Beyond Logic

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat.

"I don't much care where –" said Alice.

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go," said the Cat.

A must read from Smart Planet, America’s oil choice: Pay up, or get off  piece, written by Chris Nader, reminds me of the Cheshire Cat telling Alice how to "get there'.

The oil industry has an important message for you, America: You’re not paying enough for fuel. And if you want to realize the fantasy of “North American energy independence,” you will have to pay more for it — a lot more.

Getting drivers to go along with this notion will not be easy, so the industry has couched this message in much more careful language.

Its new media campaign began with a Feb. 5 editorial in the New York Times by Christof Rühl, group chief economist of BP. After claiming victory for optimists over peak oil pundits like me and trumpeting “North America’s oil and gas renaissance” — new “tight oil” production from shale formations like the Bakken in North Dakota and the Eagle Ford in Texas — Rühl explained how the “expected surge of new oil will lead to increased supply overall and continued market volatility.”

He wrote: “If history is any guide, OPEC will cut production and forego market share in favor of price stability.” (Emphasis mine.)

The United States and Canada have an important policy choice to make, Rühl asserted. “Nations with abundant resources must decide whether to follow the path of open markets, including foreign access and competitive pricing,” or “opt for restrictive investment regimes that risk becoming less rewarding.” (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, North American oil prices need to be higher. And the way to do that is to export crude to the rest of the world.

So let me guess. In order to keep the drilling, fracking and ongoing stripping of the Bakkan oil sands to continue, with disastrous environmental impact in hand, we have to export the toxic sludge, Dibit, under high pressure and high temperature from Canada through the US via the proposed XL pipeline for delivery to the wold in order to A. incur higher oil prices to continue doing the same old drilling, fracking and stripping and B. continue our dependence on fossil fuels supplied by foreign entities, right?

It gets better...

So I agree with Rühl, van der Hoeven and the experts cited by the Times: Crude prices would have to rise for the boom in unconventional oil and gas to continue. Their production growth has already slowed as prices have faltered.

But I disagree that the answer is to open up U.S. ports to crude oil exports. This isn’t really a principled argument about misalignment between resources and regulations, or open trade policy. It’s a strategic choice about whether or not the United States wants to remain committed to oil.

Instead of asking ourselves if we want more oil from increasingly dirty and environmentally damaging sources, we should be asking what kind of an economy we want.

From the standpoint of national security and the economy, it makes little sense to export crude oil and natural gas when the United States is still a net importer of both. (That’s right: Despite the ballyhooed boom in shale gas, the country still imports a net 6 percent of its gas.)

BRT has talked about the absurd relationship the US has with fossil fuel providers and has asked the simple question of why Germany is nearly 50% solar while the US is less then 2% even though Germany's climate is not as benign as ours. Without question, the US can get out of this ridiculous situation but in order to do that, a drastic reset needs to be done, the most important of which is to take back control of our government from the monied interests who are running this nation into the ground. Initial steps to start the process include:

• End Gerrymandering as this insures that incumbents remain in power.
• Amendment 28 whereby Congress must obey the laws it passes, terms limits and the elimination of lobbyists funneling money to the politicos in order fro them to get reelected, something not the case today.
• Leverage the net to enable public referendums on policies that affect us all. Iraq war as example
• Kill the Fed, the US had a revolution over the control of money, something we don't have as a cartel protected by government controls our money, not us.
• Demand transparency in finance and governance  We don't have that, thus we are being compromised without question.
• Institue public financing of campaigns and eliminate Citizens United as the last time yours truly checked, IBM is not a person.
• Eliminate the IRS and the byzantine tax codes (20,000 pages & counting) enabling the upper 1% to game the system. Replace it with something comprehensible and fair as the IRS works for the Fed to collect the interest on the money, our money, the Fed borrows in order to buy US Treasuries.

We must make these changes and then some before it's too late as earth is sending us a wake up call to change our ways or face the consequences, something we continue to ignore at our peril.

Any questions?