Energo-Fascism And The Carbon Dictatorship  

Michael Klare has a new article up at TomDispatch on the emergence of totalitarian systems everywhere as countries vie to control the oil supplies in a post peak world - a clear description of why we should all be investing in alternative energy technologies as rapidly as possible - if you like freedom and democracy, then you're going to be unhappy in a world that remains dependent on oil for its energy needs. This totalitarian scenario (energy rationing under strict state control) is the peak oil converse of the "carbon dictatorship" that Tim Flannery warns about as a possible outcome of unchecked global warming leading to a crash reduction of carbon emissions. If we're really unlucky we'll end up with the energo-fascists doling out our carbon rations in a decade from now...

From "Is Energo-fascism in Your Future? - The Global Energy Race and Its Consequences (Part 1)":

It has once again become fashionable for the dwindling supporters of President Bush's futile war in Iraq to stress the danger of "Islamo-fascism" and the supposed drive by followers of Osama bin Laden to establish a monolithic, Taliban-like regime -- a "Caliphate" -- stretching from Gibraltar to Indonesia. The President himself has employed this term on occasion over the years, using it to describe efforts by Muslim extremists to create "a totalitarian empire that denies all political and religious freedom." While there may indeed be hundreds, even thousands, of disturbed and suicidal individuals who share this delusional vision, the world actually faces a far more substantial and universal threat, which might be dubbed: Energo-fascism, or the militarization of the global struggle over ever-diminishing supplies of energy.

Unlike Islamo-fascism, Energo-fascism will, in time, affect nearly every person on the planet. Either we will be compelled to participate in or finance foreign wars to secure vital supplies of energy, such as the current conflict in Iraq; or we will be at the mercy of those who control the energy spigot, like the customers of the Russian energy juggernaut Gazprom in Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia; or sooner or later we may find ourselves under constant state surveillance, lest we consume more than our allotted share of fuel or engage in illicit energy transactions. This is not simply some future dystopian nightmare, but a potentially all-encompassing reality whose basic features, largely unnoticed, are developing today.

These include:

* The transformation of the U.S. military into a global oil protection service whose primary mission is to defend America's overseas sources of oil and natural gas, while patrolling the world's major pipelines and supply routes.

* The transformation of Russia into an energy superpower with control over Eurasia's largest supplies of oil and natural gas and the resolve to convert these assets into ever increasing political influence over neighboring states.

* A ruthless scramble among the great powers for the remaining oil, natural gas, and uranium reserves of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia, accompanied by recurring military interventions, the constant installation and replacement of client regimes, systemic corruption and repression, and the continued impoverishment of the great majority of those who have the misfortune to inhabit such energy-rich regions.

* Increased state intrusion into, and surveillance of, public and private life as reliance on nuclear power grows, bringing with it an increased threat of sabotage, accident, and the diversion of fissionable materials into the hands of illicit nuclear proliferators.

Together, these and related phenomena constitute the basic characteristics of an emerging global Energo-fascism. Disparate as they may seem, they all share a common feature: increasing state involvement in the procurement, transportation, and allocation of energy supplies, accompanied by a greater inclination to employ force against those who resist the state's priorities in these areas. As in classical twentieth century fascism, the state will assume ever greater control over all aspects of public and private life in pursuit of what is said to be an essential national interest: the acquisition of sufficient energy to keep the economy functioning and public services (including the military) running.

Powerful, potentially planet-altering trends like this do not occur in a vacuum. The rise of Energo-fascism can be traced to two overarching phenomena: an imminent collision between energy demand and energy supplies, and the historic migration of the center of gravity of planetary energy output from the global north to the global south.

For the past 60 years, the international energy industry has largely succeeded in satisfying the world's ever-growing thirst for energy in all its forms. When it comes to oil alone, global demand jumped from 15 to 82 million barrels per day between 1955 and 2005, an increase of 450%. Global output rose by a like amount in those years. Worldwide demand is expected to keep growing at this rate, if not faster, for years to come -- propelled in large part by rising affluence in China, India, and other developing nations. There is, however, no expectation that global output can continue to keep pace.

Quite the opposite: A growing number of energy experts believe that the global output of "conventional" (liquid) crude oil will soon reach a peak -- perhaps as early as 2010 or 2015 -- and then begin an irreversible decline. If this proves to be the case, no amount of inputs from Canadian tar sands, shale oil, or other "unconventional" sources will prevent a catastrophic liquid-fuel shortage in a decade or so, producing widespread economic trauma. The global supply of other primary fuels, including natural gas, coal, and uranium is not expected to contract as rapidly, but all of these materials are finite, and will eventually become scarce.

Coal is the most plentiful of the three; if consumed at current rates, it can be expected to last for perhaps another century and a half. If, however, it is used to replace oil (in various coal-to-liquid schemes), it will disappear much more rapidly. This does not, of course, address coal's disproportionate contribution to global warming; if there is no change in the way it is burned in power plants, the planet will become inhospitable long before the last coal mine is exhausted.

Natural gas and uranium will outlast petroleum by a decade or two, but they too will eventually reach peak output and begin to decline. Natural gas will simply disappear, just like oil; any future scarcity of uranium can to some degree be overcome through the greater utilization of "breeder reactors," which produce plutonium as a byproduct; this substance can, in turn, be used as a reactor fuel in its own right. But any increased use of plutonium will also vastly increase the risk of nuclear-weapons proliferation, producing a far more dangerous world and a corresponding requirement for greater government oversight of all aspects of nuclear power and commerce.

