tdaxp

I've been spending my time on three posts, with the ever-intelligent Federalist X, or Amendment Nine.

On Amendment Nine, "Gas Tax Holiday."
On Amendment Nine, "Maps versus Hands."
On tdaxp, "Keep Gas Prices High Forever."

Grand strategist Thomas PM Barnett defines four "flows" of the contemporary world

(1) the movement of people from the Gap to the Core;
(2) the movement of energy from the Gap to the New Core;
(3) the movement of money from the Old Core to the New Core;
(4) the exporting of security that only America can provide to the Gap

Now the Republican Senate identifies two more

(5) the movement of clean air from the New Core to the Old Core
(6) the movement of terrorism from the Gap to the Core

and is about to speed up one, and decrease the other

The current high prices for oil and gas gives us a great opportunity. They focus the minds of Americans on the great problems in the world today.

The American People will make great sacrifices to achieve a Goal, but will not tolerate meaningless hardship. The currently high prices are meaningless. They represent nothing more than the fluctuations of supply and demand, instability and war.

President Bush should turn this around. He should announce that gas prices will never come back down: that we will never subsidize Oil-Tyrants again. He should do this with a new federal gas tax, which will floor the price of gas at five dollars per gallon.

This money should not go to the general treasury. Instead, it should be immediately divided evenly given to heads of household as a monthly check. Immediately, this would make those who consume a lot of gas (and thus support the destructive policies of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela) subsidize those who do not so contribute to geopolitical instability. Better, it would encourage the economy to swiftly move to other sources of motor power.

a tdaxp Special Report by "Aaron"

I'll avoid quoting cliche' but we all know the text of President John F. Kennedy's famous Inaugural Address. At a time when there was much uncertainty in the world, the President did not ask us to fend for ourselves but to band together and make sacrifices for the greater good of each other and the world. Later, at a speech at Rice University, he famously said "we choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

In his State of the Union speech on January 31, President Bush noted the following:

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology. Since 2001, we have spent nearly $10 billion to develop cleaner, cheaper, and more reliable alternative energy sources -- and we are on the threshold of incredible advances.

In this statement, the President is throwing the onus of oil consumption reduction on scientists and engineers, not on consumers and definitely not on producers. Again, no request for sacrifice from the voting public. Has patriotism gone to exclude the self-giving that Kennedy and others asked of us?

"Welcome to my Blog," by Dennis Hastert, Speaker's Journal, 27 October 2005, http://www.speaker.gov/journal/051027_firstblog.shtml.

Speaker of the House Denny Hastert has a new blog. But that's not the news: an attack in three paragraphs from his first post is.

The attack:

Speaking of the Hurricane season, renewed attention has been brought to the way we refine gasoline in this country. Today, energy companies started reporting their 3rd quarter earnings, and while Americans paying were record prices at the pump, energy companies were making record profits.

That's odd... a Republican leader attacking oil companies for making too much money? What's going on?

Visually:



But this isn't a legislative attack -- which Hastert could launch, if he wanted to. He is using a blog, so it is an attempt to convert at least some members of the public. This just deepens the mystery -- why launch a pseudo-attack to get people mad at oil companies?



Hmm... let's take a look at the remaining two paragraphs that mention oil companies:

This is America. And Republicans don’t believe in punishing success. But what are these oil companies doing to bring down the cost of oil and natural gas? They haven't built a refinery here in America since the 1970's. They've built refineries overseas, but nothing here at home.

We want some answers and you folks out there in the blogosphere do too. When are new refineries going to be built here in America? When is the Alaska pipeline deal going to be signed so we can get natural gas to consumers quicker? Conoco Phillips has reached an agreement with the state of Alaska on the pipeline. Exxon Mobil and BP need to do the same. These companies need to invest in America’s energy infrastructure and resources. Until they do, we're going to be asking some tough questions.

