Ending a Century of Oil Addiction
Have we seen it all before? (Coal in the UK)
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CENTURY- ENERGY------- FORM TRANSPORT MODE LEADER
1800s....... Coal............. Locomotives, Steamships Britain
1900s....... Oil................ Cars, Aircraft U.S.A.
Millennium. Low Emission. "Sustainable Transport"? BRIC Countries?

"In understanding America's recent actions, and its future economic imperatives is useful to compare the increasingly outmoded US transportation system with the burden that Britain had in shaking off its coal dependency. I think of the American transportation infrastructure as a once-friendly beast of burden, which proved useful in building the economy in the 20th century. But now in the 21st, that beast is obsolete and has grown to become a voracious monster, crying out to be fed, and pushing America to act as a global bully to get what US consumers need. Unfortunately, it is not easy to get rid of such a beast. Huge capital expenditures have been made to build and sustain the system the way it is now. For example, the past 5-10 years have brought a huge increase in property prices, with new condos and suburban homes springing up across the country, all supported by a big jump in US mortgage debt. This has left America with two related and dangerous addictions: to cheap oil, and to cheap dollar debt. They are unlikely to stay cheap. America is uniquely and hugely vulnerable to a rise in oil prices and/or to rising interest rates."

Some alarming comparisons:

Energy Efficiency per capita
COUNTRY--------- OIL DAILY ELECTRIC PER ANNUM
United States..... 68.81 bbls 12,187 kWh/year (2006)
United Kingdom.. 30.18 bbls 5,784 kWh (2003)
World................ 12.55 bbls 2,215 kWh (2003 est.)

"Meantime, America does not lead in everything related to transport. It has a much smaller mass transit system, and far fewer passenger railways than most other developed countries. (Perhaps this is one reason why Warren Buffett has begun to invest in US railways.) The Japanese are the world champions in travel by rail, with a per capita average of 1,900 km (*2). At 1,730 km, the Swiss are not far behind, and further back you will find France (1,060 km), Germany (890 km), and the United Kingdom (490 km). Three BRIC nations use a decent amount of rail, considering their less mature stage of economic development, with Russia tops (at 990 km), followed by China (504 km), and India (370 km). No data was available for Brazil, which has a much less mobile population than the other three. Where does the US fit in? Way behind all of those that I have listed, at only 140 kilometers annually per capita, sandwiched between Thailand and Pakistan. The average American has only 7% of the rail travel of Japanese passengers."

@: http://www.financialsense.com/fsu/editorials/2007/0522.html

Read the entire article Dr Bubb, fascinating stuff.

That and the thesis put forward on here a couple of days ago about the parallels today with 1920-1945 which led directly to the usurping of the UK by the US in the global economy through the dollar buying up the world in boom, bust and war have both made me think about the bigger picture anew.

One thought, though. There is little evidence that China will be in exactly the same place the UK and US were to accelerate from the rest of the world. They don't have a ready-made paradigm-shifting energy source. Their one hope is to spend their huge reserves to develop new energy sources and then sell the technology to the rest of the world. But there is little sign of that happening. And even if it did, it's not as if they can just dig and find something.

America maintains a strong army for a reason


if oil went high enough so that it truly hurt Americans and their politicians, expect a nice year of "it is the worlds oil, god created the oil for all his children, not just the sand heads"

then in goes America to take their "fair share" of oil.





America will not take a recession if it can help it.

Yes and the greedy American oil companies such as Shell, BP, Total etc. have lined their pockets with the riches from oil and at the same time have exploited the poor Arab peoples by lining their pockets too. Shame.

Not only that, the greedy Japanese have exploited the Arabs too as they have no oil of their own and have had the audacity to buy it from the Arabs enriching them even more! No wonder the Arabs are angry at the West--er, East--er South, hang on..........................

what are you talking about?? i mentioned that if lack of oil becomes a problem, america has the military to take it!


also

you think $70 per barrel is making the arab nations rich?


iraq outputs 3million barrels a day, even if they got the whole $70 per barrel (which they do not!) it would equate to $76.5 billion per year. didn’t America spend 800billion on the war? goes to show how cheap oil is

The evil oil companies such as BP, Shell, Total Texaco etc. have been taking it for years. Lining their pockets and the pockets of the Arab elite while the poor fester and turn to terrorism.

America and the UK are simply paying the price of the failure by the Arab nations to share the wealth among their people. Had the trillions of $$$ earned from oil be invested in the ARab nations to eradicate poverty the Terrorist problem would not exist.

yep i can agree with that

You think that can ever actually work? No way. Wars in oil patches reduce global production.

mmmmm oil companies. Big long on sh22, tuesday morning should be nice.

None of those are American!

You mean the American military that can't even control Iraq?

The Japanese are the current masters at energy efficiency as far as I know.

You know what you are talking about.

Why don't we either build a massive nuclear reactor on the moon and transmit the energy back to earth in the form of concentrated electromagnetic radiation

or

build nuclear reactors all over the earth and blast the waste into orbit? There's nothing out there, a bit of radiation isn't going to cause any harm. We could keep our car habit, simply use electric batteries which can be swapped at service stations in the same you you refill a car.