Such future possibilities are generating great anxiety among officials of the major energy-consuming nations, especially the United States, China, Japan, and the European powers. All of these countries have undertaken major reviews of energy policy in recent years, and all have come to the same conclusion: Market forces alone can no longer be relied upon to satisfy essential national energy requirements, and so the state must assume ever-increasing responsibility for performing this role. This was, for example, the fundamental conclusion of the National Energy Policy adopted by the Bush administration on May 17, 2001 and followed slavishly ever since, just as it is the official stance of China's Communist regime. When resistance to such efforts is encountered, moreover, government officials only wield the power of the state more regularly and with a heavier hand to achieve their objectives, whether through trade sanctions, embargoes, arrests and seizures, or the outright use of force. This is part of the explanation for Energo-fascism's emergence.

Its rise is also being driven by the changing geography of energy production. At one time, most of the world's major oil and natural gas wells were located in North America, Europe, and the European sectors of the Russian Empire. This was no accident. The major energy companies much preferred to operate in hospitable countries that were close at hand, relatively stable, and disinclined to nationalize private energy deposits. But these deposits have now largely been depleted and the only areas still capable of satisfying rising world demand are located in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. ...

The Eu is talking about waging a "world war" on climate change.

Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas defended the Commission's ambitious new proposals to reduce emissions of global warming gases in a bid to allay business fears that a unilateral move by Europe could seriously hurt the economy.

"Our proposals are not easy," Dimas told a group of British MPs in London on 11 January. But he said they were "essential" if the economic damage of climate change are to be kept "within manageable limits", as shown by the Stern review in the UK.

"Damaged economies, refugees, political instability, and the loss of life are typically the results of war. But they will also be the results of unchecked climate change," Dimas said.

"It is clear that the fight against climate change is much more than a battle. It is a world war that will last for many years."

"It is like a war because to reduce emissions something very like a war economy is needed," Dimas added, saying that benefits would come in terms of "increased energy security and public health".

Gar Lipow at Grist has a book review of Joseph Romm's "Hell and High Water".

Joseph Romm's Hell and High Water may be the most depressing book on global warming I've ever read.

He writes of a "Planetary Purgatory" [UPDATE - by the 22nd Century], where sea level rises 20 feet, many coastal cities are subject to such frequent hurricanes they are abandoned, and most of the Greenland ice mass melts. What are today considered heat waves become normal summers, with more and more forest and agricultural land lost to fire and drought.

Here's the really bad news: this is not what Romm is trying to avoid, but what he hopes to settle for.

Hell and High WaterRomm fears worse "purgatory" scenarios than this, but even more, he fears "hell and high water," where we end up with sea level rises of 40 to 80 feet. This, along with mega-hurricanes, would require us to triage coastal cities, abandoning most of them. Inland agricultural areas would end up in a permanent state of drought; fire would be ubiquitous.

He spends little time considering how to reduce losses below the "purgatory" level. Deniers and Delayers, who he compares to Neville Chamberlain and Herbert Hoover, are likely to prevent the U.S. from doing anything about the problem in the near future. Even if politics shifts slightly left in 2009, they are likely to have enough influence to prevent real (as opposed to symbolic) action from taking place. China already uses U.S. inaction as an excuse for greatly increasing its emissions, planning a new a coal plant every week for decades. The U.S., in turn, will use this as further excuse for inaction.

In essence, the U.S. and China have a mutual suicide pact, and look likely to take the rest of world along with them.

To reverse this fully, to produce actual emission cuts, would require a massive program whereby the U.S. and China deployed new infrastructure on a scale comparable to war mobilization -- instituting massive efficiency improvements and shutting down existing power plants to replace them low-carbon electricity generators.

The problem is not just new emissions, but historical emissions. Rich nations, especially the U.S. and Britain, are responsible for the creating the problem, since they produced the most. Even after China catches up with the U.S. in absolute output, they will produce much less per capita than we do. As Romm implies, but does not explicitly state, China is not going to pay to clean up the rich world's mess; neither is the rest of developing world. And worldwide emissions reductions could only happen through a deal where the rich nations cut their own emissions at their own expense and paid the poorer nations to cut theirs as well.

This is what Romm thinks is politically impossible. My fear is that he is right.

...

A coalition that supported real action on global warming, as part of movement that supported real solutions on these other issues too, would have a much better chance of winning than a single-issue group. It would have a broader base and could offer more immediate relief from problems; because global warming wouldn't be its only or even main issue, it would produce quicker results in the lives of ordinary people.

Yes, this is low probability. But so is a successful grassroots single-issue campaign that can win even the changes Romm wants. It's as much a "political improbability" as Romm's own plan, and no more an "impractical impossibility." And as he says: "occasionally political realities can change fast."

Technically, Romm is sound. There are problems in two of his wedges -- nuclear power and sequestration -- but he acknowledges them frankly.

The wedges I would propose against Romm's are the following:

