[Free]

Syriana is great - and although it doesn't rub peak oil in the audiences faces like many here maybe would like it - it delivers the message in a subtle way.

Remember, it's not a documentation or political speech, it's a piece of art, and as such it is worthy.

Stephen Gaghan is definitely aware about PO, heck he is even mentioning the Mad Max scenario in this great interview...

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')...

(I explain to Gaghan a glib exchange with a friend I had with a bit of truth to it: "I was talking to someone and they said “I don’t know if I want to see it, because it looks like a sequel to Traffic,” and I said -- glibly, but also seriously, “Don’t think of it as a sequel to Traffic; think of it as a prequel to Mad Max.” ... And the question is, at a certain point, the music’s going to stop, and everyone’s going to look around and say ‘Uhhhhh, where’s my chair?” I mean, you’ve done a certain amount of research; if there’s a civilian authority on these matters, it’s you. So, how long is the music going to keep going for oil?")

Well, they think we’re at peak production this year and next year, something like that, for global energy production, the most that we can ever can really get out; that we’ve hit the crest and oddly, I think everybody had this feeling – although not a one-to-one relationship – I think that what we were seeing, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it felt like the trailer of coming attractions, it felt like a preview. Like, holy cow – we are looking into Mad Max. Like, God, that is what it’s going to look like. It’s going to be racial; 'Us fat White people, we got all the shit we need; fuck you, poor people who happen to be Black or Mexican'; it really felt like you were looking at this Hobbsean future; it was just like he laid out. I don’t know; people have been making predictions; oddly, everybody I talked to in 2001, 2002, would have said for sure that Saudi Arabia was going to topple by now, that it was going to go down in flames to the Wahhabists. And weirdly, us going into Iraq, energy prices tripled; it tripled the price of a barrel of crude, which has poured so much money into the coffers of these regimes that they’ve been able to sustain themselves a little bit longer. They were going down; they were running out of money. And now, they’re like so loaded. Imagine if you could triple your Gross National Product overnight. They’re like ‘Go Bush! Go baby! Go Iraq, go Syria, go Iran! Keep it rollin! Let’s see if we can quintuple it, sextuple it!’

It’s astonishing how good war is for oil companies and oil traders. Anyone in the energy business (will tell you): Chaos is good for the energy business. And that’s the first thing they’ll tell you. They don’t feel good about it; but it’s true. I think we will hit a tipping point ... but I also think we’re so industrious, so creative … that there really will be a Manhattan Project-style ... I mean, we’re very close to having the writing on the wall for global warming, I believe; we’ve passed a tipping point and shit is going to start going haywire, and I think we’ll start talking in terms of carbon wedges and changing our lifestyles is going to happen very quickly. I don’t know if it’s going to be five years, 10 years 15 years … It’s definitely in our lifetime; our children are going to have very different lives. The carbon economy is going to shift; I don’t know if it’s a hydrogen economy, a sunlight economy; you’re not going to be flying around on jet planes the way you are now, probably; there are going to be changes. ... I don’t know; I’m not a futurist. But I did enough research into human nature, figuring out this one, that I’m absolutely certain that until it’s really dire, nothing’s going to change.

(The energy crisis of the '70s comes up; specifically, how we didn't seem to learn anything from that.)

It’s the same fuckers, man! It’s all the same Nixon guys; they got tossed out of office for a while with Carter. They came back with Reagan; they had a bad couple years under Poppy (George H. W. Bush), who wasn’t really hip to these guys, and then Clinton … and they’re all back! Just look at them! They’re all like a hundred and ten years old, they cut their teeth under the first Nixon administration ... they hang upside down like vampire bats when they’re out of power and they wait around. It’s the same guys: ‘Hey, don’t conserve energy! There’s no problem! Party on!’

[Encode]

Does anyone have a VHS / DVD / Tivo of the Charlie Rose & Stephen Gagan interview? I'd really like to see it but not really bad enough to give Charlie Rose & Co. $35 + shipping for a DVD. You can email me off list if you like, dalman@cox.net

[Eli]

I watched last night Joe Scarborough just rip apart Syrianna as un-American and traitorous with a couple of other panelists.

Some of the things he had a problem with was how the Oil Companies were shown to be so greedy and how they were able to influence the CIA.
He was also upset that it showed that the CIA was an organization that was willing to take out a nice Arab leader if it meant protecting the Oil companies interest and our own supply of oil.
Another was how the Oil companies wrote their own laws and bought of Congressmen.

First of all I am a conservative-independent by nature so most of the time I feel Scarborough is right on but this last night was laughable.

First off our Government has been concerned about securing oil assets since WWI and even more so in WWII when Roosevelt made the deal to set up the House of Saud. Hell part of the logic that was used to get us into Iraq was that we could not let a guy like Saddam get rich off of Oil because he would use it against us.

We invaded a whole country to take out one guy, which takes a lot more effort than just using a predator drone to take out some Sheik.

