[savethehumans]

One story posted here at this site has the chiefs of Shell and ExxonMobil pontificating on how renewables AREN'T the answer, fossil fuels are, and somehow they've got to continue to be. This, I believe is the new party line for Big Oil in a P.O. world. This segment of the story says it best:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')lternative energy sources, such as renewables, will not fill the gap, says Mr van der Veer, who forecasts that even with major technological breakthroughs, renewables could account for only 30 per cent of energy supply by the middle of the century.

“Contrary to public perceptions, renewable energy is not the silver bullet that will soon solve all our problems,” he writes.

The warning from Royal Dutch Shell coincides with a critique of public energy policy by Rex Tillerson, the chief executive of ExxonMobil.

Speaking at the Royal Institute for International Affairs in London, Mr Tillerson pointed to a widespread failure by policymakers to understand the extent to which the aspirations of people in developing countries are fuelling growth in demand for energy.

Mr Tillerson said that world energy demand would rise by 45 per cent by 2030, and fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – were the only energy sources of sufficient size, adaptability and affordability to meet the world’s needs.

Mr van der Veer casts doubt today on the oil and gas industry’s ability to keep up with accelerating demand. “Just when energy demand is surging, many of the world’s conventional oilfields are going into decline,” he writes.

Although there is no shortage of oil and gas in the ground, Mr van der Veer says, the industry currently lacks the technology to recover even half of that resource.

[alpha480v]

Oil will have to be used because that is what we have to fuel the 200 million cars in the US. Alternative fuels won't allow these 200 million vehicles to fuel up at the gas stations. We Americans love our cars and will drive them until the end. Our planet will be raped for every last drop of easily extracted oil to maintain the status quo.

The citizens will plead to the government to do something about these outrageous gasoline prices. It is the greedy oil companies, and the Arabs fault anyway, Right?

It is too late to save our lifestyle. This problem should have been taken seriously by the government back in the 1970'S when Carter said Houston we have a problem.

Now we are on the long spiral down to 3rd world status. It's been fun!

[FoxV]

keep in mind that nobody is actually interested in solutions, they're all just interested in money and whatever they can do to keep the gravy train going.

Until there is a prolonged crisis, we can expect to see more of this infighting amoung the different solutions. Renewables will fight Non-renewables, Oil will fight Gas, ethanol will fight biodiesel, solar will fight wind, etc etc...

until one day the public realizes, hey they're all correct, none of them will work, and all the time will be wasted arguing amongst themselves.

Peakoil didn't have to be a crisis, but it will.

[dohboi]

Fox, PO DIDN"T have to be a crisis, if we had started preparing diligently 30 years ago and continued diligently through today. But now, it almost surely will be a huge crisis. Read some books, check out posts here. The time is long past to avoid massive disruptions.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be making major changing to do whatever softening we can. England reduced domestic petrol use by some 90% during WWII. Sure there were great hardships, but not mass starvation...In fact later sudies showed that overall health improved as people were eating less meat and dairy and were getting more exercise through doing more physical labor.

But we simply aren't taking any serious concerted action. Look at the energy bill that just passed--lightyears ahead of what has gone before, but laughably short of anything that could remotely address the severity of the situation unfolding around us.

[Twilight]

Renewables aren't the solution. They were 40 years ago.

[MonteQuest]

Could you please make up your mind on this. Which is it? The truth:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('savethehumans', ' ')It doesn't help that the bolded-by-me words of Mr. Tillerson are the truth. . .at least, fosfuels are needed to keep THIS world system functioning as-is!

[IanC]

I'm with Monte on this one. I think the oil execs are telling the truth, albiet selectively. It's true that we'll be using non-renewable fossil fuels for the foreseeable future and that "renewables" cannot keep-up with our current expected consumption. They are just avoiding the next necessary phrases about what this means for our society.

I'm waiting and hoping for brave political and hopefully business leaders who can break the news to the masses that we need to curb consumption and that the days of continued growth are over. Time for a Philosopher Queen (Kings usually f--- things up!).

-Ian

[Ludi]

It's not going to be political leaders, Ian. Any politician who tells his constituents "You're going to have to do with less and your kids will have even less than that" is looking at political suicide. It simply will not happen. Politicians expect to have careers in politics. To tell people they will have to do with less, and even less than that, forever, is not something a politician who wants a career can ever, or will ever, say.


Business leaders too, what business leader can say "I expect the economy to contract and all of you to buy less and less every year"? What kind of business leader is that? That is a failure in business, to tell you to buy LESS each year.


Do not expect this, do not hope for it. It is a vain hope.

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('IanC', 'I')'m waiting and hoping for brave political and hopefully business leaders who can break the news to the masses that we need to curb consumption and that the days of continued growth are over. Time for a Philosopher Queen (Kings usually f--- things up!).

[coyote]

The best we could hope for would be for some respected politician going into retirement to speak up about the truth before leaving, as Eisenhower did about the military industrial complex threat in his farewell speech. Any respected politicians around these days? I can think of one or two from a few years back... today, no.

Ike was ignored. Anyone of his stature around today? No?....