1. A massive performance-based efficiency program for homes, commercial buildings, and new construction. Add some public subsidies, raising taxes and using some of the revenues to encourage meeting the standards.
2. A massive effort to boost the efficiency of heavy industry. Part of this is lowering the material intensity of consumer goods -- for example, substituting straw board for particle board -- thus reducing embedded energy in manufacturing before the first BTU was saved in any factory. We should also seek to substitute low-carbon electricity for direct fueling whenever possible.
3. Since electricity can be produced by low-carbon means such as wind turbines, we can't afford to waste scarce biofuels on electricity generation. Thus, it is essential that cogeneration be adopted only to the extent that the fuels would already have been burned for industrial purposes, and that no or few emissions are needed to produce the electricity.
4. Phase out carbon-emitting power plants over the course of twenty years, replacing them completely with wind, sun, and existing hydropower. China has significant wind resources and significant deserts for solar power. The U.S. will have to subsidize the difference between the cost of these and the cost of new coal plants, plus the cost of shutting existing coal plants down. Since China suffers huge health costs from coal, the cost can probably be kept to $50 to $100 billion per year.
5. Build no new nuclear power plants, while shutting down old ones as their lifespan ends. Use the money saved to implement more efficiency and renewable energy than nuclear power would have provided.
6. Require every car to have an average fuel economy of 75 mpg. Make large investments in electrically driven mass transit.
7. Enable every car to run on electricity for short distances -- at least 60 or 70 miles (requiring more renewable energy) -- before reverting to biofuels (requiring one-twelfth the world's cropland, or possibly some of the worlds rangeland). Note that a great deal of the world's grain is used to raise animals. We could convert some of this to a combination of biofuels and production of vegetable protein for humans, thus not reducing world food production at all.
8. Convert all major row crops to low-input no-till, and possibly incorporate charcoal fertilizer as well (or allow equivalent or better permaculture improvements that cultivate soil), thus converting agriculture to a minor carbon sink instead of a carbon source.
9. Replace most freight ton-miles shipped by truck with freight ton-miles shipped by rail, using trucks only for the first and last 50 miles. Also, increase truck fuel efficiency per ton miles with a combination of various existing technologies, and also by allowing large trucks carrying more freight at a time -- to the extent this can be done safely.
10. Stop all tropical deforestation. Stop deforestation period. Stop logging old-growth and second-growth forests (other than real thinning to prevent fires, as opposed to the clear-cutting we sometimes call thinning). Substitute waste straw from no-till for manufactured woods and alter construction methods to minimize wood use, substituting things like super-adobe and low-carbon cements. (There are forms of cement that can replace Portland cement; also, carbon from Portland cement manufacture can be sequestered right in the concrete made from it. This latter technique requires manufacturing bricks and prefab slabs on the site where the cement is made.)

Dave Roberts has a follow up post on his URGE concept up at Grist which talks about practical politics.

First, remember this is conceived as a communication device, not a complete or ideal description of green policy utopia. It has to meet a few requirements:

1. It has to be broad enough to lure the support of many green constituencies.
2. It has to be specific enough to yield real lobbying and policy guidance.
3. It has to be simple and memorable enough to stick in people's heads.

I worry quite a bit about greens on this score.

You've got the wonks, with their chart-laden analysis and 50-point Perfect Policy Plans. You've got the seasoned campaigners, patrolling the halls of state and federal legislatures, haggling over provision C4sub2 of some obscure regulation. You've got the dirty hippies, talking dreamily about changing the human soul and scrapping capitalism. And you've got scattered advocates raising alarms that we're all fucked if we don't get working.

I love all those people, truly I do, and there's a little of each in me. But what's conspicuously missing from that crowd is people focusing specifically on a simple policy agenda that's easy to rally public support around and easy to communicate to policymakers -- one that can provide not only immediate advice, but mid- and long-term policy guidance as well.

This is the kind of thing that virtually all conservatives trained in the College Republicans and rightwing think tanks do. They view their roles as academics or researchers or dreamers as secondary. Most of all they're trying to push public policy in their direction.

Greens, for whatever reason, have lost their mojo on this score (though groups like the Apollo Alliance and 25x25 are groping in the right direction). Pushing public policy in your direction means more than choosing what you like and cheerleading for it. It means assessing the landscape, finding pressure points, finding trends that need to be counteracted, finding overlooked pieces of the puzzle that no one else is rooting for. It means being politically strategic.

Anyway, something like that is what I'm trying to do. I'm probably not the guy to do it, but I'd like to at least get people thinking along those lines.

Any such project is going to be schematic. It will leave stuff out or over-simplify stuff. Such as:

* A carbon cap, or tax, or cap-and-trade system. This was a tough call. Some sort of price on carbon is inevitable. But it seems to me that green advocacy for pricing carbon is kind of a back-door way of advocating for positive things like clean energy. I think a carbon price is all but inevitable now, and I'd rather have greens focus on positive solutions. But I go back and forth about this.
* Not all liquid-fuel use will shift to electricity. Solar thermal and geothermal will take a chunk of the heating. Biofuels will serve local uses.
* I didn't mention -- except by way of preparing the grid for it -- clean energy itself. That's because I think there's a sh-tload of capital out there already flooding into that market. Government research would help, but the ball is rolling. Tons of people are devoting themselves to it. Greens can fill in the gaps, pushing on things few others are paying attention to, like the grid, storage, etc.

One final note: Stentor warns us to avoid an "energy-reductionist conceptualization of environmentalism." I don't think we should avoid that, at least at the moment. In my mind, everything comes back to energy and climate change. Realigning our energy situation is central. All our other goals hinge on it, and it will have innumerable side benefits that will touch every other issue we hold dear. Every green group, of every stripe, should be focused like a laser on energy and climate change. Policymakers should be hearing one voice, talking about one thing, from every side. It's time for a coordinated push.

Jamais at Open The Future has a post on "Must-Know Concepts for the 21st Century".

My colleague at IEET, George Dvorsky, posted a list of concept about the future that he sees as vital for people who consider themselves to be intelligent to know and understand. His goal is admirable: too much of what passes for public discourse (in the United States, at least, but from what I can see, also in much of the rest of the West) is deeply focused on the past, and much too narrow. Moreover, it's not simply that we've become a culture of niche thinkers; it's that the niche thinkers that dominate public discourse have seemingly decided that their particular set of niches (largely issues of domestic politics and economics) are the only important ones. ...

George asks for additions, so in that spirit, here's a list of 10 more terms and concepts intelligent participants in the 21st century should understand. Mine has links. :)

* Carlson Curves
* Climate refugees
* Climate system tipping point
* Cognitively modified organisms
* Continuous partial attention
* Extended identity
* Open-source warfare
* Post-hegemonic politics
* Thermal inertia
* Uncanny valley

I'm not entirely satisfied with this list; it remains a bit too tech-focused. Still, in combination with George's list, this looks like the beginnings of a good primer for dealing with the key issues of the new century.

