Peak Oil is a real, immanent, and very serious problem. It is nothing like Global Warming at all. Here's why.
While there may have been a point in time when the Global Warming hypothesis merited some attention (back when the issue was first mooted, perhaps), subsequent years of sober and rational reflection have shown us that those concerns can be safely dismissed. Mankind simply cannot produce enough carbon dioxide to affect the climate. The scale is too vast, the feedbacks are too complicated, and the other forcing and/or buffering mechanisms we have identified completely swamp whatever paltry effect our miniscule contribution to global greenhouse gas levels may be causing (if there even is such an effect, which we cannot definitively conclude).
On the other hand, the lexicon of alarmist terms with which we have become familiar through the Global Warming debate -- terms like 'tipping point' and 'runaway feedback' -- really do apply in the case of Peak Oil. Just one Iranian nuclear weapon, whether or not it is even detonated, could set off a chain of events which will disturb the world's oil-producing region for the foreseeable future.
There is a human dimension to this problem which most commentators seem oblivious to. Oil in the ground does nobody any good. If it cannot be extracted, bought, sold, transported, and refined into useful products, it might as well not exist. It is human societies which produce and consume oil, and our ability to exploit a resource is conditioned by numerous factors besides the level of stated reserves. You cannot simply assume that we will have the resources and finance capital to utilize unconventional oil sources. You cannot simply assume that "technology" is a silver bullet which will overcome all production hurdles. And only someone blissfully ignorant of all world history could believe that governments will ever "get out of the way" and allow private oil producers to pump the wells dry in a Libertarian fantasy-land. The world is the theater of bloody politics: it always has been and it always will be. People will fight for power, wealth, and security, and many delicate fruits of our exigent civil society -- fruits like easy access to finance capital and loads of money for R&D -- will get trampled in the process. The system of intellectual and financial tensions stretched across the global economy is now so tight that any minor supply disruption could cause the threads to begin to snap. And with the world's advanced economies getting older and deeper in debt, they will not be able to consume oil as efficiently as before. This is just the beginning of a process that will result in a slowdown of the global economy and the outbreak of hostilities. We will have to get used to living in a world where war is more frequent and wealth less taken for granted; a world, in short, of less civilization.
Ultimately, it is man's ability to produce and consume energy efficiently which has peaked. This is the critical measure, the only one that counts in the last analysis. It has a complicated relationship with resource reserve levels, but is not linearly dependent on them. It is more dependent on culture, on the societal discipline which develops the talent necessary to rule the world with the force and intelligence that such requires. The West began depleting that resource quite some time ago.
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economics. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Friday, March 20, 2009
Libertarianism as Ornament
Comment on The Long View, "The Obamarama..."
HopefulCynic68 wrote:
The saccharin libertarian attitudes embraced by many business-types seem to issue not from any metaphysically-inclined picture of the workings of an ideal economy, but from the purely practical need to avoid any moral or political friction at the point of sale. The businessman cares not whether his customers are conservative or liberal, black or white, straight or gay; he simply desires as much patronage as possible. Therefore, he envelopes his market operations in an atmosphere of inclusivity, affecting for his part a studied and principled aloofness from all distinctions made on the basis of blood and history. Do not underestimate the impact these attitudes have on our contemporary sexual harassment and racial quotas policies. Multiculturalism—the deliberate attempt to obliterate the realities of creed, race, gender, and class, and to enthrone the concept of libertarian agency as the sine qua non of personhood—reveals itself here as the "politeness" of the trading floors; the theatre mask of embalmed civility that all who wish to buy or sell are required to don.
In this perhaps there is something to commend it, for never has Kant's Categorical Imperative been given a more focused and energetic expression. Unfortunately however, multiculturalism proceeds from an incorrect picture of humanity, and in its excesses becomes repressive and demonic. Blood and history really do matter; or at the very least, they are not dispensable. The pulse-side of man wants to advance his own family and policies and visions. This, presumably, is why he goes to market in the first place.
The extreme alternative to this ultra-utilitarian civil ethics is to turn business itself into a political weapon, such that the buying and selling of wares is restricted between preferred parties. This is the principle that governs international trade, and also the labyrinthine intrigues of every dusty Silk Road bazaar. Libertarianism can only flourish within a political horizon; it cannot condition interactions between competing horizons. This is why the dreams of globalization, the attempt to transform the entire earth into a single free market, will never be realized. Political considerations will always intrude, then become paramount. We can only expect that as our political life becomes more fragmented, our economics will become more "Asiatic." Ironically, the anarchy of libertarianism is nothing but the ornament of an overrefined civilization, as OEH has pointed out.
The great trick is to preserve the free market as engine of opportunity, but to so distribute property such that the interests of every agent lie comfortably close to home. This can only be achieved by elevating moral principles above the unrestricted operations of the market; hence capitalist ideology has a fatal flaw too often overlooked by conservatives. The optimality we seek is attained not through unbridled competition, but through the security gained by having each agent permanently related to some productive private property. The "ownership society," properly understood, is an essentially distributist ideal which has been rendered complete by admitting the distinctions of blood and history which libertarian capitalism ignores.
HopefulCynic68 wrote:
It's a myth that most businessmen love the free market, they're as human as anyone else and government-guaranteed profit appeals to them too.
The saccharin libertarian attitudes embraced by many business-types seem to issue not from any metaphysically-inclined picture of the workings of an ideal economy, but from the purely practical need to avoid any moral or political friction at the point of sale. The businessman cares not whether his customers are conservative or liberal, black or white, straight or gay; he simply desires as much patronage as possible. Therefore, he envelopes his market operations in an atmosphere of inclusivity, affecting for his part a studied and principled aloofness from all distinctions made on the basis of blood and history. Do not underestimate the impact these attitudes have on our contemporary sexual harassment and racial quotas policies. Multiculturalism—the deliberate attempt to obliterate the realities of creed, race, gender, and class, and to enthrone the concept of libertarian agency as the sine qua non of personhood—reveals itself here as the "politeness" of the trading floors; the theatre mask of embalmed civility that all who wish to buy or sell are required to don.
In this perhaps there is something to commend it, for never has Kant's Categorical Imperative been given a more focused and energetic expression. Unfortunately however, multiculturalism proceeds from an incorrect picture of humanity, and in its excesses becomes repressive and demonic. Blood and history really do matter; or at the very least, they are not dispensable. The pulse-side of man wants to advance his own family and policies and visions. This, presumably, is why he goes to market in the first place.
The extreme alternative to this ultra-utilitarian civil ethics is to turn business itself into a political weapon, such that the buying and selling of wares is restricted between preferred parties. This is the principle that governs international trade, and also the labyrinthine intrigues of every dusty Silk Road bazaar. Libertarianism can only flourish within a political horizon; it cannot condition interactions between competing horizons. This is why the dreams of globalization, the attempt to transform the entire earth into a single free market, will never be realized. Political considerations will always intrude, then become paramount. We can only expect that as our political life becomes more fragmented, our economics will become more "Asiatic." Ironically, the anarchy of libertarianism is nothing but the ornament of an overrefined civilization, as OEH has pointed out.
The great trick is to preserve the free market as engine of opportunity, but to so distribute property such that the interests of every agent lie comfortably close to home. This can only be achieved by elevating moral principles above the unrestricted operations of the market; hence capitalist ideology has a fatal flaw too often overlooked by conservatives. The optimality we seek is attained not through unbridled competition, but through the security gained by having each agent permanently related to some productive private property. The "ownership society," properly understood, is an essentially distributist ideal which has been rendered complete by admitting the distinctions of blood and history which libertarian capitalism ignores.
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