Re: Energy article from BBC news

Heinberg's scenario of the way corporations and their complicit media tell
the public only good news reminds me of the kings of ancient Israel/Judah
whose court prophets gave them the good news that God is on their side,
while truth-telling prophets were told to shut up or thrown in holes. Was
it ever thus as disaster grows and looms?

Bob

----- Original Message -----
From: "Al Koop" <koopa@gvsu.edu>
To: <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com>
Cc: <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 29, 2004 10:52 AM
Subject: Re: Energy article from BBC news

> Bill Hamilton <williamehamiltonjr@yahoo.com> 07/28/04 8:47 AM wrote:
>
> This articleappeared in BBC news yesterday.
>
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3930245.stm
>
> Interesting that the country that hit on the "bonanza" of North Sea oil
> a few
> years ago is now looking to ways to burn coal and contemplating more
> nuclear.
> Clearly North Sea oil is running out. It's also interesting that with
> its huge
> reserves, Russia is planning to ramp up nuclear.
>
> AK: One of the central issues in energy extraction is that the costs of
> coal, nuclear, wind, solar, biomass, etc will all rise as the price of
> oil and natural gas rises. The machines that mine the coal and the
> trains that transport it will cost more to run. The cost of extracting
> and processing uranium and the cost of building the nuclear plant itself
> will also rise. Solar panels will cost more to build, windmills will
> cost more to construct. And the infrastructure to support these
> alternatives will cost more than they would if manufactured with cheap
> oil today. The question that no one seems to have a good grasp on is:
> To what price level will these alternatives to oil and gas rise as oil
> and gas prices go up. This has some of the characteristics of a dog
> chasing her tail and concerns most of those who recognize the situation.
>
> So the question becomes: What can be done. With that in mind Richard
> Heinberg, author of The Party's Over has written Powerdown: Options and
> Actions for a Post Carbon-World, which is available soon at Amazon.
> Heinberg posted the introduction of this book at
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/energyresources/message/60562
>
> I found his writing rather engaging and well worth reading.
>
>
> A couple of excerpts:
>
> Everyone knows the classic scene from a dozen Westerns: a self-reliant,
> grizzled old geezer is taken to see a doctor, perhaps for the first time
> in
> his life. He knows the prognosis intuitively and is prepared for the
> worst.
> "Tell me the truth, Doc."
>
> That's how some of us feel when we read about climate change or the
> ongoing
> degradation of the world's coral reefs. Give it to me straight: I'd
> rather
> know than live in denial.
>
> But most of the leaders of government and industry feel differently.
> They
> are more like the character Colonel Jessup, played by Jack Nicholson, in
> A
> Few Good Men (1992). In that film's climactic courtroom scene,
> Lieutenant
> Kaffee (Tom Cruise), cross-examining Jessup, insists, "I want the
> truth."
> Jessup shouts back, "You can't handle the truth!"
>
> Nor, it seems, can we - at least in the estimation of the masters of the
> corporate media. And so we tend to receive only sanitized versions of
> the
> news about our world. Occasionally, disturbing information does appear
> on
> television or in the newspapers, but the offending story usually shows
> up
> buried in the same broadcast, or on the same page, as others about
> relatively ephemeral political developments, local murders, the lives of
> entertainment stars, or scores in sports games.
>
>
> and
>
> We get plenty of help in this regard from the relentlessly cheery
> entertainment industry, but also from politicians of every stripe.
> Trying to
> tell the public truly awful news is considered impolite - unless it is
> news
> about something that can be blamed on an opposing political group or
> some
> foreign enemy. While leftists sometimes highlight certain ecological
> crises
> as a way of blaming corporations and right-wing governments, they often
> make
> sure to frame their complaints in a way that suggests that the problems
> can
> be solved by implementing a plan being put forward by liberal
> politicians or
> NGOs. Meanwhile, commentators on the political right revile
> "environmental
> alarmists" for allegedly exaggerating the seriousness of ecological
> dilemmas
> to suit ideological purposes.
>
> So, as the leftists make skewed and half-hearted attempts to discuss
> ecological crises, the attacks from the right have their intended
> chilling
> effect. Mainstream environmentalists these days often tend reflexively
> to
> pull their punches and temper their warnings. There are serious problems
> facing us, they say again and again, but if we just make the right
> choices
> those problems will painlessly vanish. When they are at their most
> baleful,
> environmental scientists tell us that we have the current decade in
> which to
> make fundamental changes; if we don't, then the slide into ecological
> collapse will be irreversible. On the first Earth Day we were told we
> had
> the decade of the 1970s in which to change course; but for the most part
> we
> didn't. Then we had the '80s . . . ditto. During the 1992 Earth Summit
> in
> Rio we heard that humanity had the '90s to reform itself; after that,
> there
> might be no turning back. There was still no fundamental change in
> direction, and here we are a dozen years on. I expect any day now to
> read an
> official pronouncement to the effect that we have the remainder of the
> first
> decade of the new century in which to make changes, or else. How many
> warnings do we get? Isn't it reasonable by now to assume that we are
> living
> on borrowed time?
>
>
> Read the rest at the above URL.
>
> Al Koop
>
>
>
Received on Thu Jul 29 11:56:23 2004