Right!
Malcolm. The folks out at VW have come out with a care which gets 280 km per
litre. Consumers will just take the insurance of their gas guzzlers, and buy
a sipper to adjust.
But this will not put a dint in demand for oil and gas, now will it?
The phenomenon is that as you soon as you put a sipper on the market, then
those who could not aford the guzzler now can affor the sipper. The net
effect is a rise in demand. Each year in the world the demand for gas rises
because it gets cheaper, per capita, to own and operate a car. We already
have these little sippers here in Canada, and they get well over 50km per
litre of gas.
Back in the late 70's with the worlds worst energy crunch, there were no
sippers, just V8's and straight 6's and each average auto had a 4 barrel
carb. You were lucky if you could get better than 7 miles per gallon [or 3km
per litre].
The only real effect that very high gas costs will have is on the high
consumption countries like Australia, and the United States, and in the east
of Canada. There is a lot of cheap gas and propane in western Canada, we
export gobs of it to the US. But in the US, the rising cost of gas is going
to 'cripple' the economy. Just wait till this winter when the US consumer
gets there heating bill. This will suck all the wind out of the consumer
economy and cause a recession. It is heating cost which cannot be brought
down unless the homeowner sells the house [which in the US is on the average
very large].
The oil and gas will all be gone in 50 years. So the the oil and gas guzzler
countries will have to adapt very soon.
chao
john
----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm Riddoch" <m.riddoch@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 1:55 AM
Subject: Iran
>
> On Saturday, October 23, 2004, at 09:02 AM, Jan Straathof wrote:
>
> > Malcolm i concur with your overall analysis of the world political
> > and economical landscape, the prospect seems quite grim. It seems
> > the oil markets have gone mad much urlier than i expected; banks,
> > financial
> > institutions and large private investors are now buying oil
> > too: it all has become a great speculation game, driving up the price
> > much faster .... do i hear 100 USD a barrel, anyone ??
>
> Yes, supply is only just keeping up with demand and Saudi Arabia seems
> incapable of bringing on any spare capacity, apparently its own
> production has been declining slightly the last 4 months in a row.
> China and India are experiencing accelerated growth and both are
> looking at building their strategic reserves at a time when the US is
> filling its own to capacity. At the moment we consume around 82 million
> barrels, or about 13 billion litres of oil every single day and the
> shipping and refinery infrastructure is having a hard time keeping the
> flow going at such gigantic volumes. The underlying problem does seem
> to be geological though, we use four times as much oil as we discover
> each year and discoveries peaked in 1964 and have been declining ever
> since. The more or less constant growth in oil extraction over the last
> 150 years may be reaching a peak plateau.
>
> > I am still not convinced that opening up another front (Iran) will
> > bring
> > any new stragetic advantage in the war on terror or the pacification
> > of the Middle East.
>
> Totally, it would probably usher in a world war. The Iraq conquest is
> already a very alarming precedent, akin to Hitler's invasion of
> Czechoslovakia or Poland.
>
> > To invade Iran you'll need at least an army of 500.000 and the US
> > can't supply that at the moment, so do you think that Howard will
> > send in a 150.000 and Blair too ?
>
> Yes, eventually, if they're still in office when it happens. Both
> leaders sold their souls to the devil when they threw their full
> support behind the criminal invasion of Iraq and the subsequent
> collapse of international law. Australia followed the US blindly into
> the Vietnam disaster and instituted a military draft to do so. This
> time around we're even more sycophantic as the stakes are exponentially
> higher. An attack on Iran would probably require a military draft in
> the US and that would mean an intensification of the US war effort, or
> a real war on the home front. The US managed a gigantic war effort in
> WW2, they ground the Japanese to a pulp, supplied the Russian war
> effort and invaded western Europe. Iraq is expensive and difficult with
> a 'peace time' volunteer army and domestic economy but once total war
> is initiated I think US industrial and military power would be capable
> of a lot more chaos on a much grander scale. Just ask Richard Perle.
>
> > And further a conventional land-
> > based attack on Iran will mean some real heavy fighting and losses,
> > because the Iranian amry is well equiped with modern Russian air
> > and battlefield missiles.
>
> If it gets seriously out of hand there's always tactical nukes. Besides
> the main strategic aim would be to control the Iranian's Persian Gulf
> oil fields, the rest of the country could be bombed back into the stone
> age like they did to Cambodia or Laos. The same goes for Saudi Arabia
> and any other energy rich minor power. Iraq is the precedent that makes
> the Bush national security strategy the new reality and law of our
> international order, now and for the future. The US has forcefully
> demonstrated that it will attack any nation it deems to be a threat to
> its interests, and its national interests are fundamentally aligned
> with its energy security. I think the main difficulty wouldn't be so
> much how the Islamic world responds to an attack on Iran but how
> Russia, China and Europe would react to US control of the Middle
> Eastern oil spigot. On the one hand you have the interdependent global
> economy and on the other you have the collapse of international trade
> as the world goes to war. I'd hope they could reach some sort of
> business compromise before launching preemptive nuclear strikes on one
> another but who can guarantee that MAD will work during a terminal
> energy decline, especially given the neoconservative push for world
> domination?
