A few more thoughts about energy. Sunday morning I had brunch with A-Stock, who told me an interesting anecdote about how a financial heavy had made a bet it the middle of the '70s energy crisis that fuel would be more expensive in the 1980s, and that losing this bet caused him to come to the realization that it's not wise to bet on increasing costs for energy.

This is connected in my head to the blurbs from a book Bill Gates "loves" called The Bottomless Well:

Humanity is destined to find and consume more energy, and still more, forever.
...
Fuels recede, demand grows... but logic ascends, and with the rise of logic we attain the impossible—infinite energy, perpetual motion and the triumph of power.

Emphasis is mine. This is magical thinking. It is the opposite of science, but it is reflective of a kind of thought that is pervasive among the establishment. I am talking about the particular kind of narrow-mindedness which is grounded in the refusal to acknowledge the possibility that our civilization (indeed our world order) may fail, recede or collapse. I'm an optimist, but I also hew to the laws of thermodynamics and treat as serious the lessons of history.

A people's ability to extract, transport and apply energy through systems is its ability to affect the universe. Buckminster Fuller explains all this quite well, though he was optimistic enough to frame this as an issue for the species rather than any particular nation or coalition.

The point is that increased energy costs, in the long run, mean a net decline in all aspects of civilization. This is inconceivable to people who are invested in the righteousness of the status quo. However, there's nothing indestructible about our current world system. There's very little that is sustainable about it either, and as they say, if you don't change the direction you're headed, you're liable to end up where you're going.

Now, I think there are a lot of options. In our conversation, A-Stock mentioned Oil Shale. Shale has been on the radar since the 1960s, but there are problems with its viability. Currently, there is an idea floating around that we can build lots of small (read: relatively safe) nuclear power plants in these semi remote areas where the shale is, use the plants' primary generation phase to power our electricity grid and then re-use the still high-temperature steam in a co-generation phase to process the oil shale and slake our thirst for petroleum.

It's so fucking crazy that it might work for about 100 years, but what we'll be left with is piles and piles of waste, both in terms of spent nuclear fuel and byproducts from the shale, which is much more dirty than refining crude oil. And in the end we're still working off a relatively small finite resource base. And it will cost a ton of money to set up.

I think we need to spend a ton of money on energy research and infrastructure. But I think we should invest in something that will last, that can be built on by future generations. This can happen through a national "new deal" type program, or it could happen in a more decentralized fashion by establishing a marketplace which responded to environmental and human costs and regulating that market tightly to prevent abuse.

Given the nature of the energy industry, both are uphill battles. There will be strong resistance to any government-driven change which jeopardizes the current bottom line of any major players, probably on the grounds that it is "socialist" or some-such. There would be even more vociferous resistance, ironically most likely expressed through lobbying the government for sweetheart deals and protective legislation, to any attempt to introduce real competition and real prices into the energy market.

The only way this is going to work out is if the Public Interest can somehow get out front on these issues. I strongly doubt the sincerity of a lot of recent "we know oil's going to run out, help us find a solution" PR that's coming out of a number of the big companies (e.g. Chevron's willyoujoinus dot-com). This includes even BP and their redesigned logo. The name of the corporation is still British Petrochemical, even if their slogan was changed to "Beyond Petroleum." Have some statistics:

BP’s total six-year investment in renewable technologies was US$200-million – the same amount it spent on its “Beyond Petroleum” ad campaign. Nearly US$45-million of this went to buy Solarex Corporation – meaning BP’s renewable energy investment was 0.05% of the US$91-billion it spent to buy oil giants Arco and Amoco back in the 1990s.

Now, the only reason they spent that $200M on the ad campaign, and the only reason Chevron spent whatever it spent to create and publicize willyoujoinus.com, is because they know that some opinion leaders are getting nervous. Depending on the effects and severity of ongoing economic shock we might see concerned citizens continue to drive the agenda. Some believe 50 to 100% increases in home heating prices this winter may lead to a decline in holiday shopping, which would badly harm many US retailers who are dependent our culture's annual year-ending orgy of consumption to balance their books. If it's bad, and if energy is identified and accepted as a root cause, we could see something where, like what's happening with GM and health care, very large corporations begin to join with progressive citizens in calling for the overhaul of our economic infrastructure.

But again, even if that happens, the outcome it really all depends on who seizes the initiative. The insurance industry currently retains the upper hand on issues of health care just as the petrochemical, coal and nuclear industries retain the upper hand on issues of energy. Maybe this will change, but in spite of what free marketistas would have you believe, it's not the pattern of history for consumers to direct the action of producers.

Technorati Tags: energy, oil, shale, BP, chevron

I'm up early today. Just added some photos by Zya from Burning Man to flickr just for the hell of it. That hair is going to probably go away. We're on the move now.

