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Cleaner energy key to future
Cheap fuel is a thing of the past
Ian Lowe, Courier-Mail
ENERGY is the basis of modern civilisation. We have easier lives than our grandparents did because we use much more energy: electricity, gas and transport fuels.
Our energy use is equivalent to 40 slaves working for us in shifts, doing what slaves used to do: it produces our food, transports us, washes our clothes, entertains us, fans us when we are hot and so on. Energy also has been used to ease other shortages. Cities without water have processed seawater – using energy.
We have increased food supply for our growing population by farming more intensively – using energy. As we exhausted rich metal ores, we moved on to poorer deposits but that takes more energy. Without usable energy, our society literally would grind to a halt.
We now face two serious problems. Experts disagree about whether we are approaching the peak of world oil production, or have actually passed it. Either way, we are near the end of the age of cheap petroleum fuels.
The second problem is that the present use of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – is seriously changing the global climate. Both problems are compounded by huge inequalities. Australians use about half as much energy as US citizens, but about five times as much as Chinese and 50 times as much as people in the poorest parts of the world. This is unfair and creating tension.
Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation. He is the Earth Champion ambassador for Earth Dialogues Brisbane, July 21-24.
(1 June 2006)
Be Prepared: Perpetual cheap fossil fuel a dangerous myth
Charley Reese, King Features via Bill Totten’s weblog
One of the most pervasive and damaging myths in modern society is the belief in perpetual economic growth. Like the perpetual-motion machine, perpetual economic growth is an impossibility.
This notion is particularly difficult to dislodge from the American mind because economic growth has been part of our lives. We’ve seen it with our own eyes. Of course, part of what we’ve seen is an illusion of growth created by gradual devaluation of the currency and statistical games played by the government.
But nevertheless, there has been real economic growth, and it has been powered by cheap fossil-fuel energy. “Cheap” is the operative word here. Subtract cheap fossil-fuel energy, and the life we know will be altered drastically – perhaps, if we don’t prepare for it, catastrophically.
(31 May 2006)
Venezuela’s oil model: Is production rising or falling?
Danna Harman, Christian Science Monitor
High oil prices keep profits up, but output may be down.
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CARACAS, VENEZUELA – In recent weeks, both Bolivian president Evo Morales and Ecuador’s president Alfredo Palacio have taken a page out of Venezuelan populist president Hugo Chávez’s natural resources manual.
It’s the page that features politicizing the oil and gas industries and nationalizing them – keeping more of the petro dollars at home but alienating longtime foreign investors. A good model? Many oil industry analysts are skeptical.
While the government denies it and high oil prices mask it, analysts say Venezuelan oil production is declining.
…But whatever the real output, Venezuela – because of the high price of oil – is raking in more petrodollars than ever before. When Chávez came into office in 1999, the country reported production of 3.5 millionbarrels per day and, with oil selling at about $15 per barrel, was making just over $18 billion a year. This month, with oil at about $70 a barrel, PDVSA Finance Director Eudomario Carruyo told Reuters he expects revenue to top $85 billion this year. PDVSA officials have reportedly said that oil production will increase to 4 million barrels per day by 2012.
Furthermore, in part thanks to Chávez plowing billions of these petrodollars into new housing, free medical care, adult literacy projects and other social programs, Venezuelans perceive the industry to be exceedingly robust now. “Normal people don’t care about whether production is 3.3 million barrels per day or 2.6. For them, the oil is huge and forever,” says Alfredo Keller, an independent pollster in Caracas.
The problem, says Mr. Ochoa, is that politicizing the industry has rotted it, and served both to empty PDVSA of its best professionals, and to scare foreign partners away from new investment.
(31 May 2006)
Coverage of Venezuela has become very ideological. The Christian Science Monitor is usually one of the fairest sources in N. America. Even so, it pays to watch which sources are quoted, and what the hidden agenda is behind the article. -BA
