Peak oil and government question

[RogerCO]

[ Perhaps it was cornish immigrants

...and this from a man who lives where they don't even know how to make a proper pasty...

[Blue Peter]

Monbiot and James Humphries (ex Dowing Street department of spin) were on Radio4

....

Roger,

Is this your response to me? It seems rather different than your original "fighting for democracy" post.


Peter.

[RogerCO]

Roger, Is this your response to me? It seems rather different than your original "fighting for democracy" post.
Peter.

No, I need more time to put that together (I'll do it "drekly" as we say down here); it was a response to the mention of Monbiot and something relevant to this discussion that he and Humphries said this morning on the radio.
"Fighting for democracy" is a good way of putting it though. And on the MI5 thread I suspect that most people in the intelligence services are not necessarily on the side of the bad guys - after all the secret police (in their current form) were formed precisely to protect democracy and probably see that as a key part of their role - the problem is that they tend (arguably correctly) to identify the interests of democracy with the interests of the democratically elected government - which may actually be unable to act correctly and be sleepwalking to disaster as Monbiot and Humphries pointed out.

In case you didn't know drekly is Cornish speak for some vague undefined time in the future

[peaky]

Our politicians and leaders are, by and large, good men.

I have to say that after reading Chomsky, Pilger, Curtis and the MediaLens site to name a few, I'm really not so sure. They're not Hussein, Pol Pot or Mao, but there's many shades of grey between there and the Head of Butan The clearly documented record of history shows over and over again that those running the show have lied, invaded, cheated, decieved and manipulated to implement their ideologies. This is one of the points that Curtis makes quite clear.

Most of the time, those in charge can just carry on doing what they're doing because few of their own population really suffers personally from the consequences of their covert action (or inaction). You can invade other countries, go for the oil, introduce new laws to 'protect' citizens - even, as Blair is clearly doing, blatantly carrying out actions now which are in direct contradiction to current government policies and still the media - who work on the principle that our government is inherently well intentioned and that anything that goes wrong (like the death of 100,000 Iraqis) is an unfortunate mistake - will support them just as they did over Iraq. As Orwell said, "Make the lie big neough and no one will see it".

As you can probably guess, I reckon that those in power will not really do much to ameliorate PO and the solutions are definitely based in grass-roots level changes. ..... that's us

[Joe]

the media - who work on the principle that our government is inherently well intentioned

I thought the (majority of mainstream) media worked on the principle that the government is there to look after their business interests?

[MacG]

Humphries made the point that the government will never take the lead because they think that the swing voters in marginal constituencies are the epitome of 'consumers' and the govt simply will not take them on with measures designed to reduce consumption. They would rather sleepwalk to destruction than introduce 'unpopular' regulation - this observation from a man who has been in the meetings in Downing St where these issues (climate change, and by association PO) are discussed.

This makes a lot of sense and fit my view pretty well. It goes by definition that those who get elected are the ones which are best at... getting elected! No more, no less. Those who are best at getting elected also know what it takes to get un-elected. What can look like a conspiracy of some kind is in reality just a set of people acting according to the rules and constraints of a system of some kind.

[fishertrop]

the government will never take the lead because they think that the swing voters in marginal constituencies are the epitome of 'consumers' and the govt simply will not take them on with measures designed to reduce consumption. They would rather sleepwalk to destruction than introduce 'unpopular' regulation

One of the key weeknesses in the democratic system - the empowered voter must be sufficiently well educated, unselfish and given to long-term-planning if they are to be trusted chose the leaders of their country.

In the UK, we are (on the whole) ignorant, self-centered and short-termist.

We vote for whoever will give us what we want today - and as people have said, it doesn't matter about wars and such like so long as the UK populous is uneffected by these actions.

Alas, the next harsh lesson in our long road of true education comes when the UK has to pay a price for all the short term self interest.

Any time you ask the UK to make a sacrifice, you are finished as a politician, with one exception - a catastrophic event that opens that "special door" in the collective UK mind that allows them to act outside the usual mode; something like 9/11.

