Rhinocrisy

You’ll note that a Bush energy bill is squeezing its way through the House and Senate this week. Easily done, since it’s especially lubricious, being absolutely permated with oil. This Reuters bit has the salient details.

The broad strokes are, basically, tons of credits for oil and gas production and moving in the direction of new exploration, including, especially, offshore drilling. This is significant because it implies a recognition of a need to move to more difficult oil sources as easily-available sources run dry. To paraphrase Colin Campbell, when people start looking for oil under 10,000 feet of water, you know they’re having problems.

Also, there’s some bones thrown to the nuclear industry, including tax credits of up to 1.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. This might be something like 30% of the cost to the consumer (depending on time of year, etc.), so it’s no small boost.

Finally, don’t pay ANY ATTENTION to the suggestion that this bill does anything positive for renewables. The most charitable thing that could be said about it is that it glances in their general direction - but only so that it can more accurately spit upon them. There’s meager bits about tax credits for purchasing hybrids, and a rather paltry home-efficiency refurbishing credit. Then $800 million worth of credits for utilities that invest in renewables - while simultaneously cutting the old requirement that all utilities must generate at least 10% of energy via renewables by 2020. No money for research.

This outlines the strategy for the future pretty clearly: bail out the oil and gas industry for the next ten years, spend like mad to exploit oil resources as much as possible while they last, and meanwhile encourage the growth of the nuclear industry. If this strategy is to succeed, note that nukes must replace both electricity generation AND liquid fuel, meaning the construction of something on the order of thousands of plants. Since the U.S. hasn’t commissioned a new plant since 1978, this is a somewhat daunting task. But I look forward to the sight of a cooling tower’s graceful curves peeking up over my neighbor’s rooftop.

Some things never change. Specifically, the font on the International Socialist Organization’s fliers. Civilization could end, and you can rest assured the ISO would issue a flier about it in 18-point bold Helvetica (”Fight back! Stop the oppression of fuel and gas shortages!“).

I ran into some ISO-types busking in Central Square yesterday. I made the mistake of insulting their flier as I walked past, which resulted in a protracted tirade about the inefficacy of the ISO and left politics in general. It started as a general commentary on the robotic nature of ISO product, and how brainless they seem with their shoddy sloganeering. I believe my first salvo was something along the lines of, “I’ve lived in Boston for eight years, and you guys have had the exact same slogans the whole time.” You know the ones: Stop this! End that! Fight back! Now! Now! Now! Simple imperative statements are appealing, for about ten seconds, until you realize that their political insight doesn’t extend much further than that.

Eventually this conversation proceeded into the matter at hand, namely the “anti-war” movement. I’m glad to see that nothing new is happening on that front. Apparently there’s a big rally scheduled for late September, which is presently split between the UFPJ^* and ANSWER^†. The former obsequiously refuses to divest itself from the Democrats and mouth words in support of the Palestinians; the latter dogmatically insists on thrusting the issue of Palestine into a march about the Iraq occupation. “They’re connected!” insisted the ISO type I was harranguing. True. True. This, I guess, is the leftist version of the “Kevin Bacon Game”.

She also insisted it was necessary to support the Iraqi resistance if we are really opposed to ending the occupation, because those who do NOT support the Iraqi resistance think we have to “finish the job” in Iraq. This seemed to be a false dichotomy to me (I certainly don’t get sorted correctly by it), and when I pointed out that it wasn’t necessary to support the NVA or the NLF in order to want to end the Vietnam War, and many of the people opposing it were not so inclined, she demurred.

This makes hiding in the Internet seem like a much more comfortable notion, since the world out there is dominated by people acting out some bizarre Marxist fantasy, shining their alien light on the rest of us leftists and insisting that anyone who wishes to march in support of some particular cause (e.g. ending the occupation of Iraq) should be happy to wear that glow. Either I must wear ugly Marxist clothes or dress like a Democrat - not much of a choice.

WSJ:

In a report published last week, Merrill Lynch & Co. said the aggregate net income of the 70 largest companies in the [oil] sector is expected to rise 26% this year to $230 billion, on sales of $2.57 trillion, up nearly 10%.

$2.57 trillion is about 1/4 the GDP of the United States. It is the GDP of the biggest companies in the oil sector. Those of us who eat locally, don’t use cars, and avoid using air conditioners — we don’t get to take part in the single greatest social project undertaken in human history. The extraction and combustion of as much fossil carbon as possible.

I think I’ll take another cross-country road trip! After all, look at the charts: the poor oil companies are about to see their profits start to drop. Poor things, I have to help out — it’s like tsunami relief, only different.

I remember this cycle from the 80s. At some point, the science-fiction pork-train hits the wall of reality. And today, we learn that the quarter-trillion-dollar Joint Strike Fighter might not survive the inevitable military budget cuts of the post-post-9/11 period.

Which is to say that there is a silver, or at least carbon-fiber, lining in the dusty fog of Iraq. One less tool for global military domination.

Now if they could just get rid of that missile defense system….

Wolcott strikes again: the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are now the Couch Potato Pattons. Ouch.

But as Saurabh has pointed out before, there is a certain lack of vim on our side of the revolution, too. If religion was the opiate of the masses, the Internet must be concentrated Oxycontin. Because I have never seen such a bunch of doped-up activists on either side of this war.

So what should we call the people who spend their time looking at computer screens instead of, say, fucking shit up, or arguing with real live war supporters, or working on counter-recruitment, or just getting some sleep.

I would look for wit to my favorite snarky asshole right-wingers. But their terms for lefties are laced with fear and disgust at our supposed lack of concern about terrorism, rather than with good-humored amusement at our fecklessness.

So it’s up to us. How about — Hedgehog? OK, that wasn’t very funny. How about the “Molotov CD-burners” who “picket lines of code” and “organize their desktops” while “pro-testing their motherboards”? Are we “memory stick radicals”? Or “link-lulled leftists”? Maybe we’re “blue-screen black flaggers” or “blustering bloggers.” Your thoughts?