Rhinocrisy

Yesterday, as peace rallies raged in many cities and here in San Francisco, sexy booties started to shake at the Love Parade, I went swimming in the Bay. At my club, which is one of the last bastions of old-school Irish San Francisco, I was in the sauna with an old Navy veteran and an old cop, both of them some of the more conservative people I know, and I think both Bush voters.

They were ripshit about the war on terror. They don’t see it going anywhere. The immediate incitementof their anger was that today is their annual Golden Gate Bridge swim. An annual event for 74 years in which a bunch of local San Franciscans who love their city go out and celebrate a landmark — incidentally, protecting it with their presence. But since 9/11, they have had to get a special permit; the feds require a federal cop to be stationed under the bridge during the swim. These clubmates of mine find it infuriating that the war on terror is costing everybody money and freedom — and New Orleans has showed them clearly that the sacrifices have been for nothing.

I didn’t go to the peace rally. I think rallies are great when you have an underdog position that you need to share however you can, but I don’t see the point once 65% of the country agrees with you. When the old Irish guys at the rowing club are against Bush, you’ve won — that’s when it’s time to move to Phase II.

What the hell is our Phase II? We accuse Bush of mishandling the occupation of Iraq, but we’re mishandling the occupation of America. I’m worried that as peak oil drags the economy into a permanent gutter, and mistrust is rightly high against the feds, we’ve opened the door for demagogues.

Here’s a goofy, un-hashed-out idea that I think could get some legs. Why not a shadow government? Taxes in this country are uniquely low, and public services are as well. I’d like to see a group of us start to pay taxes into an alternative government where we hash out a more democratic constitution, overtly protect all the rights we think need protecting, and then start electing leaders with free and fair elections. The taxes can go toward public services, maybe starting with education and criminal justice. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to call a cop without feeling like you’re just feeding the beast? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to send kids to a public school that got decent funding and public support?

I realize that this idea might sound elitist, but I don’t see it that way. I think anyone should be able to join, and pay truly progressive taxes — poor folks should be able to join for almost no money. Rich folks can pay into this system rather than paying private school tuition.

Of course, it would be suicide to call it a government, or taxes. It would just be a voluntary association of democratic-minded people, paying dues.

I don’t think the infrastructure exists yet to make such an ambition happen across class, language, race, and geographic lines. Any thoughts?

PS: Right after posting this, I see that the feds have already put out the call for private philanthropy to fund the Iraq adventure. Unsurprisingly, nobody’s kickin down nothing. And yet people routinely toss down donations to environmental groups, to private school tuition, and to other private groups that pick up the public good when government drops the ball. This makes me think even more that a replacement government would be inherently more peaceful — people don’t want to pay for war.

Dear Secretary Bodman,

I couldn’t help but notice that you plan to pay $30 million to cover the application fee for a consortium of electric utilities that want to apply for a license for a new nuke plant in Misssissippi. I know you have the money available, as you just last spring requested a cut of $30 million from your department’s energy efficiency budget.

So as long as you have that money to blow, I have a couple ideas. On the very pro-business, conservative end, you might consider undergrounding all the big utility wires in the Gulf region, as that will probably do more for grid reliability than adding a new nuke plant.

But since you seem determined to fill your shiny new hole at Yucca Mountain (how yonic!), I have a better idea. Why don’t you take those $30 million to the Republic of Georgia and try to buy up some loose nukes?

If you absolutely have to use the money for an energy supply project, how about this. Buy a bunch of Euros. Convert them back to dollars after the currency collapses. Then you can give out paper greenbacks on street corners for people to burn in their cook stoves.

Love,
Hedgey

PS: as an appendix to all the hopelessness and despair of the week (is winter coming or something?) I give you the Rocky Mountain Institute’s hopeful vision for a post-oil future. I promise not to lay into it too hard before Monday. Happy Folsom Street Fair. Happy Love Parade. Happy beginning of fall. As this guy likes to say, “Happy, happy, happy.”

Dangerous Mix: Oil, Saltwater Mar Louisiana Coast, Threaten Future
Katrina Dumps 193,000 Barrels Over Damaged Marshlands; Fishing Areas Are Polluted Hurricane Rita Delays Work

By KEN WELLS
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
September 23, 2005; Page A1

NAIRN, La. — More than three weeks after Katrina came ashore in Louisiana, the Coast Guard says the storm’s surges and winds unleashed at least 40 oil spills — 10 of which are major — from ruptured pipelines and battered oil-storage facilities. In total, at least 193,000 barrels of oil and other petrochemicals were blown or driven by tides across the fragile marshy ecosystems and populated areas of the Plaquemines and St. Bernard parishes, southeast of New Orleans.

The spills, the largest ever loss of oil in the state, approach the scale of the famous 1989 Exxon Valdez tanker spill, which dumped 240,000 barrels of crude oil in the fish-rich waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound.

