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Some
of you may have heard the "good" news
coming out of the Gulf. We're not referring to some
breakthrough in Persian Gulf conflict or the
prospect for evolving sustainable human
settlement patterns in Louisiana. (See “Down
Memory Lane With Katrina,” 5 September
2005).
Today
we consider news that Business As Usual
advocates consider even more important -- news
that is already impacting every citizen in the
Commonwealth. According to published reports on
5 and 6 September, Chevron Corp. and others have
"discovered" new petroleum resources
under 7,000 feet of water and 175 miles off the
coast of Louisiana. Early, unconfirmed
assessments say that this “find” may double
the United States “reserves.”
Anyone
reading as far as paragraph three of the news
report would find
that even an optimistic forecast of future oil
production "would not solve the world’s
energy problem or eliminate U.S. reliance on oil
imports, but it would help stabilize U.S. oil
production, which has been declining, and cover
some of the world’s rising demand for
petroleum.”
Early
indications are that most readers did not get
that far, or they chose to ignore the context.
Finding
this new oil resource is positive news only if
this natural capital is invested wisely.
First,
the new supply of petroleum must be made
available in a way that production does not
endanger other important resources. For example,
the drilling and production platforms must be
designed so that they will hold up under
Category 5 (or 6?) hurricanes. The following
reality sets the context for the future of oil
production:
Regardless
of how much more oil is found in the future,
the cheap oil is gone. It is becoming harder
to find new petroleum resources and more
costly to pump and transport them. This
reality should impact all future
considerations of energy and consumption in
general. It has not.
Second
and more important:
The
new reserves must be invested in ways that
create less consumption in the future, not
more. No one is even mentioning this reality.
By
“consumption” we mean not just oil, but
energy in general and every other non-renewable
and renewable resource upon which civilization
depends. Consumption per capital is going up.
The population is going up. That is not a
sustainable trajectory for civilization.
Consumption of oil and energy is a bellwether
but it is not the only issue as we noted in “Soft
Consumption Paths,” 7 August 2006.
If
the activities of citizens and their governments
since October 1973 are a guide, these new oil
resources will not be wisely invested. They will
be burned up to support Business As Usual and
autonomobility. All indications are that the new
petroleum find will disappear like all the other
natural capital that has been wasted over the
past 80 years.
The
best way to calibrate the probable course of
action by the market and by governance
practitioners is to recall the actions of a
recent lottery winner. An overweight 45 year old
with a family history of diabetes and heart
failure won a lottery jackpot of several million
dollars. She immediately bought a million dollar
wooden yacht, hired a cook that formerly worked
at her favorite Pizza Hut and married her high-school
sweetheart who had recently divorced after
becoming an alcoholic addicted to playing poker.
As a nation-state, the United States is that
overweight jackpot winner.
On
the day of the announcement, the new Gulf find
was predicted to drive down the value of oil
futures and thus the price of gasoline. It is
important to understand that oil futures are
just another gambling venue guided by less
rational thought than playing the lottery or the
slots. It is run by “brokers” and
“investors” who have little knowledge of
petroleum engineering and care little about the
cumulative impact of over-consumption. Future
speculators do have a keen nose for short-term
profit. Cheaper oil and gasoline will
re-energize the autonomobile market, the
scattered housing market and mass over
consumption in general.
One
might hope that – given the recent enlightened
talk about the need to conserve oil, energy and
resources in general – this is an overly
pessimistic view. Take a look at the Business
Section of WaPo for 16 September, just 10
days after Chevron's “discovery” hit the
front page: “Falling Oil Prices, A
Brightening Economy: Factors That Pushed Oil
Price Up Are Now Pushing It Down, Analysts Say
Slowing Inflation Could Mark a Turning Point.”
The pictures accompanying the stories showed
Steve Taylor pumping gas in Toledo and people
carrying shopping bags in Philadelphia.
Also
on the front page of the 16 September Business
section is a story on the woes of Ford Motor Co.
(“Ford’s Vision Shrinks Along With Its
Workforce.”) Last week we talked to a Ford
salesman in the northern part of Virginia. We
asked if lower gas prices had any impact on
moving the huge inventory of large, unsold
vehicles on the lot. “It provided immediate
relief” was the response. Who knows, Ford may
start up its Excursion line again because
“that is what people want.”
Jim
Bacon quotes Philip Shucet in last week's column
(“The Dog that
Didn’t Bark”) to the effect that those
politicians who have been accused of dragging
their feet on transportation “solutions”
just may have been listening to voters. The last
two week's news on the political front would
support Shucet’s observation and the need for
PROPERTY DYNAMICS.
Voters
have short memories and no ability to consider
cumulative impacts when it puts a cloud over
immediate gratification, higher profits, lower
taxes and more consumption.
Here
is a sampling of the Gulf oil news impact: On 21
September USA Today reported on-line that
78 percent of President Bush’s approval
ratings could be correlated with inverse changes
in the price of gasoline. Closer to home WaPo
for 22 September reports that two congressional
races in the northern part of Virginia could
turn on the price of gasoline. (“Drop in Gas
Price Could Alter The Nature of Two Area
Races.”) On 24 September the front page of WaPo
suggests that the price of gasoline and related
“good news” may help the party in power.
Lest
these observations be taken as a condemnation of
one party and a violation of the recent
declaration of Bacon’s Rebellion as an
endorsement-free and partisan-free zone, let us
look at what we hear from those at the other end
of the partisan spectrum.
In
the opening to our column “The
Whale on the Beach,” 28 August 2006,
concerning over consumption of natural capital,
we noted that Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient
Truth” fails to even mention the importance of
human settlement patterns. Gore has now released
his “plan” for reducing carbon. As he did in
"Earth in Balance" and in "An
Inconvenient Truth," Gore misses the most
important ramifications of his observations and
concerns.
Retrofitting
homes and building new energy-efficient and
carbon emission-free homes via “Connie Mae”
is a nice idea but it is the location of those
homes that makes a difference. Two thirds of
energy consumption is involved in transport.
Most of that energy is wasted in overcoming
spacial dysfunction and lack of regional
balance.
As
we noted in a recent Blog posting and documented
in "The Shape of the Future,"
efficient human settlement patterns below the
Alpha Neighborhood scale reduce the cost of
location variable goods and services as compared
to scattered locations by a factor of 10, not 10
percent but 10 times. Many of these costs are
directly related to energy consumption.
The
important thing is that this reduction in energy
consumption will not lower the quality of life.
In fact it will create settlement patterns which
the market demonstrates are most favored by
families and enterprises who have a choice. That
choice is not provided by Business As Usual.
It
is instructive that the Style section of WaPo
is where on one reads of the view of James
Lovelock (“The End of Eden” 2 September
2006) and E.O. Wilson (“Science and
Salvation,” 20 September 2006). These
perspectives, which we highlight in "The
Shape of the Future," are not in the
national news, on the editorial pages or in the
Business Section.
The
mere speculation of new petroleum reserves 175
miles out and 7,000 feet deep in the Gulf of
Mexico as reported in the Business Section is
sufficient to keep consumers over-consuming. It
gives them hope they can continue driving
autonomobiles around dysfunctional human
settlement patterns a few more years and let
future generations pay the toll.
The
news from the Gulf will keep corporate profits
rolling in as the chance of survival, much
less sustainability of civilization, treads
the path to entropy.
These
facts spotlight the need for PROPERTY DYNAMICS
and citizen education leading to support for
Fundamental Change in human settlement patterns
and Fundamental Change in governance structure.
More on these issues in future columns,
including observations from our recent field
work in Northern Rocky Mountain Urban Support
Region.
--
September 25, 2006
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