On another note, I find from this bit in Fortune that this book is a favorite of Bill Gates. Quote:

Humanity is destined to find and consume more energy, and still more, forever.
...
Fuels recede, demand grows... but logic ascends, and with the rise of logic we attain the impossible—infinite energy, perpetual motion and the triumph of power.

Sounds like late-stage futurism (e.g. approaching facism) to me, except the authors are Regan appointees, not painters. Hmmm.... Also sounds like Bill Gates is still not very smart about the world in spite of making all that money. The rest of the Fortune bit is an interesting read, though. Lots of talk about big-league philanthropy.

Finally, a quick bummer: I caught a headline yesterday explaining that the FCC is using a 1994 law to compel universities, ISPs and other 'net access providers to make survalence of TCP/IP traffic easier, which they claim is needed to fight terrorism, though the DEA is also involved so I think they've got a number of applications in mind. Universities are objecting because they would be forced to shoulder the costs, estimated at over $7B, for the snooping system. They are not raising civil liberties concerns because regular court-orders would be required to use the surveillance system. This as a report of surveillance going on outside the legal channels comes from the FBI. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has background on the law.

Watching Frontline's bit on torture now. Yeah. The little details like how when General Miller came in to take over GTMO to replace the "softie" Baccus he implements a policy that all salutes would be coupled with the exchange "honor bound / to defend freedom," between saluting individuals...

And this was at the high-end, our response to international terrorism. This was before we invaded and occupied a non-threatening foreign nation and started processing thousands of detainees, mostly with reservists as staff. That got considerably more ugly, with a lot more deaths it would seem. The decision to use Abu Ghraib. The decision to use private contractors. It couldn't be more dramatically wrong.

There's a DOJ lawyer Yoo -- a political appointee and member of the Federalist society -- saying that there's evidence from Israel that aggressive interrigations helped to reduce suicide bombings. I'm curious about that, because from my understanding, the use of state brutality in many ways perpetuated the Intifada.

General Miller seems set to take the fall here. Sanchez, Gonzales, Rumsfeld and Bush are all responsible here, as well as John Ashcroft, but unfortunately I don't think they'll be held accountable in any meaninful way.

Tony Lagouranis, who actually tortured people -- e.g. keeping them locked in a storage container, hovering above hypothermia (rectal temperature taking), scaring detainees into pissing themselves with dogs -- has some of the most compelling stuff, but nothing tops the home videos. Not just the brutality. Watching kids tape themselves fucking up a folding chair with a knife, whooping it up... it's familiar, and deeply disturbing in context.

The truth is we're all accountable for this, whether we like it or not. This administration has got to be stopped. It's too bad we had to wait a year after the election for America to realize this. McCain and Graham are clearly positioning themselves for '08. That's going to be a pretty wild circus.

You can watch the whole thing online -- something PBS is doing correctly -- though they should really put DVD quality versions out on bittorrent so that people can watch it whenever they want. That would be serving the Public Interest.

Saturday night. Holy crap. As if staying out until 5am on Friday wasn't enough.

Kevin brought me out to a rather nice apartment party in Greenpoint. Third wave kind of scene; young professionals; tasty artichoke dip; the sort of thing that threatens to price me out of my old neighborhood. I don't know how it happened, but Franz and I worked our way through a bottle of Wild Turkey in about two hours, things get hazy from there. We were disputing over the issue of Federalism and the appropriate purview of the power of the State. We eventually went to Royal Oak, my attitude was reportedly "fuck those hipsters." The self-loathing is getting more pronounced, you see.

Scene missing.

Conclusion: I puked on Wes and Jeremy's futon. Testiment to my social network that I lived through the night and lost only my bike lock and a jacket (jacket might be at the bar, I'll drop by and check). Apologies to the girls I called at 3 in the morning; hope I was civil at least. Don't really remember. Mega apologies to Wes for the untimely return of the artichoke dip.

I've got to do a little adjusting here, let things settle down, learn to play again. My first day back I was skeptical. I'm still not convinced, but I'm remembering why I like living here. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone ambitious. Gentrification gets me down, but it's not something I can control. Yet.

Anyway, this week I get a haircut and a sublet. We'll see how it works out.

Sam Rosenfeld and Matt Yglesias, two professional wonks at the American Prospect, have written something good.
The Incompetence Dodge got some play in the tit-for-tat world of the blogosphere for the way it drops rhetorical bombs on the position du-jour of the so-called Liberal Hawks -- aka those Democrats who supported the war and their backers in the punditry. It's high quality flaming, and the LibHawk position (essentially that invading and occupying Iraq would have worked given better management) needs discrediting, but the thing that makes me want to write about what they wrote is that they go on to offer some substantive thinking about the nature of US military power and its appropriate uses.

