Dana Blankenhorn

The War against Oil Remains The Real Battle of our Time

Think of this as Volume 18, Number 36 of the newsletter I have written weekly since March, 1997. Enjoy.

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The darkness in any generational crisis consists of false choices, with advocates of “once and for all” solutions lined up against supporters of democracy, of liberty, and of free markets.

So far, democracy has won every time.

But when people are inside the crisis, it’s hard to tell that this will be the outcome. Until then, the crisis continues.

At this point it’s important to understand the nature of the current crisis. It’s not about the housing bubble, and it’s not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about oil, which is in such artificial scarcity as to actually be the world’s currency. Those who have it have, since 1973, been soaking up the rest of the world’s wealth for themselves, and its political power, as the world runs on oil.

Revolt of the Optimists

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 35 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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There is an iron law in American politics.

The optimists win.

The media and most professionals ignore this law because they think it's a gloss, something you can put onto a campaign like lipstick on a pig. It's not. The side that exudes optimism from every pore, that has a positive agenda addressing pressing issues, almost always wins American elections.

The Obama campaign recognized this truth early-on, which is one reason why it was vitally important (in retrospect) that they stayed apart from the “netroots,” sites like DailyKos, Firedoglake and Americablog. It's not that these left-wing sites want to be pessimistic. It's just that living in the trenches of politics, day after day, is living in a sausage factory. It grinds you down, it gets you angry, it makes you pessimistic.

Most grassroots political movements, even of the Astroturf kind, are born of anger and pessimism. It's what the other side isn't doing, what “those people in power” are keeping from happening. It's very easy to say what you're against, it's easy to organize a protest. It's much harder to build something positive.

From a business standpoint it's not in the interests of Kos & Co. to be positive, however. On a day to day basis, it doesn't sell to activists. It's pointing your readers in a direction they are not inclined to go in.

Yet there is a positive change agenda sitting before us, waiting to be seized. As regular readers of this blog know, it starts with what I call the War Against Oil.

A DARPANet Program for Renewables

Everyone knows about the Apollo program. They know about the race to the Moon, and they know about all the technologies spun-out from it.

The publicity pay-off won't be nearly so great from the Pentagon's latest mega-plan, the Energy Initiatives Task Force, but the financial pay-off should be much greater.

Fact is our military is more vulnerable to an oil shock than any civilian agency. It takes enormous amounts of energy to stay in a place like Afghanistan, and those supply lines can be cut rather easily. The Army has been experimenting with “solar tents” in-country for a few years, tents covered in thin-film solar panels that can run the devices needed for command-and-control. But the rest of even a small base must still be powered from outside, and those supplies must come through hostiles at great risk to life.

The Problem of the Moment (Is Not the Problem of the Moment)

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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As the debt ceiling kabuki reaches its climax it's a good time to consider what the real problem of our time is.

The simple answer is a lack of growth.

If economic growth were strong, the debt would not be a problem. Republicans don't see growth coming, and see that as a good excuse to go back on the promises we made decades ago, to see people into a comfortable, healthy retirement through Social Security and Medicare. They think that if that money can be “put to work,” in the fossil fuel industries, that growth will return.

The key fallacy in the previous paragraph is not where you think it is. It's in the phrase “fossil fuel industries.” We can no longer get long-term growth through fossil fuels, as we have for the last two generations. We can only get scarcity. Every barrel of oil or mcf of natural gas we produce, every ton of coal we tear from the ground, means there's one less left. No matter how much there may be, the cost of getting it will not go down, ever.

This is not news. Nixon knew that domestic supplies were headed down a generation ago, that the abundance of the previous generation was winding down. The energy prosperity of our generation, what there has been of it, was bought with blood. All the energies of our foreign policy, all our wars, over the last 30 years, have been fought for one reason and one reason only – to assure the monopoly of power needed to bring oil, gas, and other natural resources to our markets, at a price we could control.

The Big Mistake of our time, and I'll repeat it because it's important, was Al Gore's decision to make this fight a moral fight, a fight over “the Earth,” rather than what it is, an economic choice. At this point in time, his arguments are completely counter-productive to the simple truth.

Why Gore Does Not Speak For Me

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 30 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Big problems can be solved if they are turned into business opportunities.

Government can help by seeing the opportunities and making sure capital reaches the people seizing them.

This is the true story of America. It always has been.

• Government power directed capital to complete the Erie Canal, and support the construction of railroads.
• Government power limited the monopoly rents of utilities so large-scale manufacturing could happen.
• Government power created demand for goods so producers could get a price.
• Government power fought the Cold War with technology, leading to computer chips and the Internet you have today.

In all these cases government power got behind trends that already existed in the marketplace, and because it did American businesses were able to seize these opportunities ahead of competitors.