[dohboi]

So it's not going to be a politician because they want to get re-elected. It's not going to be an NGO because they want members. It's not going to be a business leader, because they want to sell stuff.

There's only one person left on the planet who can save us all from our wicked ways: It's our very own MONTE! His quote:
"In order for us to move to an economy based upon renewable energy, we must powerdown and abandon all normal notions and expectations regarding economic growth. We must restrict per capita consumption and move towards making significant reductions in the world population levels." must become our new mantra.

All hail Monte! But knowing Monte to be a humble fellow, he is likely to decline this august position. In other words, we're doomed, unless...we can have a leaderless revolution?

[gnm]

Oh I think it will be a politician. But what he/she will say is..

Elect me leader and the good times will come again! I know who is to blame for your misery and all we need to do is get rid of those laws standing in the way of making (insert scapegoat group here) pay for whats been done to us and take back whats rightfully ours!

Which of course tends to snowball into genocide and war.... We all know the story, WWII, Rawanda, etc etc..

-G

[dohboi]

Good point, gnm.

That, of course, is already happening. What do you think the whole immigration debate is about. As the middle class is being wiped out, the PTB are desperate to distract us from the fact that the richest 1% are walking off with nearly all the money. Terrorism and war have been pretty good distractions. Blaming blacks has become unpallatable politically. So now they go after the "browns," but not in those terms. Instead they use the abstract code word "immigration." (Not to say that some sane immigration policy isn't needed. It's just not the "crisis" it is presented as, and crtainly not the or even a major reason the middle class is losing out.)

The sad thing is that these divide-and-conquer strategies work so well, in spite of their absolute absurdity. As if the people to blame for the evaporation of the wealth of the middle class are the absolute poorest people in the country--if they were getting all the money, they wouldn't be poor! Why is it so hard for the masses to connect the massive increase in the wealth of the richest with their own losses? It would be funny if it weren't so depressing.

Now I have nothing against the super rich per se. But generally powerful super elites, cut off from the realities of the majority and of the earth, tend not to make very good long-term decisions for their societies or for the land. Jared Diamond (among many others) makes this point quite powerfully.

It has not gotten much play here, and would likely be controversial, but surely the huge gap between the richest and the poorest, and the growing vacuum between, is a major reason why we are doomed and why the decisions necessary for a livable future will not be made.

(Sorry if this strayed a bit from the main topic.)

[Plantagenet]

Right now the politicians are obsessed with the climate change crisis, thanks to the years of propagandizing by the MSM, Hollywood, etc. .

The "Peak Oil" crisis isn't getting any attention because the MSM, Hollywood, etc. haven't pushed it.

[Zardoz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dohboi', 'S')o it's not going to be a politician because they want to get re-elected...

...There's only one person left on the planet who can save us all from our wicked ways:

It's our very own MONTE!

His quote...:

"In order for us to move to an economy based upon renewable energy, we must powerdown and abandon all normal notions and expectations regarding economic growth. We must restrict per capita consumption and move towards making significant reductions in the world population levels."

...must become our new mantra.

In other words, we're doomed, unless...we can have a leaderless revolution?

[EnergyUnlimited]

Zardoz,
My viev is that any new US president will quickly fall into a line regardless what he might say in election campaign.
President of US has considerable powers, but corporations have even more powers.
I doubt, that any US President will go against corporate interests, for as long as corporations exist.

[dohboi]

Zardoz, I basically agree with your main points. In fact I have argued the same thing to NGO's I'm involved with. The problem isn't that we're not ready to hear something new. The problem is that those who advise politicians and NGO's are chicken sh*ts, totally averse to anything they see as politically risky.

And advisers manage, or at least influence, nearly everything.

Environmental groups are being told by the polsters that they pay that they should not try to follow Gore in being honest and clear about the threat of global warming and the moral imperative to address it. Instead they are supposed to engage in happy talk about technofixes. I have protested vehemently in essentially your words that the populace is now ready for a stiffer dose of truth and that not speaking strongly and clearly could render these groups irrelevant. But to little avail, I'm afraid.

I would like to believe that Obama could break through the fog, but he is being handled and has already probably entered the "bubble," where everything he hears and reads is being managed by cowardly strategists.

In general, it is the people who have to lead their leaders, not the other way around.

[TonyPrep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('ElijahJones', 'A')sking humans today to make decisions that will be beneficial to the species 40 years from now is a losing effort. There is no way to organize humanity on the scale needed to have avoided the issues that are coming. They are a function of human nature and the abundance of oil.

An odd thought is this. Suppose there had been no oil and we had to use the so called clean alternatives from the start. Would we have gone to the moon? Would we have filled the earth with windmills until we reached a different type of peak, peak aluminum perhaps and then in the subsequent upheaval as growth stagnated and the earths systems shut down from the sheer mass of humanity...

You see it is hard to believe that a renwable resource would leave us in such a precarious position. But 40 years ago almost nobody really thought of oil as being a finite resource.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Zardoz', 'I')t could happen, though. It would work. We're way more than ready for it.