Good news and bad news at the dawn of petrocollapse

Written by Jan Lundberg

There is good news and bad news at the dawn of petrocollapse:
To the rescue!
- Bike stations and Library Bikes as victors over oil!

However...
- Inevitable: New Orleans as victim of oil

There is more than a double whammy at play in the U.S. Gulf as to the energy supply picture. Besides the devastation of the general infrastructure, Katrina has inflicted two accute shortage situations as never before experienced simultaneously: oil (and refined products), and natural gas.

Gas was already in very tight supply, as has been oil. Today's sudden and heightened supply tightness can feed on itself, as history has shown. To say the least, this country is going to have a recession that could be rather dark by winter. "

A national and global economy that is not built for conservation and efficiency cannot accept "Stop! no more" from Mother Nature. Hence, the possible onset of general petrocollapse and the toll on consumers, even though for now consumerism still rides high everywhere in the U.S. except in the areas directly disabled by Katrina. But according to airportbusiness.com,

"Airlines and oil companies are working on plans to supply jet fuel to at least ten U.S. airports that could be shut down due to a lack of jet fuel caused by refinery and pipeline shutdowns from hurricane Katrina." The report from Aug. 31st makes clear these are not Gulf area airports hit by Katrina, and they include Atlanta and Washington Dulles. "

This may be the biggest oil-supply shock since the 1970s. We are now in the days of reckoning,'' said Cambridge Energy Research's Daniel Yergin after Katrina hit the petroleum sector. As a reader of the Lundberg Letter in the late 1970s, Yergin knows that our forecast of a 9% shortfall of gasoline in 1979 -- that we accurately predicted would trigger "days of lines and hoses" -- can apply today.

I hesitate to say that based on a possible 20% shortfall from Katrina that the U.S. will positively and immediately enter into its third (and last) major oil shock, because the rest of the world does not have the same shortage. But that could change due in large part to the wounded colossus trying to suck up ever more petroleum for its wasteful applications.

Unfortunately, being in the pay of the petroleum industry, Yergin is acting as the main nay-sayer of the growing consensus that the world is now or very shortly will be at peak extraction of oil. As this column has repeatedly explained, the other side of the peak does not look anything like a gradual reverse-growth scenario. The market will act as its own executioner by running up prices and creating shortage, regardless of geological reserves of oil and fancy consultants' assurances.

It may already be happening now: stockpiling and hoarding mean that tremendous "tertiary storage" (two hundred million cars’ gas tanks) is topped off, ultimately creating paralyzing shortage. Katrina may teach wasteful U.S. petroguzzlers far beyond the Gulf that nature bats last and that the unnatural works of man -- including the vast, vulnerable petroleum infrastructure -- are short sighted.

If this is the dawn of petrocollapse, so be it. If the dawn has not yet come, it is nevertheless close. The lesson of Katrina should be less sensationalism and more reckoning of our unsustainable lifestyles and foreign policy. Were it that Daniel Yergin's "reckoning" is such.

Michael Ruppert told Culture Change on Aug. 31, "I think (Katrina’s impact is) about a 20-25% hit on US (oil) supply for as long as 3-4 months maybe longer. The economy may not recover."

Truthout.org’s Kelpie Wilson wrote on Aug. 31, "If we had a president who was a leader, he or she would start by asking us to do our part by staying home and not driving our gas guzzlers this weekend. They are going to need lots of fuel down in New Orleans because once they get those levees rebuilt they have to pump all that water out of there. It's sure not going anywhere by itself - most of the city is six feet below sea level."

J.H. Crawford, author of the book CarFree Cities, writes:

"If New Orleans... must be relocated to higher ground... we should make the point that a new, carfree city to house the refugees would cost less to build and emit fewer greenhouse gases than any other alternative that might be considered.

"Whatever happens, we should be prepared to address the fact that, should New Orleans be destroyed, the event is largely the responsibility of the United States for releasing staggering quantities of greenhouse gasses during the past 150 years and for failing to even address the need for reductions. This event could be the wake-up call for America. It could turn out to be a disaster that far overshadows September 11th in terms of both loss of life and property damage.

"This disaster has been inevitable for a long time, but it seems likely that people are simply going to rebuild the city in harm's way, again. The interval to the next disaster will likely be a lot shorter than the last interval."

Where Mr. Crawford may be wrong is that if Mike Ruppert is correct and petrocollapse has begun, there will be no rebuilding as commonly supposed.

How about "New Orleans: victim of Big Oil"? Suffice to say that it's in our face that our petroleum lifestyle has immense drawbacks such as irreparable toxic spills and global-warming-charged hurricanes. Yes, the oil giants exercise extraordinary power. But they are not in control when it is the people who may or may not give them their money. Yes, oil prices go up. Due to subsidizing petroleum in a dying culture that guzzles poison hootch like a drunkard, we are actually paying many times the price that's recorded (over $10 per gallon).

If this is the point in our history when one may say in the future in retrospect that Katrina touched off petrocollapse and the transition to sustainability, will our behavior start to show some collective intelligence before Katrina’s big sister -- total petrocollapse and climate distortion to the max -- visits us?

The suffering in the Katrina-hit Gulf Coast ecosystem includes millions of people who did not ask for this disaster. That they unwittingly helped bring it on -- via unsustainable land, air and water practices -- is an unkind thing to suggest at this tragic time. There are lessons, however: the SUV photographed in the flood and crushed by nature reminds us that no one species is all-special. Our new cars are not invincible, nor are we. And nature is slamming the motor vehicles to remind the universe who is boss -- errant children in the guise of modern society are running amok with machines and energy on the way to and after achieving overpopulation.

[ read the rest of the article ]