Ah ha! It becomes clear: Hastert is upset that new refinaries haven't been built, and the force stopping this is the environmentalists. Clever of the Speaker not to mention them by name -- learning is better remembered when the learner has to do some thinking himself. So like a teacher that makes his pupils think so they will remember the lesson better, Speaker Hastert is counting on the reader to figure out the enemy is the environmentalists:



Of course, the Republican-led attack on environmentalists is not unprovoked. The reason it is needed in the first place is that the Environmentalists have been hostile to the oil companies for years, preventing them from fully serving the people

Visually




This is very clever. The heart of war is reinforcing your strong points, not your weak points The oil companies already have little popularity, so instead of foolishly trying to bolster them directly, he transforms public hostility to oil companies into public hostility toward the enemy of the oil companies. Master strategists like Sun Tzu and John Boyd would be proud.

So what is the goal? What is the Republican/Oil Company "future worth creating" -- their "happy ending"? Simple: the neutralization of the environmentalists so both the oil companies and the Republican Party can fully interact with the People without that interference. Visually:



I have written about net attacks and counterattacks before. And also real-world internets, also called seas of friction.

"Hubbert's Curve: does not apply in Gap," by Thomas Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 26 May 2005, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/001878.html.

An interesting observation from Thomas Barnett on the Hubbert Curve and Peak Oil -- the claim that we are running out of exploitable oil.

Hubbert's Curve is real and applies to Core areas where oil supplies have been exploited to death. It does not apply in Gap where National Oil Companies (NOCs) rule the reserves. We simply haven't explored most of the Gap. It's that simple

All the more reason to be geogreen. Oil has been a disaster to countries that have it. To save the descendants of the current citizens of the Gap, we must make sure their oil is worthless.

"The Other Culprit on High Oil Prices," by Thomas Barnett, Thomas P.M. Barnett :: Weblog, 25 May 2005, http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/archives2/001865.html.

Interesting thinking from Kerry-votin' geopolitical grand strategist Thomas PM Barnett. While I had dismissed scare mongering, Barnett gives an alternative system-level explanation for high oil prices besides "oil is running out."

Another great front-page WSJ on the global oil markets, pointing out that after the rising demand of India and China and other emerging markets, the key culprit in persistently high prices today is the fact that global oil companies simply haven't invested in refining capacity for years now.

What's interesting about this is that it's really a self-fulfilling prophecy: the oil companies resist sinking the big bucks because they fear oil is receding in importance in coming years and decades as we shift to hydrogen (e.g., British Petroleum becomes Beyond Petroleum), and so by eschewing these investments, they create persistent high prices that accelerate that shift.

But if you don't believe in that, you can always stick to the Hubbert Curve and wah-wah-wah yourself all the way to some scary doomsday scenario

Oil capitalism leading the shift away from oil. Nifty.

"Nuclear lobby gathers steam but can expect severe reaction," Telegraph, 21 May 2005, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml;sessionid=GW3FEXENGK2NPQFIQMGSM5OAVCBQWJVC?xml=/money/2005/05/21/ccnuc21.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/05/21/ixcoms.html&menuId=242&_requestid=26511 (from Tim Worstall through Macroblog).

Geogreen isn't just a good strategic decision -- it's healthy, too

The 1986 blast at Chernobyl - from a combination of poor design, sloppy construction and negligent maintenance - was the probably the worst accident imaginable at a nuclear plant. About 45 people died as a result of the explosion but the 1988 Piper Alpha fire claimed 167 lives on the North Sea oil rig, and not one person was lost in America's Three Mile Island reactor leak.

Even Greenpeace's anti-progress numbers don't change the arguments

Greenpeace says it would expect 30,000 deaths over a 30-50 year period from Chernobyl, including many who contracted thyroid cancer as children. Yet, an independent report estimates that the increased chance of cancer in the affected area is 0.1pc over 40 years. If the latter figure is correct, the number of people who have been killed by nuclear power is tiny compared with deaths in other parts of the power industry.