Out of interest, how cheap is it to produce energy by nuclear means as opposed to oil/gas/coal fired stations?

iraq, a nation with no standing army, navy, or air force to speak of


you really think the worlds most powerful military cant control a nation with nothing to fight with.


if the shit hit the fan , America can EASILLY take over the oil fields and set up a secure area, just mine and claymore a 50km radius of the fields and sit 50k troops there. how are these "terrorists" going to even get close. the only problem is... will the rest of the world permit this action

There are three spheres of power:
+ Economic power
+ Political power
+ Military power

When you rely on the last one alone, you are perceived as a bully. Right now, China is using the first two, and the USA is relying mainly upon the third. This is not making America popular. And China gains political power (ie the power to persuade), when it uses its rising economic power effectively.

The other problem is, America's military power will fade away slowly, as its economic power fades. Remember the fate of the Soviet Union? There is a riskthe USA will go into collapse as its economic power continues to wane.

The imperial over-reach led by Bush, and assisted by Blair, greatly speeded up the decline of the American Empire. Dark days lie just ahead, i fear

Indeed. And they've proven utterly unable even to control that place.... imagine if they had any real opposition.



Are you seriously claiming that Iraq is 'under control'?



LOL. You should send your CV to Bush, you sound like just the kind of General he needs in charge of Iraq... delusional and assured of the utter supremacy of the US forces even when they've been proven useless in the real world.

The US military is a paper tiger and it's being rapidly worn out by the occupation of Iraq. They're not going to be invading anywhere else any time soon.

I wouldn't bet on it fading away slowly; they're looking at trillions of dollars of repairs and new equipment just to recover from Iraq, and where's that going to come from if the US economy is in a deep recession?

If you read the entire FS article, you will see that figures for Japan are included.
Their energy efficiency is quite good, and they are one of the top developed oil-consuming nations which have developed their economy so it is best able to cope with higher oil prices. Hong Kong also is not bad

building a car on the moon would be more expensive than building a nuclear power plant on earth.



the reason for the move from coal to oil was because it is a much better energy source and cheaper than coil for what it gives.
if we need and have another energy revolution it will require the same thing, ie it would need to be cheaper and easier to use than oil


i think our next revolution, or at lest half revolution in energy will be efficiency.

yes, if the aim is to stay there as long as you can






well, remember Shock and awe at the beginning? if they wanted to cripple a nation like iraq all they need to do is continue that on for a month longer with very little risk and pretty low cost!

[quote name='cells' date='May 27 2007, 07:55 AM' post='649834']
what are you talking about?? i mentioned that if lack of oil becomes a problem, america has the military to take it!
also

they only have the military to take it,if other countries around get a perceived benefit.

the saudis may not want a nuclear iran throwing it's weight around in the region,but the russians....who equally well don't want such are willing to flog arms to the iranians,to bring america down a notch.

the germans would be quite happy to see a confrontation between a resurgent russia and america,because the best case is it will bankrupt them both....the worst case is...all out war,leaving germany in pole position to gain economic superpower status.

they're all a bunch of nutters in power....and they ALL want to wear the trousers.
old habits die hard.

I recently read this paper, the author of which lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union, and now makes a compelling case that US is also headed for collapse (but is less prepared for this event than the FSU): Closing the Collapse Gap...

That presentation is very thought-provoking, and was discussed extensively on a GEI thread

link: http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=1970

The Oil Addiction article has been picked up by several websites so far

Damn right RB you hit the nail on the head with that one, just like the West moved their people forward with the economic behemoth of the industrial revolution the arabs nd middle eatern countries should have moved their people forward with their riches in oil.

they didn't, the middle east is a sign of what greed and corruption leeds to.

And a worrying example for those who are concerned about incraesing wealth concentrations in the west

Interesting article. The main weakness in the argument is that Britain was already the dominant world power at the the end of the Napoleonic War when the Industrial Revolution had barely started. The British Empire was largely built using sailing ships not steamships.

Some other countries, like Spain, might disagree with that assessment.
And depending upon what period of Napoleon's reign you are talking about, so would the French

Thanks for the GEI link, some v useful posts there. A couple of years ago Dr Colin Campbell gave a series of presentations explaining why the decline of oil could well seriously undermine the whole basis of finance by bringing into question the banks' practice of issuing 'instruments of debt' rather than real money backed by solid collateral. Here's a link to the presentation he made at a 1 day conference in Edinburgh (btw I attended): The Second Great Depression: Causes & Responses

From Campbell's paper:

"The First Half of the Age of Oil now closes. It lasted 150 years and saw the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade, agriculture and financial capital, allowing the population to expand six-fold. The financial capital was created by banks with confidence that Tomorrow?s Expansion, fuelled by oil-based energy, was adequate collateral for To-day?s Debt.

The Second Half of the Age of Oil now dawns, and will be marked by the decline of oil and all that depends on it, including financial capital. It heralds the collapse of the present Financial System, and related political structures, speaking of a Second Great Depression.

But there are survival strategies. Governments may be persuaded to sign the Depletion Protocol whereby imports are cut to match world depletion rate, such that world prices fall into reasonable relationship with cost, and profiteering from shortage avoided; the current monumental waste of energy may be reduced; renewable energies from wave, tide, wind, solar, hydro and geothermal sources may be brought in; and the nuclear option re-evaluated.

The survivors, whose numbers may not greatly exceed those of the pre-oil age, may find silver linings as they rediscover rural living, regionalism, diversity and local markets, coming to live in better harmony with themselves, each other, and the environment in which Nature has ordained them to live. But the transition will be a time of great tension, including international tension as consumers vie for access to dwindling supplies, and as city life becomes unsustainable"

I read somewhere that Japanese goods have a 5% cost advantage over US goods due to energy efficiency alone.