The Tory Party

Random Geo-Political Thoughts - part 1

I don’t think gas prices are high because of The Man. They are high because we are approaching the peak in global oil production. It’s not that we’re running out of oil (so the straw man “They say we’re running out of oil — but we have squillions of gallons left!” doesn’t stand). We’re running out of the easy-to-get oil that makes our super-high-energy-consuming lifestyles possible.

It’s like we have a magical milk-making cow that happens to have millions of dinosaurs worth of milk in it. We never had to worry about feeding the cow, but what we do have to think about is how much effort the farmer has to expend to milk the cow. At first, the cow was all full, and you only had to milk her for an hour to get a barrel. So the farmer just needs a glass of milk for breakfast, and he’s got enough energy to milk her that hour for a barrel.

Metaphorical cow

So Farmer’s one-glass breakfast gets enough milk for himself and everybody in the neighborhood. So cheap!

But much later the cow’s not so full. She may even have half as much milk as she ever did, but now it takes all day to get that barrel of milk. For breakfast, the farmer may need a whole cheese wheel. Maybe it took only a half-barrel of milk to make that cheese-wheel — but that means there’s only a half-barrel left for the rest of the neighborhood. So expensive!

Now imagine that the neighborhood built its whole lifestyle on the notion that it was going to have cheap milk forever. Everybody has forty cheese-eating kids and houses made of cheese and milk-powered water pumps and milk-powered lights and milk-powered cars.

So it’s a pickle.

What America saw in the 70s oil crisis was the peak in American oil production. Oh, man, we shoulda took a listen to that warning shot.

Global oil production may even have already peaked, and be seeing our prices actually artificially suppressed by the oil companies/Iraq ransacking. I hope that’s not the case. I hope we see oil and gas prices rise gradually, naturally, so the “Holy crap we gotta do something” moment happens while oil is still cheap enough to transition to something else. We can use solar power, but we ain’t got enough existing solar panels to power the creation of new ones. We can use wind power, but we ain’t got enough existing windmills to power the creation of new ones. And can someone tell me if biofuel is real or not?

Anyway — nothing beats the pure bang-for-the-buck of oil.

What can we do? I don’t think too terribly much until oil prices get uncomfortable enough (read shortages, gas lines, $5/gallon) to get everyone’s attention.

But there is one thing you can do to greatly improve your quality of life: Get an IUD.

Stay in school… cos it’s the best…

More information to come. But simply put an IUD means no matter what happens to plastics, pharmaceuticals and interstate commerce, you don’t have to risk having kids until you want to.