In our system, the way it HAS TO WORK for peak oil is - biz as usual until catastrophe, then some form action.

And has Hirsch pointed out, it's always much harder when you do it this way - but that's the system we have....

[snow hope]

Here here!

[Blue Peter]

In case you didn't know drekly is Cornish speak for some vague undefined time in the future

Thank goodness for that. I thought for a moment it had something to do with that horrible face on page 4 of this thread


Peter.

[fishertrop]

Back to the ant hill, anyone seen Monbiot's latest article?

Imagine what lawful protesters might face in a post-peak UK...

Remember the bad old days in the 80's? -- lots of marches lots of protests, some fighting, but democracy not entirely missing? I think they might have actually been the "good old days" for protesting

[fishertrop]

I think many in governments are greatly influenced by the likes of this:

http://www.peakoil.com/article8116.html

Keynote address by
David J. O'Reilly
Chairman and CEO
Chevron Corp.
at the 26th Annual Oil & Money Conference
London, England
September 20, 2005

....

[Joe]

"Ingenuity is how we find new solutions - either by design or by some unexpected convergence of events. In our business, ingenuity is taking many forms."

So basically, the CEO of Chevron is waiting for a miracle?

[peaky]

the media - who work on the principle that our government is inherently well intentioned

I thought the (majority of mainstream) media worked on the principle that the government is there to look after their business interests?

Yep. And the rest.

[isenhand]

One of the key weeknesses in the democratic system - the empowered voter must be sufficiently well educated, unselfish and given to long-term-planning if they are to be trusted chose the leaders of their country.

The majority are not necessarily right!

To me, I?m very much pro democracy but I do see the above as a major problem. That was one of the things that set me in the direction of technocracy. There are many things where there is no ?right? or ?wrong? answer and for such things peoples opinions are the best way to do things and democracy works best for such things. However, there are many things that there is a ?right? answer and for such things you need to be well informed and knowledgeable on the subject to even have a chance f making the right decision. In such situation I think having a technical expert make the choices is better than relying on the opinions of the less skilled majority.

[Bootstrapper]

No one doubts that fossil fuels are subject to depletion and that depletion leads to scarcity, which in turn leads to higher prices; however, there are many resources that are not heavily exploited because they cannot be produced economically at low prices and with existing technologies. With higher prices, the development of such resources could become profitable. Ultimately, a combination of escalating prices and technological enhancements can make more resources economical. Much of the pessimism about oil resources has been focused entirely on conventional resources. However, there are substantial nonconventional resources, including production from oil sands, ultra-heavy oils, gas-to-liquids technologies, coal-to-liquids technologies, biofuel technologies, and shale oil, which can serve as a buffer against prolonged periods of very high oil prices. Total nonconventional liquids production in 2025 is projected to be 5.7 million barrels per day in the reference case, up from 1.8 million barrels per day in 2003. "

Good point Snow Hope, but Government is (and has been for a long time) the servant of the Market while it ignores the Commons. There's another half to the problem, which it chooses not to address; If our civilisation continues to burn Petroleum, it will overload the biosphere with CO2 and trigger a major climate alteration, the consequences of which are incalculable, but guaranteed not to be in the best interests of BAU. It's possible that irreversible climate change may already be underway. No nuclear threat, no 81st Airborne Division, no UN sanctions, no invasion of some dusty place whose name most of us can't pronounce will stop a runaway greenhouse effect or keep the oceans at their present level, or turn aside hurricanes or keep the Gulf Stream running.

The Market 'externalises' as many costs as it can get away with, most importantly, the cost of disposing of the waste it produces. As a result, there is no market 'signal' to trigger an 'adjustment' away from practices that will ultimately destroy the biosphere upon which the Market (and everything and everyone) depends for it's survival. This signal should be provided by government but it's obvious they've sacraficed this duty on the altars of Mammon and Power.

Paul