Jamais also has "An Eschatological Taxonomy" which is a handy tool for those of a doomerish disposition - the challenge is to construct a scenario (preferably one which is totally unavoidable no matter what actions we take) that results in Planetary Elimination. Personally I'm hoping we can work out a way to keep things at "Regional Catastrophe" or lower...

What do we mean when we talk about the "end of the world?"

It's a term that get thrown around a bit too often among a variety of futurist-types, whether talking about global warming, nanofabrication, or non-friendly artificial intelligence. "Existential risks" is the lingo-du jour, referring to the broad panoply of processes, technologies and events that put our existence at risk. But, still, what does that mean? The destruction of the Earth? The end of humankind? A "Mad Max" world of leather-clad warriors, feral kids, and armed fashion models? All are frightening and horrific, but some are moreso than others. How do we tell them apart?

Class	Effect
0	Regional Catastrophe (examples: moderate-case global warming, minor asteroid impact, local thermonuclear war) Global civilization not eliminated, but regional civilizations effectively destroyed; millions to hundreds of millions dead, but large parts of humankind retain current social and technological conditions. Chance of humankind recovery: excellent. Species local to the catastrophe likely die off, and post-catastrophe effects (refugees, fallout, etc.) may kill more. Chance of biosphere recovery: excellent.
1	Human Die-Back (examples: extreme-case global warming, moderate asteroid impact, global thermonuclear war) Global civilization set back to pre- or low-industrial conditions; several billion or more dead, but human species as a whole survives, in pockets of varying technological and social conditions. Chance of humankind recovery: moderate. Most non-human species on brink of extinction die off, but most other plant and animal species remain and, eventually, flourish. Chance of biosphere recovery: excellent.
2	Civilization Extinction (examples: worst-case global warming, significant asteroid impact, early-era molecular nanotech warfare) Global civilization destroyed; millions (at most) remain alive, in isolated locations, with ongoing death rate likely exceeding birth rate. Chance of humankind recovery: slim. Many non-human species die off, but some remain and, over time, begin to expand and diverge. Chance of biosphere recovery: good.
3a	Human Extinction-Engineered (examples: targeted nano-plague, engineered sterility absent radical life extension) Global civilization destroyed; all humans dead. Conditions triggering this are human-specific, so other species are, for the most part, unaffected. Chance of humankind recovery: nil. Chance of biosphere recovery: excellent.
3b	Human Extinction-Natural (examples: major asteroid impact, methane clathrates melt) Global civilization destroyed; all humans dead. Conditions triggering this are general and global, so other species are greatly affected, as well. Chance of humankind recovery: nil. Chance of biosphere recovery: moderate.
4	Biosphere Extinction (examples: massive asteroid impact, "iceball Earth" reemergence, late-era molecular nanotech warfare) Global civilization destroyed; all humans dead. Biosphere massively disrupted, with the wholesale elimination of many niches. Chance of humankind recovery: nil. Chance of biosphere recovery: slim. Chance of eventual re-emergence of organic life: good.
5	Planetary Extinction (examples: dwarf-planet-scale asteroid impact, nearby gamma-ray burst) Global civilization destroyed; all humans dead. Biosphere effectively destroyed; all species extinct. Geophysical disruption sufficient to prevent or greatly hinder re-emergence of organic life.
X	Planetary Elimination (example: post-Singularity beings disassemble planet to make computronium) Global civilization destroyed; all humans dead. Ecosystem destroyed; all species extinct. Planet itself destroyed.

One last quote from Jamais, this one on the topic of geoethics - for those who decide that re-terraforming earth is the solution to global warming (this is one area where I go all luddite and say - please don't do this...).

The pace and course of global warming-induced climate disruption is such that, even with an aggressive global effort to cut greenhouse gas output starting today, temperatures will continue to rise for two or three decades. If the effect of rising temperatures hits a "tipping point" resulting in far-more-radical changes to the Earth's ecosystems than one might otherwise expect, we may be forced into using riskier, planetary-scale engineering projects to mitigate the changes and return us to "Earth-like" conditions. In Terraforming Earth, I looked at some of the proposals for large-scale reversals of temperature increases and CO2 buildup; In Terraforming Earth, Part II, I looked at the complexities of bioengineered adjustment instead of geoengineered mitigation.

But whether we end up taking the mitigation or the adjustment course, we will want -- need -- clear guidelines to help us make the right choices. Such guidelines would, for some, seem like common sense; indeed, their use would not be to tell us what to do, but as a consistent metric against which to test proposals. These principles would not tell us whether a given strategy would succeed or fail, but whether the strategy would be the right course of action.

As an explicit parallel to bioethics, these guidelines would be known as "geoethics."

...

I will propose a draft definition of geoethics, along with some suggested principles, but I'm looking for input (in the comments, preferably, but in email, too) from the larger WorldChanging community as to the phrasing and value of the concept.

Proposed phrasing:

Geoethics is the set of guidelines pertaining to human behaviors that can affect larger planetary geophysical systems, including atmospheric, oceanic, geological, and plant/animal ecosystems. These guidelines are most relevant when the behaviors can result in long-term, widespread and/or hard-to-reverse changes in planetary systems, although even transient, local and superficial alterations can be considered through the prism of geoethics. Geoethical principles do not forbid long-term, widespread and/or hard-to-reverse changes, but require a consideration of repercussions and so-called "second-order effects" (that is, the usually-unintended consequences arising from the interaction of the changed system and other connected systems).