This is much needed. The Left often shies away from really grappling with issues of power, and military power especially. Efforts to the contrary are productive.

The U.S. military is good at exactly what one would expect an exemplary military to be good at: destroying enemy forces while keeping collateral damage to historic lows. Consequently, we have the ability to eject hostile forces from areas where they lack a strong base of popular support. This power allowed us to create the conditions for negotiation between the parties to the Bosnian war, and to keep the local Serb, Croat, and Muslim communities from killing one another in large numbers once the peace was signed. They also allowed us to eject Serbian forces from Kosovo and bring autonomy to that province, plus provided a large measure of security and autonomy for Kurdistan for more than a decade. These are no mean achievements, and they were accomplished largely from the air, at little risk to American soldiers. But in none of those places have we yet been able to achieve what we are likewise failing to accomplish in Iraq: the sudden transformation of a society.

That's tight. I can unpack that seven different ways depending on who I'm talking to and make it all sound interesting. Well done there, boys. Keep it up.

On the opposite end of the salary spectrum, we have pro-am and still pseudonymous Billmon with his Imperial Candor:

Like Richard Clarke, [Colin Powell Right-Hand Man] Wilkerson strikes me as reasonably representative of the technicians who actually run the empire -- and his assumptions largely appear to reflect those of his class. American supremacy is a taken as a given, requiring no legal or moral justification. Not because America has any grand historical mission to spread the blessings of democracy to the heathen, but because American power maintains the world order and keeps the peace, or at least something approximating it. It also keeps the sea lanes open and the oil flowing and the wheels of industry turning, not just here but around the world.

It does appear to have dawned on Wilkerson that the U.S. hegemony isn't viewed as quite such an exercise in utilitarian benevolence by the rest of the world, but I'm not sure he understands exactly why this is. I think he puts far too much blame on the cabal's shenanigans -- although these admittedly have made things worse -- and not enough on the fact that empires, even the practical, no nonsense type favored by the realists, are anachronisms in the modern world.

We've got a couple of the pieces of the puzzle here. A national security policy based on returning the US to its republic-an (not Republican) roots would have wide popular appeal. At the same time, there's a recognition that force is real, and that it can do good if we're willing to attempt to shoulder the responsibility. This is essentially the ethos of Spiderman, and it's the only moral way for people in positions of power to behave.

Power of one over another tends (tends) to corrupt, and an institutionalized or persistent differential in power (Absolute Power) corrupts without fail, creating Oppression, which is Evil, and something to be actively confronted. Activists like to fight Oppression, and in doing so we often end up with a negative, rather than healthily skeptical, view of power. This leads to an almost instinctual, perhaps even irrational, fear of wielding it ourselves, which as we can see has led to a great and tragic backsliding.

We must realize that power is not going away, and like all things it will remain unequally distributed at any point in time. Total Equality is not something that can be attained. This is why pure pacifism just doesn't work out. It is also the fundamental failing of Anarchism as a political philosophy, and interestingly enough its source of triumph as a personal philosophy.

Personally the credo No Gods, No Masters is quite compelling, though my heart is really in the logical inverse: All Gods, All Masters. When you get down to brass tacks this leads to different techniques for implementation -- raising up rather than tearing down -- but philosophically they're kindred notions. Anyway, it's a very empowering way to look at the universe. That's good.

However, any analysis of the human condition on the global or historical scale reveals that many people strongly desire Gods and/or Masters. That's a choice people are allowed to make in my book. Heck, who doesn't get a craving for credible leadership from time to time? I mean, mouldn't that be nice?

It would, but we're not going to get it until we contemplate and concieve our own notions of power, and then implement them in a way that displaces the establishment. That's what I mean by "the revolution."

And it might just happen. I'm seeing a lot of really good heavy lifting starting to happen all over the place. It's become clear that the conservative movement has reached a high water mark. Having achieved Total Power, their coalition is breaking as its internal inconsistancies come to the fore. Yes, the wheel is in spin, another cycle starting. There's a lot of organizing that's ramping up now that needs help. There's also a lot of intellectual work to be done so that this shift -- which in many ways is inevitable -- can be translated into meaninful gains for the Public.

I know where my official place in the 2006 campaign is: providing tools. I build and maintain instruments for information warfare. But in the meantime I'm also working on the revolution, which is the Long Game. But it starts now. It always starts now.

I made it. The last haul of 800 miles from Chicago to Brooklyn left me with a sore buttcheek from my wallet, but otherwise it went smoothly.