The other thing is it has been shown time and time again that all kinds of industries have written their own laws and then just gotten Congressmen to support their bills, no news their it is just a fact.

Really, even though the attack on the Sheik was sensationalist in the movie overall it was not that far from what really goes on in the world.

That being said, I thought Syrianna could have been much better it seemed to me that it tried to show how smart it was but ended up being overly convoluted. And the whole Matt Damon story line could have been cleaned up and his character could have been used more efficiently to advance the storyline. Really you could watch the whole movie and really come away not realizing just how important oil is to the US, that is a tragedy of the film.

[Dreamtwister]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'R')eally you could watch the whole movie and really come away not realizing just how important oil is to the US, that is a tragedy of the film.

[Eli]

I agree, they could have even just thrown in an admit conversation by the Oil Company executive or the Congressmen about how if we lost access to the oil from the fictional Gulf State, the US way of life was over and their would be massive unemployment and it would herald in the next Great Depression. He should have pointed out how we are hanging by a very thin thread.

But alas that does not come through in the film.

I still find it funny that Scarborough was up in arms so much over it. The fact that it is in the US vital interest that we secure access to oil can not be overstated. And most of his complaints about the film are actually the reality of the situation.

[rogerhb]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'I')Some of the things he had a problem with was how the Oil Companies were shown to be so greedy and how they were able to influence the CIA.

[0mar]

Has Scarbourgh even looked at the history of the CIA? If you put the CIA foreign involvements next to the KGB's foreign involvement, they'd pretty much read identical.

[jaws]

Matt Damon's character in the movie was pretty pro-American, and it almost kills him.

[Eli]

It really was as if he was trying to say that the US wouldn't do what is necessary to retain control of oil resources.

If the CIA is not involved in trying to keep Oil resources within US reach what the hell are they good for?

The single most important resource to the US economy and the CIA is not going to get involved?

[wagdog]

According to Lord Browne, CEO of BP, the movie Syriana is based on mythology. If the CEO of BP says peak oil is a myth, then it must be true. It's just a bunch of evil governments monopolising the oil.

In reality, the world's base of oil and gas is strong and the amount that can be recovered is constantly being expanded as technology advances.

The other side of the coin, however, is the myth that says since there is an ample resource base, there is no need for concern. The reality is that much of the oil and gas yet to be recovered is controlled by governments and not private companies. Often, these governments have their own interests, many of which don't align with the interests of energy consumers.

But one has to grimace at the stuff about climate change:

The bigger challenge is how the industry faces climate change. Many companies, including BP, have accepted the precautionary principle that states while the science of climate change isn't certain, the mounting evidence cannot be ignored. "We can't afford to wait for certainty," said Browne.

If these companies have accepted the precautionary principle, why do they spend so much money on PR campaigns attacking the validity of climate change science?

[emersonbiggins]

Way late, but I caught 'Syriana' tonight on DVD. It left me baffled, but that probably was the desired effect of the producer, considering what previous posters have said. The serpentine nature of the oil corporatocracy, as portrayed by the movie, seems entirely possible in real life, but I've little experience when it comes to the business of running the world economy. Corruption has to be a part of the game, though, I'm sure of that.

BTW, I'm trying to ascertain something in regard to ME politics. I know about the nonworking underclasses of the ME, Saudi Arabia esp., that turn to the "charitable hospitality" of Wahabbism, but are there undercurrents of a turn towards independent modernity, completely sovereign from the West? That is something that I haven't considered, the fight for liberty that's impossible to achieve with the decidedly pro-US puppets in power. In other words, liberty desired in spite of the US, not derived from it. If true, it certainly paints a far less black/white image of the ME - a good thing, if you ask me.

[Eddie_lomax]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('emersonbiggins', '
')BTW, I'm trying to ascertain something in regard to ME politics. I know about the nonworking underclasses of the ME, Saudi Arabia esp., that turn to the "charitable hospitality" of Wahabbism, but are there undercurrents of a turn towards independent modernity, completely sovereign from the West? That is something that I haven't considered, the fight for liberty that's impossible to achieve with the decidedly pro-US puppets in power. In other words, liberty desired in spite of the US, not derived from it. If true, it certainly paints a far less black/white image of the ME - a good thing, if you ask me.

[Wednesday]

Oh I just really liked Prince Nasir (hey that's Dr. Julian!).

Loved the way his face lit up when he was talking about reform with his ministers. For him, it wasn't just about oil.

I noticed in the last few minutes of the movie that his own wife was wearing trousers and a blouse with her hair well groomed but falling loose and long. She looked beautiful and comfortable in her Western wardrobe. She would have needed his unwavering support to pull that off. Loved that guy.

[threadbear]

Syriana is a great movie, though confusing the first time you watch it. It's really better the second time through. Nasir was a fantastic guy and it's important to note that there are many like him in the Middle East, but they are generally dismissed as rebels, revolutionaries, resisters, by the Western powers, and if they take it one step further, terrorists.