>
> > To think that the US, or the West, could dominate or should guide
> > the socio-political emancipation and the economical development
> > processes of the arab/muslim world, is a mistake of gigantic historical
> > proportions.
>
> Truly gigantic, but these are the most gigantic of human times where
> gigantism is a function of the will to will and its global ordering. I
> imagine the Israeli military, itself effectively a de facto US force,
> would be used to initiate a conflict. Any attack on Iran is likely to
> erupt in a wider Middle Eastern war and that may well be what the
> neoconservative hawks are planning on. If the end game is to control
> Persian Gulf oil for the next few decades then a global war is most
> probably inevitable, the US can choose to ignite it at any time. In a
> sense it already has with the conquest of Iraq.
>
> > If the West truely and honestly wants the integration of
> > the arab/muslim regions into the modern world-system, we should
> > empower them, strenghten their identity and independence and above
> > all give them the support and tools to solve their own problems.
>
> I'm not sure this is part of the plan, who in the western world really
> cares about Arabs? We want electricity 24/7, unending credit to buy
> what most of the world would consider luxury goods, and we want it all
> guilt free, so sure, in principle everyone should enjoy 'democracy'.
> But it's their oil we're stealing and have always stolen, if their kids
> get in the way we simply annihilate them through industrial warfare.
> That seems to be what is happening in Iraq at the moment and
> historically that is the promise of our 'democratic' national
> self-interests. Here's an interesting bit of disinformation for you,
> how about a pre-election US attack on Iran launched in the next 2
> weeks? http://207.44.245.159/article7113.htm
>
> > But
> > no, we arrogantly think we should fix that for them: we invade them
> > to bring democracy, privatize their economies, write their curricula,
> > train their judges and police, commercialize their media and so on,
> > because we think we know better, because we think we are better ....
> > yeh .... pride goes before the fall.
>
> Hubris and imperial arrogance result in either the fall of
> civilisations or their brutal perdurance. God only knows how it's going
> to turn out and unfortunately He appears to be well and truly dead,
> apparently we are the ones who killed Him and took His place. Our
> shared, modern subjectivity and its planetary ordering are probably
> well overdue for a fall, and perhaps that fall would be better sooner
> than later as runaway global warming may become catastrophic by 2050.
>
> Regards,
>
> Malcolm
>
>
>
> --- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
Malcolm. The folks out at VW have come out with a care which gets 280 km per
litre. Consumers will just take the insurance of their gas guzzlers, and buy
a sipper to adjust.
But this will not put a dint in demand for oil and gas, now will it?
The phenomenon is that as you soon as you put a sipper on the market, then
those who could not aford the guzzler now can affor the sipper. The net
effect is a rise in demand. Each year in the world the demand for gas rises
because it gets cheaper, per capita, to own and operate a car. We already
have these little sippers here in Canada, and they get well over 50km per
litre of gas.
Back in the late 70's with the worlds worst energy crunch, there were no
sippers, just V8's and straight 6's and each average auto had a 4 barrel
carb. You were lucky if you could get better than 7 miles per gallon [or 3km
per litre].
The only real effect that very high gas costs will have is on the high
consumption countries like Australia, and the United States, and in the east
of Canada. There is a lot of cheap gas and propane in western Canada, we
export gobs of it to the US. But in the US, the rising cost of gas is going
to 'cripple' the economy. Just wait till this winter when the US consumer
gets there heating bill. This will suck all the wind out of the consumer
economy and cause a recession. It is heating cost which cannot be brought
down unless the homeowner sells the house [which in the US is on the average
very large].
The oil and gas will all be gone in 50 years. So the the oil and gas guzzler
countries will have to adapt very soon.
chao
john
----- Original Message -----
From: "Malcolm Riddoch" <m.riddoch@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: <heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, October 23, 2004 1:55 AM
Subject: Iran
>
> On Saturday, October 23, 2004, at 09:02 AM, Jan Straathof wrote:
>
> > Malcolm i concur with your overall analysis of the world political
> > and economical landscape, the prospect seems quite grim. It seems
> > the oil markets have gone mad much urlier than i expected; banks,
> > financial
> > institutions and large private investors are now buying oil
> > too: it all has become a great speculation game, driving up the price
> > much faster .... do i hear 100 USD a barrel, anyone ??
>
> Yes, supply is only just keeping up with demand and Saudi Arabia seems
> incapable of bringing on any spare capacity, apparently its own
> production has been declining slightly the last 4 months in a row.
> China and India are experiencing accelerated growth and both are
> looking at building their strategic reserves at a time when the US is
> filling its own to capacity. At the moment we consume around 82 million
> barrels, or about 13 billion litres of oil every single day and the
> shipping and refinery infrastructure is having a hard time keeping the
> flow going at such gigantic volumes. The underlying problem does seem
> to be geological though, we use four times as much oil as we discover
> each year and discoveries peaked in 1964 and have been declining ever
> since. The more or less constant growth in oil extraction over the last
> 150 years may be reaching a peak plateau.
