fuel conservation.

Major tax breaks for recycling and conservation. Not this lame thousand off your gross kind of break, either. Big breaks for companies too. Think about the offices, schools, stores where you work. Is there any motivation to conserve energy? Come on! When budget cutting comes around, it's usually people getting cut before the lights do. How about the zillion CRTs sucking down the wattage?

You use less water than average, you get a tax break, you use less energy, you use less gas, you use less heating oil or natural gas than average, you get a break, etc. Ride a bike, take a bus, take a train, ka-ching! Hell, the phone company's computers could figure out all that, the same way they handle cell phone bills. (Saints preserve us.) A Republican could probably sell it to his fellow money-grubbing ilk. Jump-start the economy, you damned hee-haw! Put all them unix geeks and venture capitalists back to work! Pay all the yahoos getting laid off from Lucent to figure out how to pipe sunshine down fiber optic cable.

daniel
10-31-2002, 03:37 PM
An Apollo Program for Energy?

www.msnbc.com/news/828636.asp?cp1=1#TOP (http://www.msnbc.com/news/828636.asp?cp1=1#TOP)

bebeto
11-01-2002, 08:03 AM
Yes! The author has the idea. But on the political side of that article, notice there isn't really anything coming out of Washington. Bush needs a Road to Damascus conversion for anything good to come out of his lips. It's amazing how many reports and studies come out about the coming crises of energy and ecology while absolutely nothing but more rape, pillage, and plunder comes from the wonks on high. Money talks. We have to make it worthwhile to the selfish. I envision some great Malthusian reckoning about fifty years out, if not sooner. 2012? That's something else, I guess.

Anyone here ever read Roald Dahl's first book called Some Time Never: a Fable for Supermen? Not what I would call a children's story at all! After man wipes himself out, the elves or gremlins take over. A good, depressing read. Dahl wrote it right after WWII, or possibly during it. It was published in 1948. It's pretty hard to find.

daniel
11-01-2002, 09:03 AM
Check out the book Hubbert's Peak by Kenneth Duffeyes, a former oil company geologist now Princeton Professor (there is a website for it also). Duffeyes says the peak of world oil production is next year, with exponential spikes in extraction costs afterwards (oil production follows a bell curve). By 2008, he is confident there will be world-wide shortages, rolling black outs, and price spikes across the globe -- even if the US occupies the entire Middle East.

I think all of these issues seem to be coalescing beautifully around the 2012 "transformation" date.

John Hoopes
12-07-2002, 08:43 PM
This paper on The World Petroleum Life Cycle (http://dieoff.com/page133.htm) is also worth considering.