Proposed core principles:

# Interconnectedness -- planetary systems do not exist in isolation, and changes made to one system will have implications for other systems.
# Diversity -- on balance, a diverse ecosystem is more resilient and flexible, better able to adapt to natural changes.
# Foresight -- consideration of effects of changes should embrace the planetary pace, not the human pace.
# Integration -- as human societies are part of the Earth's systems, changes made should take into consideration effects on human communities, and the needs of human communities should not be discounted or dismissed when considering overall impacts.
# Expansion of Options -- on balance, choices made should increase the number of options and opportunities for future generations, not reduce them.
# Reversibility -- changes made to planetary systems should be done in a way that allows for reconsideration if unintended and unexpected consequences arise.

...

Integration is an explicit counter to the "die-off" line of thinking that places the needs of human societies below all other systems on the planet. Not only does the "die-off" argument result in ecological disaster as desperate societies try to grab remaining resources, its logic leads to the argument that (a) since human society is inherently unsustainable, and (b) since the planet, given sufficient time, can recover from any environmental burden we place on it before we die, there's no reason to be cautious, and we should do as we like with no concern for the future. Seeing human societies as part of the planet's systems, and as worthy of preservation and protection as any other part, allows for a longer-term perspective. ...

Khebab has his latest compilation of oil production statistics and depletion models up at The Oil Drum.

The All liquids peak is now July 2006 at 85.49 mbpd (previously May 2006 at 85.21 mbpd), the year to date average values in 2006 (10 months) are down from 2005 for all the categories except for the total liquids which now equals 2005 production. The peak date has changed for Crude Oil + Cond. and is now May 2005 at 74.15 mbpd.

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on the retreating European ski fields.

Keep off the pistes, say the signs, not because hikers might collide with skiers, but because their boots would wear away what dregs of snow remain. After a slow start to the season, snow cover may have built up at the big-name, high-level Swiss resorts like Davos, Zermatt and St Moritz. But less-famous names, still waiting for snow, are planning to seek alternative sources of tourist cash.

"The lifts were open over the Christmas season. Now it's over, I don't know," says Luca, a Locarno resident trekking along paths muddied by melted snow on the steep slopes above the town. "It makes it a lot quieter for walking."

Above Locarno on the 1,400 metre Cimetta - blanketed in snow last year - the ski lifts and restaurant are closed. A thin trail of brown-streaked old snow runs down a short slope in the shadows. The lakeside resort in Italian-speaking southern Switzerland is known more as a summer destination than for its ski slopes, but the lack of snow cover is indicative of a problem that many mid-level Alpine resorts are experiencing.

One thing that isn't retreating is China's foreign exchange reserves - and they might get used to buy up as much oil as possible.

China's foreign exchange reserves, already the world's largest, have passed $US1 trillion ($1.3 trillion), the government announced today, amid debate over how the country should use its newfound wealth.

The central bank said its reserves stood at $US1.0663 trillion ($1.36 trillion) at the end of December, up more than 30 per cent from one year earlier, making this the first country officially to top the $US1 trillion mark. China passed Japan in early 2006 as the nation with the biggest foreign reserves as Beijing drained money from its economy, stockpiling much of it in US Treasuries in an effort to prevent a spike in inflation as export revenues surged in. ...

Economists are debating how China's reserves might be put to use to address pressing needs. Some have suggested that Beijing use the money to buy oil and other resources abroad for China's booming economy. Others say it could pay for more schools and social programs.

The East Asia summit has concluded with energy security and "clean" coal receiving top billing and the Japanese pushing for a reduction in oil dependency in the region. I'm not sure if I noted the second part of technology Review's special on China and "clean" coal, but if not, here is the link.

AUSTRALIA and China will establish a clean-coal technology working group in an effort to balance China's need for energy resources with growing concern about the impact of coal burning on the global environment.

The move comes as Japan announced a $US2 billion ($2.5 billion) package at the East Asia Summit in Cebu to help its neighbours develop energy-saving technology and find ways to ease the region's dependence on oil.

The Prime Minister, John Howard, discussed the new clean-coal plan after a meeting with the Chinese Premier, Wen Jiabao, in Cebu yesterday. "China is at a different stage of development than Australia," he said. "We have grown our economy and productivity off the back of coal, which is now regarded as emitting far too many greenhouse gases. That doesn't alter the fact if we approach this in a constructive fashion and try to work together, pool our experience, pool our knowledge, it can be better for both countries."

The aims of the group include sharing knowledge about clean coal, identifying areas where the use of clean-coal technologies can be improved and identifying joint clean-coal technology projects.

"This is a good idea, a good proposal. It's a new aspect of co-operation between Australia and China," said Qin Gang, China's Foreign Ministry spokesman. "How to use coal in an efficient way and deal with the challenge of climate change is a problem around the world and Australia and China will work together on it."

The main outcome this year was an energy security declaration committing the 16 nations to look for new energy sources, including work on biofuels.

The world's richest woman is a Chinese lady who recycles cardboard.

U.S. trash has made Zhang Yin China's richest person.

Zhang in 1990 started collecting wastepaper in Los Angeles and shipping it to China to make the cardboard needed by growing export industries. Her company, Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd., is now China's biggest packaging maker. Nine Dragon's stock has risen fourfold since its March initial public offering, pushing Zhang's fortune to $4.7 billion.

``Other people saw scrap paper as garbage, but I saw it as a forest of trees,'' Zhang, 49, told reporters last November in Hong Kong. ``I had to learn from scratch. The business was just my husband and me, and I didn't speak a word of English.''

Investors such as Merrill Lynch & Co. and Baring Asset Management are betting on Zhang, the daughter of a revolutionary- era army officer, as the Chinese companies that make everything from computers to bicycles demand more and more cardboard boxes. China's exports have increased fivefold to $762 billion during the past decade.

Zhang is the world's richest self-made woman ahead of U.S. chat show host Oprah Winfrey and EBay Inc. Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, according to Shanghai-based Hurun Report, which ranks wealthy people in China.