>
> > I am still not convinced that opening up another front (Iran) will
> > bring
> > any new stragetic advantage in the war on terror or the pacification
> > of the Middle East.
>
> Totally, it would probably usher in a world war. The Iraq conquest is
> already a very alarming precedent, akin to Hitler's invasion of
> Czechoslovakia or Poland.
>
> > To invade Iran you'll need at least an army of 500.000 and the US
> > can't supply that at the moment, so do you think that Howard will
> > send in a 150.000 and Blair too ?
>
> Yes, eventually, if they're still in office when it happens. Both
> leaders sold their souls to the devil when they threw their full
> support behind the criminal invasion of Iraq and the subsequent
> collapse of international law. Australia followed the US blindly into
> the Vietnam disaster and instituted a military draft to do so. This
> time around we're even more sycophantic as the stakes are exponentially
> higher. An attack on Iran would probably require a military draft in
> the US and that would mean an intensification of the US war effort, or
> a real war on the home front. The US managed a gigantic war effort in
> WW2, they ground the Japanese to a pulp, supplied the Russian war
> effort and invaded western Europe. Iraq is expensive and difficult with
> a 'peace time' volunteer army and domestic economy but once total war
> is initiated I think US industrial and military power would be capable
> of a lot more chaos on a much grander scale. Just ask Richard Perle.
>
> > And further a conventional land-
> > based attack on Iran will mean some real heavy fighting and losses,
> > because the Iranian amry is well equiped with modern Russian air
> > and battlefield missiles.
>
> If it gets seriously out of hand there's always tactical nukes. Besides
> the main strategic aim would be to control the Iranian's Persian Gulf
> oil fields, the rest of the country could be bombed back into the stone
> age like they did to Cambodia or Laos. The same goes for Saudi Arabia
> and any other energy rich minor power. Iraq is the precedent that makes
> the Bush national security strategy the new reality and law of our
> international order, now and for the future. The US has forcefully
> demonstrated that it will attack any nation it deems to be a threat to
> its interests, and its national interests are fundamentally aligned
> with its energy security. I think the main difficulty wouldn't be so
> much how the Islamic world responds to an attack on Iran but how
> Russia, China and Europe would react to US control of the Middle
> Eastern oil spigot. On the one hand you have the interdependent global
> economy and on the other you have the collapse of international trade
> as the world goes to war. I'd hope they could reach some sort of
> business compromise before launching preemptive nuclear strikes on one
> another but who can guarantee that MAD will work during a terminal
> energy decline, especially given the neoconservative push for world
> domination?
>
> > To think that the US, or the West, could dominate or should guide
> > the socio-political emancipation and the economical development
> > processes of the arab/muslim world, is a mistake of gigantic historical
> > proportions.
>
> Truly gigantic, but these are the most gigantic of human times where
> gigantism is a function of the will to will and its global ordering. I
> imagine the Israeli military, itself effectively a de facto US force,
> would be used to initiate a conflict. Any attack on Iran is likely to
> erupt in a wider Middle Eastern war and that may well be what the
> neoconservative hawks are planning on. If the end game is to control
> Persian Gulf oil for the next few decades then a global war is most
> probably inevitable, the US can choose to ignite it at any time. In a
> sense it already has with the conquest of Iraq.
>
> > If the West truely and honestly wants the integration of
> > the arab/muslim regions into the modern world-system, we should
> > empower them, strenghten their identity and independence and above
> > all give them the support and tools to solve their own problems.
>
> I'm not sure this is part of the plan, who in the western world really
> cares about Arabs? We want electricity 24/7, unending credit to buy
> what most of the world would consider luxury goods, and we want it all
> guilt free, so sure, in principle everyone should enjoy 'democracy'.
> But it's their oil we're stealing and have always stolen, if their kids
> get in the way we simply annihilate them through industrial warfare.
> That seems to be what is happening in Iraq at the moment and
> historically that is the promise of our 'democratic' national
> self-interests. Here's an interesting bit of disinformation for you,
> how about a pre-election US attack on Iran launched in the next 2
> weeks? http://207.44.245.159/article7113.htm
>
> > But
> > no, we arrogantly think we should fix that for them: we invade them
> > to bring democracy, privatize their economies, write their curricula,
> > train their judges and police, commercialize their media and so on,
> > because we think we know better, because we think we are better ....
> > yeh .... pride goes before the fall.
>
> Hubris and imperial arrogance result in either the fall of
> civilisations or their brutal perdurance. God only knows how it's going
> to turn out and unfortunately He appears to be well and truly dead,
> apparently we are the ones who killed Him and took His place. Our
> shared, modern subjectivity and its planetary ordering are probably
> well overdue for a fall, and perhaps that fall would be better sooner
> than later as runaway global warming may become catastrophic by 2050.
>
> Regards,
>
> Malcolm
>
>
>
> --- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
--- from list heidegger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---