Wednesday, April 06, 2005
Drilling in the A.N.W.R. is nothing compared to this: NYTimes story: Greenspan Expects High Price to Lead to More Fuel Supplies. Excerpts: (emp add) ... Mr. Greenspan was optimistic about the long-run outlook for energy supplies, and he warned against efforts to "distort" or "stifle" prices set in global markets.
Though Mr. Greenspan conceded that higher oil prices had caused only a "modest" reduction in demand so far, he predicted that higher prices over the long run would lead to higher investment in extraction technologies, exploration and unconventional sources of energy like methane gas frozen in Arctic ice. Are we now going to destroy the polar ice cap? Is this where "Randian free market" doctrine leads? The "market" is everything. But the "market" has serious weaknesses. Its horizon is almost always short term (<5 years) and long-term collective goals are often undermined by "opportunistic" economic entities (currently the burn-fossil-fuels corporations).
posted by Quiddity at 4/06/2005 07:33:00 AM
4 comments
Wolcott points to someone who may disagree with ol' Alien Greed-spin.
I wouldn't take Al Greenspan's
talk of magic markets and antartic
methane seriously. State capitalism (and its evil identical twin, crony capitalism) in the form of lots and lots of nuclear power plants (paid for by the federal government and built by the one or two enormous oligopolistic companies that have the resources for the job)is a far more likely scenario:
"Vice-President Dick Cheney threw away 20 years of environmental caution yesterday when he announced that the US would build a new generation of nuclear power plants in the government's effort to overcome a national energy shortage.....Mr Cheney has shrugged aside these difficulties, and given the government-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL), which two years ago bought the biggest US nuclear reactor designer, Westinghouse Electric, a huge boost.
Westinghouse has designed half the world's nuclear stations and 60% of those in the US. Eighteen months ago, after 14 years of work, its newest design, the AP600, was licensed by the US department of energy, but none has been built....
The idea would be to build a series of them across the US. Mr Cheney said between 1,300 and 1,900 new generating plants would be needed. If Westinghouse built only a few of them it would make BNFL a very rich company."
(Guardian, May 2001)
So-conservatively-we're talking
1,000+ mini-nuclear power plants
scattered across the country.
For 'market forces' and 'hydrogen
economy', read: nuclear power. More specifically, a USSR-sized shitload of nuclear power plants financed and created by the same methods as stealth bombers and aircraft carriers; i.e. bearing no relation to market forces under any conceivable definition of the term.
Well, what you are saying is probably true. But oil IS going to run out some day. It take a shit-load of energy to produce hydrogen for the hydrogen economy. Wind and solar require huge amounts of space and are not entirely free of problems either. So what do you propose as an alternative?
You should read about the significant improvements in nuclear safety before rejecting this option. http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/nuclear.html
It is our best hope at maintaining our standard of living in the long run.
Reply to Anon2:
TINA (There Is No Alternative) is certainly an irrefutable argument for switching to nuclear power (thanks for the link BTW). Oil won't last much longer, renewables aren't suitable for energy-dense power generation (i.e. cities and large towns!) and the 'hydrogen economy', if it ever comes to pass, will be produced by coal or uranium. And needless to say, burning enough coal for the energy needs of 6 billion people is not a good idea.
My guess for the future is a messy combination of nuclear/gas/coal resources for the developed world and Neolithic energy resources (wood and animal droppings) for the rest of the globe (I don't think we'll see nuclear power in Somalia or Peru anytime soon).
In any case, the 'American Standard of Living' is history, together with our short-lived petrocarbon cornucopia.
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