In British coal mines fatality rates still run at 11 a year per 100,000 employees and show no sign of falling. In Russia, which exports coal to the UK, the death rate is more than twice Britain's. All heavy industries kill people and it is not clear that modern reactors are particularly lethal.

Good points. Read the whole thing.

"Old Foes Soften to New Reactors," by Felicity Barringer, New York Times, 15 May 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/national/15nuke.html?hp&ex=1116129600&en=1c78e4248b7ee1c3&ei=5094&partner=homepage (from Democratic Underground).

As go Tree-Huggers

Several of the nation's most prominent environmentalists have gone public with the message that nuclear power, long taboo among environmental advocates, should be reconsidered as a remedy for global warming.

...

Stewart Brand, a founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the author of "Environmental Heresies," an article in the May issue of Technology Review, explained the shift as a direct consequence of the growing anxiety about global warming and its links to the use of fossil fuel.

..

In his article, Mr. Brand argued, "Everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production." He ran down a list of alternative technologies, like solar and wind energy, that emit no heat-trapping gases. "But add them all up," he wrote, "and it's just a fraction of enough." His conclusion: "The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon-dioxide loading is nuclear power."

In recent statements, three top environmental experts - Fred Krupp, the executive director of Environmental Defense, and Jonathan Lash, the president of the World Resources Institute and James Gustave Speth, the dean of Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies - have stopped well short of embracing nuclear power, but they have emphasized that it is worth trying to find solutions to the economic, safety and security, waste storage and proliferation issues rather than rejecting the whole technology.

So go Tough-Guys

The proposals that Senator McCain is considering would provide a 50-50 cost-sharing arrangement, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in subsidies, to gain federal certification for three new designs for nuclear plants. On Monday he met with Jeffrey R. Immelt, the chairman and chief executive of General Electric, which constructs nuclear plants.

It's better to subsidize nuclear power by fighting lawyers than subsidizing oil by fighting Iraqis.

But the question -- is this a Subversion [PISRR] of either the Green or Hawk movements by the other, or an actual new ideology?

"Gas-thirsty cars imperil U.S., conservative ex-officials warn," by Edward Epstein, San Francisco Chronicle, 7 April 2005, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/04/07/MNGIAC4EBC1.DTL (from Clean Cut Kid).

Republican big-wigs are joining the geogreen fight

Take record high gasoline prices, add in fears of terrorist strikes against Middle East oil fields and a growing financial drain on the country, and you produce a band of national security conservatives who sound like environmentalists in urging President Bush and Congress to push for U.S. energy independence by weaning Americans from oil use.

It makes no sense to import vast amounts of oil from unstable petrokleptocracies. Oil revenues allow corrupt elites to avoid real reform and buy-off (often dangerous) special interests. It diverts capital from New Core growth economies to these backwords pits. It helps funds Islamic terrorism. It exposes us to another oil shock.

That said, the proposed solution is foolish

The conservatives, including some top national security figures from the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, recently sent the White House a letter saying it is time to raise the mandated fuel efficiency on autos and turn away from petroleum-fueled vehicles in favor of such alternative fuels as ethanol, bio-diesel or electricity and more hybrid cars and trucks

We have a real problem, and the dinosauric solution is mandated fuel efficiency. Using vertical controls as clubs. Genius.

When a fuel efficiency standard is mandated, it basically says there is no term of trade that makes consumption above the standard beneficial. This is a belief characteristic of command-and-control economies, not modern free markets. Further, mandated standards increase misery for everyone. The mandates cost a greater fraction of the poor's income to comply with, but they offer the rich no way to "buy society off" and divert their excess capital to the general welfare for private purposes.

On the other hand, a high but rebated gas tax would be beneficial to the poorest while encouraging the rich to divert their extra cash for everyone's good. Create a heavy gas tax, but fully rebate it to American citizens (every citizen gets a proportionate share of the revenue). Now that's a plan everyone can get behind.