Katrina simultaneously set in motion another toxic event along the battered coast of Louisiana. A monumental surge of saltwater flooded tens of thousands of acres of vulnerable freshwater marsh. Much of the water has been trapped for three weeks by the levees designed to keep it out and has become a stew mixed with other effluent from ruined houses, businesses, cars and sewage-treatment plants. Large swaths of salt-burned wetlands may take years to recover….

Awesome! Some folks in Dover, the town where they teach “intelligent” “design” “theory” alongside the modern synthesis (”Darwinian”) theory, where the “textbook” Of Pandas and People is employed in classes, are suing the school board with the assistance of the ACLU. Trial starts Monday! This should be entertaining. It’s enough to make a boy jump up and down shouting “Ooo! Ooo! Eeee! Eeee! Eeeee!” and fling his feces across the room.

Last night I had the pleasure^* of attending a lecture by Richard Heinberg, a professor at New College of California who has spent the past couple decades figuring out how to transition the world off of oil addiction. He has watched opportunities come and go.^÷

• In the early 1980s, the United States could have taken up conservation as a national mission, which would have leveled out the “peak” in peak oil. It would have taken about 25 years — that is, until about now — for the changes to percolate through the economy, with cities growing ever more walkable, vehicles ever more efficient, our economy ever less dependent on far-off suppliers, and our buildings ever more comfortable even without compressor air-conditioning. Instead, according to Heinberg, Reagan and Bush convinced the Saudis to flood the world market with oil so as to cut out the Soviets’ primary source of foreign exchange. And in every way possible, we made our lives more dependent on oil, rather than less.
• In 1991, after Iraq took over Kuwait, the U.S. could have taken the opportunity to support energy conservation and tell the spooky Saudi royals to deal with their border problems on their own. Instead, we took the opportunity to establish semi-permanent bases in a country that is also the capital of a religion our leaders pointedly misunderstood.
• In the 1990s, Al Gore suggested a carbon tax. If it had gradually driven oil prices up to their current levels, the result would have been more conservation, a more gradual and bearable oil peak, and plenty of money for public investment in the transition. Instead, we got Newt Gingrich, followed quickly by a five-year investigation of a $100,000 land deal in Arkansas and an impeachment trial. Which was, at least, more entertaining than a carbon tax.
• In 2000, Al Gore ran for president. Sort of.
• In 2001, after right-wing religious nuts decided to avenge the permanent bases in Saudi Arabia and the ongoing bombing of Iraq by blowing shit up in the USA, and everyone in the U.S. was asking, what can I do to help, the president could have taken the opportunity to ask for shared sacrifice and encourage people to conserve energy. Hell, he could have asked people to all move to communes in Tibet and they would have. He said to give blood and suddenly the Red Cross was turning people away. So he seized the moment to push for, you know, repeal of the estate tax, the endangered species act, and Social Security. In any case, it sure is shared sacrifice!

Following a history like this, a weaker man might have grown discouraged and taken to more fruitful pursuits — like attempting to punch holes through a brick wall with his forehead — but Prof. Heinberg is an eternal hope machine. He has come up with an idea called the oil depletion protocol. It’s a bit complicated and to tell the truth I wasn’t paying much attention by the time he got to it, but the short version is that countries that currently import oil all need to get together and agree to import 2% less every year from now on. That could even out the peak, prevent developing nations from developing in an oil-dependent manner, and prevent perpetual oil war. Kind of like the Montreal Protocol, only instead of air-conditioner refrigerant, we’d be phasing out the lifeblood of the global economy.

It’s a nice idea until you think about it. An astute audience member asked, “So this protocol requires that countries all give an accurate assessment of their current reserves. And an accurate portrayal of their current imports. And then to reduce their imports in the name of some international common good.” “Right,” said Heinman. She looked as convinced as if she had just been told that most Americans worship a flying spaghetti monster. “What are the chances of that happening?” she asked. “I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s the only way out that I can see.”

I agree. It’s the only way out that I’ve heard, other than this rather gloomy collection of thoughts. And at this point, we are so deep in the cave that the only way out appears way too high overhead. I feel like we as a civilization are about to be in the position of the injured climber in IntoTouching the Void. We are about to cut our own rope and go down into the crevasse of darkness and misery because it is the only direction left.

Or at least that’s the conclusion if we are indeed near peak oil and the U.S. Dept. of Energy report on transitioning off oil is correct. Here’s their report, yet to be officially released, but somehow leaked out onto the web. I hope it’s for real, though we can’t be sure. In any case, check out the pdf of The Hirsch Report:

…Mitigation will require an intense effort over decades. This inescapable conclusion is based on the time required to replace vast numbers of liquid fuel consuming vehicles and the time required to build a substantial number of substitute fuel production facilities. Our scenarios analysis shows:

• Waiting until world oil production peaks before taking crash program action would leave the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for more than two decades.
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 10 years before world oil peaking helps considerably but still leaves a liquid fuels shortfall roughly a decade after the time that oil would have peaked.
• Initiating a mitigation crash program 20 years before peaking appears to offer the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast period. The obvious conclusion from this analysis is that with adequate, timely mitigation, the economic costs to the world can be minimized. If mitigation were to be too little, too late, world supply/demand balance will be achieved through massive demand destruction (shortages), which would translate to significant economic hardship. There will be no quick fixes. Even crash programs will require more than a decade to yield substantial relief.