"Dynamic Discourse" has a post asking for Apple to make the iPhone (and iPod) a service, not a product.

As part of my sick-day routine, I sat in bed and listened to CBC Radio One on the AM dial eating toast and sipping my tea. On The Current today there was some discussion with Heather Rogers (author of Gone Tomorrow, a book chronicling the social and political history of household garbage in the United States) around the new iPhone by Apple. Her arguement was essentially that the iPhone, like all other tech gadgets, has built-in obsolescence into its technology to ensure people will upgrade and purchase the next generation of iPhone in a year or two. Furthermore, as Apple is so successful at marketing these throw-away gadgets, the idea of expensive disposable products is becoming ingrained in our culture. That is, it is acceptable to toss these highly toxic items into the landfill when a new model is released into the market and/or the old one becomes damaged but is less expensive to purchase the new model than to replace the part of the old one.

I agree that our culture of increasingly disposable consumption is considerably degrading our environment. Companies like Apple are the fundamental catalysts to this issue. However,they are simply adhering to the traditional capitalist premise that to remain competitive and continually bring in profits to shareholders, they must always expand their product base and/or create "new and improved" models of old products. If Apple doesn't do this, another company will and the Apple company will fail. But Ms. Rogers failed to offer any recommendations to resolve the issue. For this shortcoming, I am disappointed with The Current because- as its program title implies- it should be providing the latest information to listeners. If Ms. Rogers was truly up-to-date with her research on this topic, she would know that the latest information offers such innovative solutions. Here is what Ms. Rogers should have talked about...

In 1999, Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins released their book, Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. In 2002, William McDonough and Michael Braungart built on these ideas and published their book, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. Without going into too much detail, these books offer a new paradigm to how we can solve this issue of older products continually entering the waste stream. The key point made is that rather than an economy where products are made and sold, consumers could obtain services by leasing or renting the goods as opposed to buying them outright. Manufacturers become deliverers of service instead of just products. If the goods fail, the manufacturer must repair them with the costs built into the product lease agreement. And when new technologies are available and new models are released, the old models are taken back by the manufacturer, deconstructed, recycled, and put back into the product processing stream. Hence the term, "cradle-to-cradle".

The premise is that manufacturers will ultimately own the goods, thus will create products that will maximize product durability and usefulness to reduce their business costs and investments (since the products are owned by the manufacturer, they are considered investments). Less waste, enhanced consumer experience, increased employment through new manufacturing cycles, and less energy use (three times as much energy is used to extract materials than to recycle them) are all benefits from this new industrial process. Many leading companies are implementing these principles already: Google with it's web-based software, Interface Corporation with its Flooring, Carrier with some of its air-conditioning equipment, Xerox with its copiers, Hewlett-Packard with its printers, and so on.

If Apple were to subscribe to this new service economy, only then would Apple's next generation of products be touted as revolutionary. Otherwise, their super-sleek, uber-cool iJunk is simply another line of more tech gadgets destined for the landfill.

Mr. Steve Jobs, if you want to really impress me and offer me a true cultural shift via your products, offer me an ePod lease that I know will never end up in the waste stream and will be updated with the latest and best technology indefinitely.

The New York Times has an article on freecycling - both my brother and one of my work friends recommended this to me recently - it seems to be growing pretty fast.

Getting new stuff can feel really good. Most everybody knows that. Most everybody also knows — particularly in the aftermath of the consumption-frenzy holiday season, that utility can fade, pleasure can be fleeting and the whole thought-that-counts thing is especially ephemeral. Apart from the usual solution to this problem (more new stuff!), it's worth pondering whether getting rid of stuff can ever feel as good as getting it.

A few years ago, a self-described tree-hugger in Tucson named Deron Beal was working for a nonprofit that focused on recycling as a way to minimize what was going into local landfills. While plenty of people were willing, even eager, to get rid of things they no longer wanted but that weren’t really trash, finding people who wanted those things was a challenge. Beal set up a Yahoo Groups mailing list, hoping to create a giveaway marketplace where people could list usable items and others could lay claim to them and then come pick them up. The mailing list became the basis for Freecycle, a Web-enabled network of about 3,900 such e-mail groups, each dedicated to a local community and managed by a volunteer moderator, and claiming 2.9 million participants in more than 70 countries. One of the largest Freecycle groups, with 25,000 members, is for New York City.

Save-the-earth types make up only a fraction of Freecycle users. Like any successful marketplace, this one works because it links people with widely disparate motivations. Some participants want to declutter. Some see it as akin to a charity. Some just don't want to lug items to the dump. And of course, many people are looking for free stuff. As Freecycle has become a bigger and bigger de facto brand, Beal prefers "movement" ‚ its sheer scale no doubt attracts people who aren't tree-huggers or "simple living" fanatics but just have some item they'd like to unconsume and in the process see what all the fuss is about.

Whatever attracts people to join, part of what keeps them involved, Beal says, is something they probably didn’t expect: the moment when someone thanks you backward and forward for giving him something you planned to throw away. "There's a sort of paradigm shift in your brain: "Wow, that feels really good" Beal says. "That's what I think is fueling this absurd amount of growth we've had."

Fast Company has a look at the compact fluorescent lightbulb and Walmart and GE's plans to spread them across America,

Sitting humbly on shelves in stores everywhere is a product, priced at less than $3, that will change the world. Soon. It is a fairly ordinary item that nonetheless cuts to the heart of a half-dozen of the most profound, most urgent problems we face. Energy consumption. Rising gasoline costs and electric bills. Greenhouse-gas emissions. Dependence on coal and foreign oil. Global warming.

The product is the compact fluorescent lightbulb, a quirky-looking twist of frosted glass. In the energy business, it is called a "CFL," or an "energy saver." One scientist calls it an "ice-cream-cone spiral," because in its most-advanced, most-appealing version, it looks like nothing so much as a cone of swirled soft-serve ice cream.