Which is why Al Gore does not speak for me.

The Birth of Civilization

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 26 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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There is no energy shortage.

Global warming means there is more energy in the air than there was. How can there be an energy shortage?

What we're short of is stuff we can burn. Stuff we can burn is how we've defined energy throughout the eras we've called “civilization.”

Can you really call yourself civilized if you define energy the way cavemen did – as stuff you can burn? Didn't civilization start with farming?

Fact. There is abundant energy all around us. The Sun shines. The wind blows. The tide rolls. The Earth we know is a skim coat on top of molten rock.

What we're not doing is harvesting this abundance. Civilization has barely begun.

We know what has delayed the day of harvest. Fading industries always capture the political system to forestall their demise. But in the end technology wins out, then economics wins out. Massive factories became the Rust Belt, production without consumption became the Great Depression, unregulated utilities were harnessed by the Progressive Era, and we fought a Civil War to free human labor from southern planters, unleashing America's machine age.

This is what I have learned in my study of history. American history is a process. Technology leads, the economy follows, and politics struggles in vain to catch up with it all.

Where is the change happening? It's happening all around us.

 

There Is No Energy Shortage

(The following originally appeared today at Renewableenergyworld.com, but since we have a lot of new visitors I'm reposting it here.)

It's Earth Day. It's Good Friday. It's a three-day Easter weekend.

And Americans are depressed.

Despite a rising stock market, despite falling unemployment, most Americans feel the economy is going into the tank.

The reason: high gas prices.

For those who did their efficiency homework years ago (which probably includes many readers of this site) high gas prices are no big deal. In fact, evidence suggests we're weathering this bout much better than in the past, thanks to efficiency technologies, where America has a lot more room to grow than its economic rivals.

Still, it's time we change the frame of the debate, starting with this Earth Day.

How Easy it is to Go Native in Washington

The process of “going native,” accepting the groupthink and frames of Washington policy wonks, has always upset activists of all kinds.

Writers in the Netroots call what happens The Village, and those who engage in this groupthink Villagers. When I hear the term I think of the old TV series The Prisoner, the villagers being those prisoners who obeyed orders and answered to their numbers, blindly following orders from whatever Number 2 was put in front of them.

Today's contestant is Darren Samuelsohn, who took a job at the ultimate villager site, Politico, after a decade as an environmental reporter. His latest basically calls the American renewable industry easy prey for foreign competition, and blithely notes it's being replaced in policy discussions by “cheap natural gas.”

In writing this he's accepting a whole lot of frames put forward by the cavemen who captured the Village with the first Bush and got utterly blatant about it with the second.

• Size is all that matters. It does in fossil fuels. In new tech industries innovation counts for a lot more, and we have more of it. Small companies can also move into niches quickly.

• Natural gas is cheap. Really? Really. Only if you ignore the environmental damage, a cost no one seems willing to account for. Accepting lousy accounting as reality means giving in to the frame.

• Solar and wind depend on government grants, while fossil fuels are free enterprise. Samuelsohn knows this to be a lie, yet he repeats it as though it's not.

Government Pushes Shovel-Ready Projects, Forbes Pushes Back

What can possibly be wrong with the government pushing the most shovel-ready projects toward completion through the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) dubbing them priority projects? 

Apparently Forbes, which can't seem to post anything these days without a right-wing political slant, even such a bit of obvious good news.

William Pentland puts Charlie Sheen's obnoxious “winning” into his headline, then whinges about “the poor bastard projects rejected because they needed more help getting over the goal-line.” Yes, the ones that need the least help are getting priority for this year. Those which need more help take more time.

Sheesh.

This is just knee-jerk Obama bashing, of the kind Newt Gingrich engaged in, hating on the President for not getting involved with Libya and then, the very next day, hating on him for getting involved.

It's stupid. It makes the whole party sound like a Charlie Sheen rant. And even Detroit has apparently wised up to that fool.

Why the Economy Still Sucks (And Why It Won't For Much Longer)

Think of this as Volume 15, Number 15 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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This is not an April Fool's joke. Abundance is coming. The hard times are ending for good. But the hole Republicans got us into is a profound one, and making the turn from this crisis will take time.

There are two reasons why economic growth remains low, despite good policies which have staved off a second Great Depression:

1. Money Remains Underemployed
2. The New Game Hasn't Scaled Yet.

I have solutions for both problems today. Let's take them one at a time.

Money Remains Underemployed

There's plenty of capital around, but it is sitting in short-term storage. It's unemployed. Money managers say they're “preserving capital,” when what they should be doing is risking capital in hopes of a gain.

How do we bring that capital out and put it to work?

Inflation.