Also, over the past week 2000+ spam comments were accrued on the site. I've implemented a CAPTCHA challenge. Sorry for the additional hassle, folks, but it's the only way to keep this crazy train rolling.

Soon enough the website will be more completely overhauled and moved from wordpress to Drupal. This will let you do nice things like have an account that your computer will remember so you don't have to bother with this crap.

Anyway, I'm back at it in NYC. Will be working pretty furiously through the next couple of months. Looking for a sublet, hoping maybe I can find something that will work for me and just me, but we'll see...

Made the 747 mile day -- 10,000 vertical feet there too -- and another 550+ across much more level terrain to pull into the Farm. Good place to spend a night.

Apropops of what I wrote before about work, one of my favorite Snarkbloggers is joining a campaign. Fuckin' a, man. Just come on back sometime and make fun of the bastards again.

The place I feel most in it so far is still Westhaven. It feels like the revolution up there. I really do want to build an outhouse that drains into an algae pool I use to make biodesil I trade to my neighbors for fresh produce which I excrete in the outhouse which drains into an algae pool...

Dead Tower? What is that, like Whiskey Dick or something?

Aside from our neo-survivalist tendencies, we also talk real crackpot schemes. One good one we had was a rehash of the Corpulent Populism concept, combined with our idea of a turnkey Porntrapraneur service. The two ideas are 1) a publication aimed at converting middle class straight white males to the left -- a Progressive Maxim of sorts -- and 2) an answer to the revelation to outfits like Suicide Girls may not, in fact, be all that empowering to all that many women, since the girls in the photos don't get a real cut of the revenue, nor even the copyright to their images. We invision a system which would allow people to join a network of porntraprneneurs, with 80%+ of proceeds going back to the actual producers and the image subjects retaining full copyright over their photos. We also envision a magazine of inquiry, taste and opinion which would enjoy a collegial relationship with these content producers, publishing some racy pin-up images with every issue. Seems like quite a combination.

So there was that, and then I was out. I think the way I'll get back there is if the biz gets over the hump and I have time and inclination to write and Mark finally gets the fucking internet. I could occupy the Siesta and crank out many lines code and many pages of book. It would be good. Maybe.

San Francisco was fun though. Once the party got going everyone was stoned and it was loopy and loud. I think I was only entertaining for the first half of things. Joe and I played some word games. "Crack torch" became "freebase combustor" became "narcotic immolation system," which is a good name for a band we thought. Dumm is on his way to Amsterdam for a conference. Zack dresses really nice, or let's Jamie dress him really nice which amounts to the same thing and is a good idea in either case. I told the bird-picture phone joke, and only realized right then that the punch line -- "wing, wing wing... herwow?" -- could have kind of prejudicial overtones. Or maybe it was a flash of social paranoia. Who knows.

Anyway, I woke up and drove to Vegas, and met Mike of Trellon in real life. I like this guy. I've liked him since he told me in one of our first IM conversations that he has two rules for the company: No scumbags, no liars. Those are rules I can get behind. Plus he's a legitimately eccentric workaholic single-father (his 9-y/o daughter is awesome; charges me and everyone else $1 for every time we cuss) and a practicing Catholic to boot. I can get behind that.

Also met colleague Dan Moger, who I thought was two years older than me but turned out to be two years younger. He was a frat-houser in his day at Wesleyan, which means he knows how to tuck his pink collared shirt in, but isn't much of a back-slappin' keg-tappin' personal friend to the Quayles. Actually in previous days, he helped monitor the first free elections in Georgia. That's the former Soviet republic, where, unlike the member of our United States, there is no Poll Tax. Ho ho ho.

Anyway, it's been interesting. We're on some ambitious paths here, following the twin lures of being devistatingly effective in taking control of the government away from assholes and making the kind of money that qualifies you as "successful" in 21st-Century America. These are both things I'd love to do in the next year, but I've still got to get used to the idea in some ways. I need to find my own logic and through-line for it, my own terms for the deal.

Reading the second volume of HST's corrispondence, wishing I could get that as a motherfucking podcast. 747 miles tomorrow. G.D. it.

I'm in Vegas. Craps is fun.

I inadvertantly deleted a couple of "real" comments just now trying to manage my massive comment-spam problem. I'm going to try a few new things, and if that doesn't work I'll do the deal that forces you to type in the random letters before you can post, a CAPTCHA test.

Anyway, thanks for the comments. I'll be reaching out soon to folks once I get a sense of what time I'll be arriving the next few places. Yesterday I did 570 miles and it wasn't event all that hard, so I'm hopefuly about tomorrow's 747 mile haul through the Rockies. As I recall from before, I-70 is mostly deserted until you get into Denver, so I'm hoping to beat Google's 15-hour estimate for timing.