For two decades, CFLs lacked precisely what we expect from lightbulbs: strong, unwavering light; quiet; not to mention shapes that actually fit in the places we use bulbs. Now every one of those problems has been conquered. The bulbs come on quickly; their light is bright, white, steady, and silent; and the old U-shaped tubes--they looked like bulbs from a World War II submarine--have mostly been replaced by the swirl. Since 1985, CFLs have changed as much as cell phones and portable music players.

One thing hasn't changed: the energy savings. Compact fluorescents emit the same light as classic incandescents but use 75% or 80% less electricity.

What that means is that if every one of 110 million American households bought just one ice-cream-cone bulb, took it home, and screwed it in the place of an ordinary 60-watt bulb, the energy saved would be enough to power a city of 1.5 million people. One bulb swapped out, enough electricity saved to power all the homes in Delaware and Rhode Island. In terms of oil not burned, or greenhouse gases not exhausted into the atmosphere, one bulb is equivalent to taking 1.3 million cars off the roads.

That's the law of large numbers--a small action, multiplied by 110 million.

The single greatest source of greenhouse gases in the United States is power plants--half our electricity comes from coal plants. One bulb swapped out: enough electricity saved to turn off two entire power plants--or skip building the next two.

Just one swirl per home. The typical U.S. house has between 50 and 100 "sockets" (astonish yourself: Go count the bulbs in your house). So what if we all bought and installed two ice-cream-cone bulbs? Five? Fifteen?

Peak oil video of the month comes courtesy of James W Johnson - Post Oil Man:



ING Bank has produced a research report on the likely impact of a US and/or Israeli attack on Iran.

NG is a global financial services company of Dutch origin that includes banking, insurance, and other divisions. The report was authored by Charles Robinson, the Chief Economist for Emerging Europe, Middle East, and Africa. He also authored an update in ING's daily update, Prophet, that further underscored the bank's perception of the risks of an attack.

ING's Robertson admitted that an attack on Iran was "high impact, if low probability," but explained some of the reasons why a strike might go forward. The Jan. 9 dispatch, describes Israel as "not prepared to accept the same doctrine of ‘mutually assured destruction’ that kept the peace during the Cold War. Israel is adamant that this is not an option for such a geographically small country....So if Israel is convinced Iran is aiming to develop a nuclear weapon, it must presumably act at some point."

Sketching out the time line for an attack, Robertson says that "we can be fairly sure that if Israel is going to act, it will be keen to do so while Bush and Cheney are in the White House."

Robertson suggests a February-March 2007 timeframe for several reasons. First, there is a comparable situation to Israel's strike on Iraq's nuclear program in 1981, including Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's political troubles within Israel. Second, late February will see Iran's deadline to comply with UN Security Council Resolution 1737, and Israel could use a failure of Iran and the UN to follow through as justification for a strike. Finally, greater US military presence in the region at that time could be seen by Israel as the protection from retaliation that it needs.

In his Jan. 15 update, Robertson points to a political reason that could make the assault more likely – personnel changes in the Bush administration may have sidelined opponents of attacking Iran.

Preisdent Bush recently removed General John Abizaid as commander of US forces in the Middle East and John Negroponte as Director of National Intelligence, both of whom have said attacking Iran is not a priority or the right move at this time. The deployment of Patriot missile batteries, highlighted in President Bush's recent White House speech on America's Iraq policy, also pointed to a need to defend against Iranian missiles.

I quite liked this post at the Mahablog on Rod Dreher's disillusionment with what conservatism has turned into (or has been proved to be, depending on your point of view).

Per Glenn Greenwald, don’t miss this audio essay by rightie Rod Dreher.

As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.

But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.

In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.

The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.

It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Not under a Republican President.

Like so many loyal soldiers of movement conservatism, Dreher’s earliest political memories are of the Carter Administration and the Iranian hostage crisis, followed by the triumphant ascension of Ronald Reagan. He was 13 years old when Reagan was elected, so you can’t fault him for viewing these events through a child’s eyes. The problem is, as it is with so many of his fellow travelers, that his understanding of politics remained childish. He seems to have retained a child’s simple faith that Democrats (and liberals) are “bad” and Republicans (and conservatives) are “good,” so one does not have to think real hard to know who’s right or wrong. In the minds of righties, Republicans/conservatives have an inherent virtue that keeps them on the side of the angels. What passes for “critical analysis” among righties is most often just the unconscious jerking of their knees in support of their faith.

Dreher’s is the voice of a man who realizes his faith has been betrayed.

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

The answers to your questions, Mr. Dreher, are (1) yes, and (2) because you were brainwashed. As I wrote here,

I noticed years ago that the rank-and-file “movement conservative” is younger than I am. Well, OK, most people are younger than I am. But surely you’ve noticed that a disproportionate number of True Believers are people who reached their late teens / early twenties during the Carter or Reagan years at the earliest. They came of age at the same time the right-wing media / think tank infrastructure began to dominate national political discourse, and all their adult lives their brains have been pickled in rightie propaganda.

Because they’re too young to remember When Things Were Different, they don’t recognize that the way mass media has handled politics for the past thirty or so years is abnormal. What passes for our national political discourse — as presented on radio, television, and much print media — is scripted in right-wing think tanks and media paid for by the likes of Joseph Coors, Richard Mellon Scaife, and more recently by Sun Myung Moon. What looks like “debate” is just puppet theater, presented to manipulate public opinion in favor of the Right.

In this puppet theater “liberals” (booo! hisss!) are the craven, cowardly, and possibly demented villains, and “conservatives” are the noble heroes who come to the rescue of the virtuous maid America. Any American under the age of 40 has had this narrative pounded into his head his entire life. Rare is the individual born after the Baby Boom who has any clue what “liberalism” really is. Ask, and they’ll tell you that liberals are people who “believe in” raising taxes and spending money on big entitlement programs, which of course is bad. (Read this to understand why it’s bad.)

