What kind of moron does US General Rick Lynch think we are? I'm watching News Hour with Jim Lehrer. Lynch was holding a press conference trying to tell us we are not seeing the emergence of an Iraqi civil war, it's just the Iraq security forces putting down insurgents.... thousands and thousands of insurgents. Yeah and black isn't black, it's now "non-white".
Speaking of the middle east, I saw Syriana today. Powerful film, easily the best film I have seen in the last year. I had a headache and felt sick as I left the cinema. Another Section Eight hit run, their strongest yet. This is an amazing year for Hollywood. A small group of film-makers are on the front foot in presenting to the general public some of the things that are wrong with western imperialism and demonstrating why the short-sighted policies of the last 60 years, and our continued addiction to middle-eastern oil, is coming back to bite us on the arse. Go see it, tell your friends to go see it, then come tell me what we are going to do about it.
I thought Syriana was very moving too - not only for it's impactful content. The US oil companies & intelligence community have lots to answer for, especially in the Middle East. I love the way the small film-makers are gettin their message out about this stuff.
What to do about oil-addiction? High oil prices are already accelerating alternative energy-source developments. That won't be enough. Short-term, city people have to move less, move in abd drive a ton less. High petrol prices have already put more people on bicycles, but that's still not enough.
Post WW2 urban development (like Melbourne & Sydney) grew up around the car & cheap oil. That spawned an urban infrastructre (freeways, airlines, trucking networks) based on the mass production/mass consumption economic paradigm. Deep, long-lasting solutions to oil-addition involve changing the economic paradigm.
Carlota Perez (www.carlotaperez.org) has lots to say about this. It's happening now, but it'll probably take a couple of decades before it's done. Read her 2002 book for more.
Posted by: Fred Pugsley | Sunday, February 26, 2006 at 09:32 AM
We;re going to keep using oil until, essentially, it becomes too expensive to pull out of the ground. I was listening to a guy talk about this the other night. So the Earth will never actually run out of oil -- man will simply deem it to expensive to drill, instead, he reckoned.
Fact of the matter is, there's no need for it. I also recently saw a how which spoke about a car Chrysler (I think) developed back in the 50s that would run on just about anything. They even ran it on scotch! So the ability to run machines, etc, on alternate fuels has been around for awhile... it just depends on how much money governments want to throw at them, to make them as affordable as oil burners.
Posted by: Rob Irwin | Wednesday, March 01, 2006 at 12:52 PM