…OH THOSE DWINDLING RESOURCES….NOT…
January 29, 2013 By I
have talked about this before, but this story bears repeating here,
especially since the Western allies have clearly made moves in Africa
that portend a return to the kind of 19th century resource imperialism
that guided French and British foreign policy in the region in the 19th
century. More about that later, but just keep that resource scramble in
the back of your mind.
And at the risk of repeating a story I have told here before, I will repeat something else. Growing up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota through the sixties and seventies, like most American students during that era, I went through the elite-sponsored E-Day, or Earth Resources Day, a national orgy that was promoted throughout the country of an entire day of school being devoted to “Earth awareness and environmental resources.” We were subjected, all day, to films and readings depicting impending doom from pollution, over-population, and, most of all, dwindling resources. But, similarly, we were also subjected to reviews of practical measures that could be taken to fix things, or even ameliorate them. Litter on highways was picked up and cleaned. Lead in gasoline was curbed and eventually simply gotten rid of altogether, by way of stopovers at catalytic converts and a lower speed limit (thanks to the 1973 Yom Kippur War). Rivers in North America and Europe were cleaned up and corporations quite dumping crud into them (and for those on this site who remember Tom Lehrer, think of his satirical song “Pollution”, which came out just before E-Day).
Now, why am I bothering you with all of this? Because one of the things that was part of the E-Day curriculum throughout Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota (that’s the one WITHOUT the presidential faces on the mountain folks, so quit confusing North and South Dakota, please! It’s like thinking someone from Brooklyn is from Harrisburg, PA), was the mention of the vast field of shale oil in the area where those four states intersect. I was familiar with it, having traveled through the South Dakota portion of the butte country of that region, and looking out and literally seeing the oil-blackened shale standing in the open.
And that prompted the thought in my mind that “there couldn’t possibly have been enough dead dinosaurs to produce all the oil still in existence, not to mention all the oil that has already been extracted and refined.” During E-Day I voiced this observation in science class, was promptly made fun of, told not to say silly things, and to be quiet. This was accompanied by a roll of the teacher’s eyes in obvious frustration.
We know the rest of the story, by now. There is a theory of abiotic petroleum, first advanced by the Russians, another country that seems to be swimming in the stuff (not to mention Russia’s gas [I mean, the energy resource, not the gastro-intestinal condition]). This theory, in contradistinction to the “fossil fuel” meme, holds that petroleum is a natural product of the Earth itself and a semi-renewable resource. Translation: We’re not going to run out any time soon. The fossil fuel idea was – you guessed it – a product of the Rockefailure clan.
So, with all that context, now consider this:
Peak Oil Bites the Dust
Of course, we’ll continue to hear the hypocritical hysterics and histrionics of people like Al Gore who lecture the rest of us on our energy consumption while they jet around the world in their private jets, but that isn’t what concerns me here. What concerns me is that while all this is going on, the West scrambles madly to reassert and reinsert its privileged position in Africa, for the simple reason of controlling its resources, and denying them to China, and, of course, the vast bulk of the African peoples. Sadly, the game plan of the West is what it has always been: use everyone else’s resources up first, then our own. And this, of course, while the same elites have suppressed the development of alternative energy technologies.
And at the risk of repeating a story I have told here before, I will repeat something else. Growing up in Sioux Falls, South Dakota through the sixties and seventies, like most American students during that era, I went through the elite-sponsored E-Day, or Earth Resources Day, a national orgy that was promoted throughout the country of an entire day of school being devoted to “Earth awareness and environmental resources.” We were subjected, all day, to films and readings depicting impending doom from pollution, over-population, and, most of all, dwindling resources. But, similarly, we were also subjected to reviews of practical measures that could be taken to fix things, or even ameliorate them. Litter on highways was picked up and cleaned. Lead in gasoline was curbed and eventually simply gotten rid of altogether, by way of stopovers at catalytic converts and a lower speed limit (thanks to the 1973 Yom Kippur War). Rivers in North America and Europe were cleaned up and corporations quite dumping crud into them (and for those on this site who remember Tom Lehrer, think of his satirical song “Pollution”, which came out just before E-Day).
Now, why am I bothering you with all of this? Because one of the things that was part of the E-Day curriculum throughout Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, North Dakota (that’s the one WITHOUT the presidential faces on the mountain folks, so quit confusing North and South Dakota, please! It’s like thinking someone from Brooklyn is from Harrisburg, PA), was the mention of the vast field of shale oil in the area where those four states intersect. I was familiar with it, having traveled through the South Dakota portion of the butte country of that region, and looking out and literally seeing the oil-blackened shale standing in the open.
And that prompted the thought in my mind that “there couldn’t possibly have been enough dead dinosaurs to produce all the oil still in existence, not to mention all the oil that has already been extracted and refined.” During E-Day I voiced this observation in science class, was promptly made fun of, told not to say silly things, and to be quiet. This was accompanied by a roll of the teacher’s eyes in obvious frustration.
We know the rest of the story, by now. There is a theory of abiotic petroleum, first advanced by the Russians, another country that seems to be swimming in the stuff (not to mention Russia’s gas [I mean, the energy resource, not the gastro-intestinal condition]). This theory, in contradistinction to the “fossil fuel” meme, holds that petroleum is a natural product of the Earth itself and a semi-renewable resource. Translation: We’re not going to run out any time soon. The fossil fuel idea was – you guessed it – a product of the Rockefailure clan.
So, with all that context, now consider this:
Peak Oil Bites the Dust
Of course, we’ll continue to hear the hypocritical hysterics and histrionics of people like Al Gore who lecture the rest of us on our energy consumption while they jet around the world in their private jets, but that isn’t what concerns me here. What concerns me is that while all this is going on, the West scrambles madly to reassert and reinsert its privileged position in Africa, for the simple reason of controlling its resources, and denying them to China, and, of course, the vast bulk of the African peoples. Sadly, the game plan of the West is what it has always been: use everyone else’s resources up first, then our own. And this, of course, while the same elites have suppressed the development of alternative energy technologies.
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