Just one example of how the word liberal has been utterly bastardized, see this Heritage Foundation press release of March 2006 that complains Congress is becoming “liberal.” Why? Because of its pork-barrel spending.

But I want to say something more about betrayal. One piece left out of most commentary on the freaks (not hippies, children; the name preferred by participants of the counterculture was freaks) was how betrayed many of us felt. Remember, we’d been born in the years after World War II. We’d spent our childhoods dramatizing our fathers’ struggles on Normandy Beach and Iwo Jima in our suburban back yards. Most of us watched “Victory at Sea” at least twice. Most of our childhood heroes were characters out of American mythos, like Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone (who seemed an awful lot alike). Further, some of the scariest times of the Cold War unfolded during our elementary and middle schools years. We grew up believing the Communists would nuke us any second. Our schools (even Sunday School, as I recall) and media made sure we were thoroughly indoctrinated with the understanding that liberty and democracy were “good” and Communism was “bad,” and America Is the Greatest Nation in the World.

For many of us, these feelings reached their apex during the Kennedy administration. I was nine years old when he was elected. He seemed to embody everything that was noble and good and heroic about America. I remember his tour of Europe the summer before the assassination. I watched his motorcade move through cheering crowds on our black-and-white console television and never felt prouder to be an American.

But then our hearts were broken in Dallas, and less than two years later Lyndon Johnson announced he would send troops to Vietnam. And then the young men of my generation were drafted into the meat grinder. Sooner or later, most of us figured out our idealism had been misplaced. I was one of the later ones; the realization dawned for me during the Nixon Administration, which began while I was a senior in high school. Oh, I still believed in liberty and democracy; I felt betrayed because I realized our government didn’t. And much of my parents’ generation didn’t seem to, either.

The counterculture was both a backlash to that betrayal and to the cultural rigidity of the 1950s. And much of “movement conservatism” was a backlash to the counterculture, albeit rooted in the pseudo-conservatism documented earlier by Richard Hofstadter and others.

Rod Dreher and others of his generation are now old enough that their children are at least approaching adolescence, if they haven’t already arrived. What “earliest political memory” will imprint on them? What form will the inevitable rebellion against their parents’ generation take?

Glenn Greenwald and Digby both note that just because Bush is now almost as unpopular as Nixon when he resigned in disgrace, there is no room for complacency, as Bush tends to become more extreme when he feels he is in a position of weakness.

The reason Bush violated the law when eavesdropping is the same reason Lithwick cites to explain his other lawless and extremist measures -- because he wanted purposely not to comply with the law in order to establish the general "principle" that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law. This is a President and an administration that are obsessed first and foremost with their own power and with constant demonstrations of their own strength. Conversely, what they fear and hate the most is their own weakness and submission to limitations.

For that reason, the weaker and more besieged the administration feels, the more compelled they will feel to make a showing of their power. Lashing out in response to feelings of weakness is a temptation most human beings have, but it is more than a mere temptation for George Bush. It is one of the predominant dynamics that drives his behavior.

His party suffered historic losses in the 2006 midterm elections as a result of profound dissatisfaction with his presidency and with his war, and his reaction was to escalate the war, despite (really, because of) the extreme unpopularity of that option. And as Iraq rapidly unraveled, he issued orders that pose a high risk of the conflict engulfing Iran. When he feels weak and restrained, that is when he acts most extremely.

Bush officials and their followers talk incessantly about things like power, weakness, domination, humiliation. Their objectives -- both foreign and domestic -- are always to show their enemies that they are stronger and more powerful and the enemies are weaker and thus must submit ("shock and awe"). It is a twisted world view but it dominates their thinking (and that is how our country has been governed for the last six years, which is what accounts for our current predicament). As John Dean demonstrated, a perception of one's weakness and the resulting fears it inspires are almost always what drive people to seek out empowering authoritarian movements and the group-based comforts of moral certitude.

The most dangerous George Bush is one who feels weak, powerless and under attack. Those perceptions are intolerable for him and I doubt there are many limits, if there are any, on what he would be willing to do in order to restore a feeling of power and to rid himself of the sensations of his own weakness and defeat.

I believe Martin Luther King Day has just been and gone in the US, so here's a snippet from his speech "Beyond Vietnam" (Juan Cole has some additional commentary on this).

This Madness Must Cease

Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home and death and corruption in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words:

"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."

If we continue, there will be no doubt in my mind and in the mind of the world that we have no honorable intentions in Vietnam. It will become clear that our minimal expectation is to occupy it as an American colony and men will not refrain from thinking that our maximum hope is to goad China into a war so that we may bomb her nuclear installations. If we do not stop our war against the people of Vietnam immediately the world will be left with no other alternative than to see this as some horribly clumsy and deadly game we have decided to play.

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam, that we have been detrimental to the life of the Vietnamese people. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

In order to atone for our sins and errors in Vietnam, we should take the initiative in bringing a halt to this tragic war. I would like to suggest five concrete things that our government should do immediately to begin the long and difficult process of extricating ourselves from this nightmarish conflict:

1. End all bombing in North and South Vietnam.
2. Declare a unilateral cease-fire in the hope that such action will create the atmosphere for negotiation.
3. Take immediate steps to prevent other battlegrounds in Southeast Asia by curtailing our military buildup in Thailand and our interference in Laos.
4. Realistically accept the fact that the National Liberation Front has substantial support in South Vietnam and must thereby play a role in any meaningful negotiations and in any future Vietnam government.
5. Set a date that we will remove all foreign troops from Vietnam in accordance with the 1954 Geneva agreement.