On Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:23:02 -0400 Jon Bosak <[email protected]> writes:
> Here's an article that puts the fracking issue into a larger
> context:
>
> http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/KI24Dj02.html
In this article Michael Klare makes a strong case for the likelyhood of
decades more of heavy dependence on fossil fuels. He says market forces -
rising global energy demand and shrinking supply causing rising energy
prices - will drive a race to extract ever more costly, lower quality
fossil fuels, of which fracked gas is only one. This will cause untold
environmental damage but will happen anyway in his view. I find his
scenario persuasive because for decades I have found Klare to be a
reliable source on the geopolitics of natural resource control.
Klare has little to say about the question I find most interesting: How
will energy consumption patterns respond to rising energy price, and how
will that affect the quality of life of the average person? I have tended
to be pessimistic about this, but there are so many key variables to
consider, often pulling in different directions, and so few are trained
to study big picture dynamics, that a wide range of scenarios has
emerged, often reflecting a focus on just the variables a given
specialist can handle.
For example, Klare says:
"So great is our demand for energy, and so well-entrenched the existing
systems for delivering the fuels we consume, that (barring a staggering
surprise) we will remain for years to come in a no-man's-land between the
Petroleum Age and an age that will see the great flowering of renewable
energy. Think of this interim period as -- to give it a label -- the Era
of Xtreme Energy, and in just about every sense imaginable from pricing
to climate change, it is bound to be an ugly time."
Maybe. He does make a good case for a long, bitter tail on the Petroleum
Age, and its environmental consequences. But why won't rising energy
costs drive people in the US to reduce energy use by reducing our energy
extravagance and waste that is enormous even compared to other highly
industrialized societies like Europe and Japan ? This argument just
applies to energy consumption the same market forces argument that Klare
applies to derive his energy production scenario.
Today, per capita average energy consumption in France is still only a
fraction of ours. I lived in Europe at various times during the
1950s-1970s before their recent expansion of auto use competing with
public transport, supermarkets encroaching on farmers markets, outbreaks
of suburban sprawl and other attempts to copy "the American dream".
European energy use during that period was even much lower than it is in
Europe today. Yet I did not feel like I was living in Third World
poverty. Actually I felt my quality of life to be higher than living in
the US.
I get Klare's analysis that global conflict over dwindling supplies of
energy and other resources is likely to be ugly. But what is going to
stop us from converting our housing, transportation, food production,
etc. to forms that use far less energy, ways of living that worked in
Europe and still do today to an extent unknown in the US, as our present
way of life becomes increasingly expensive and unaffordable? Is Klare
counting on us remaining stuck like spoiled brats in the distorted values
of our "happy motoring" dream?
Karl North
Northland Sheep Dairy, Freetown, New York USA
www.geocities.com/northsheep/
"Pueblo que canta no morira" - Cuban saying
"They only call it class warfare when we fight back" - Anon.
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