^*The pleasure mostly came from my conversation with the lovely and brilliant Saheli*, whose musings occasionally grace our comments. Hooray for meeting a blogmate in person! It’s a first for me. And no wonder, since I’m not a person, but a burrowing creature who lives under the earth.

^÷I made up this list of missed opportunities. His is probably much, much longer.

Now that God has sent another righteous hurricane to wipe out all those faggots and communists in Houston, Texas, we can all relax. For a moment I was a little worried that all that faggot communism would start spreading like an evil cancer, and I would soon be forced to have egalitarian butt-sex with another man, but no longer. Now I can worry about OTHER scary things.

For example, U.S. refining capacity. Most oil refining is done just-in-time and physically proximal to market. This is because gas laws differ all over the place, and it simply makes sense to produce gasoline of a certain kind where it’s going to be used. It also makes sense not to have 50% spare capacity just sitting around unused all the time - why waste all that money running factories when you don’t have to?

Let’s consult our friends at the EIA. According to them, U.S. refining capacity utilization runs at about 90%. That is, we refine about 15 Mbd of crude, and we’re capable of refining just under 17 Mbd. That’s peachy! Good thing nothing bad is about to happen.

Also, you’ll be delighted to read this:

As with most aspects of the U.S. oil industry, the Gulf Coast is by far the leader in refinery capacity, with more than twice the crude oil distillation capacity as any other United States region. (The difference is even greater for downstream processing capacity, because the Gulf Coast has the highest concentration of sophisticated facilities in the world.) As discussed in the section on Trade, the Gulf Coast is the nation’s leading supplier in refined products as in crude oil. It ships refined product to both the East Coast (supplying more than half of that region’s needs for light products like gasoline, heating oil, diesel, and jet fuel) and to the Midwest (supplying more than 20 percent of the region’s light product consumption.)

Fuck, yeah! Say, you don’t think this could have anything to do with the several recent airline bankruptcies, do you?

Let’s do some quick, bad math: U.S. gasoline stocks usually run at about 90 million barrels. Consumption is 9 million barrels a day. Let’s say that the Gulf Coast has 45% of the refining capacity in the U.S., which normally fills 9 Mbd of gasoline. This means that if the Gulf Coast refining is knocked out for 22 days as a result of Hurricane Rita, U.S. gasoline stocks will be totally depleted.

This is obviously hyperbolic, of course, since we can actually import gas, and consumption is probably going to drop like a stone over the next month. But $5 for a gallon of gas doesn’t seem that hyperbolic at all.

Apparently, it’s Lurker Day, where all you readers who never leave comments must announce yourselves and EXPLAIN WHY YOU NEVER LEAVE COMMENTS. I mean - explain what keeps you reading this blog. Hole in the head? Secret crush? Some sort of compulsive disorder? You live with one of the authors? That sort of thing.

UPDATE: Ah, crap. Apparently YESTERDAY was Lurker Day. So, I guess I should add to that list: you like to feel ahead of the game, comparatively.

So, those of you who are over thirty (anyone? anyone?) might remember the war on pornography prosecuted under the Reagan Administration, under the stern eye of Attorney General Edwin Meese III and his famous Commission. I don’t remember this, but that’s okay, since I can just watch it play out again today. Via 100 monkeys typing, we learn that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is fashioning an anti-obscenity squad composed of FBI agents.^*

Even if you do NOT recall, I trust most of you are familiar with the reaction of feminists to the Meese commission. That is, many feminists chose to side with the conservative Christian right and their censoriousness in decrying pornography, on the grounds that pornography was chauvinist and hateful towards women. The Meese commission, in fact, concluded that pornography promotes rape and sexual abuse. Many parties concluded that the Meese commission was full of shit and would have said just about any sort of lie in order to prove its point, and the fact that, you know, they didn’t actually perform any studies, and in fact brought in experts^† to contradict actual studies that had been performed. However, many radical feminists of the Andrea Dworkin school of thought apparently didn’t attend those parties and continued to quote Meese’s bogus “research” favorably.

Andrea Dworkin is now dead, however, and hopefully others of her ilk are as well. This time, if a war flares up, I’m hoping feminists will ally themselves in favor of free speech and, well, sex. I happen to think being pro-sex is actually quite feminist, for reasons I think I’ve sketched out before. Women should be taking firmer control over their own sexuality (ideally with both hands). There’s certainly more room for this in a sexually liberal society than there is in a conservative one. On the other hand, the idea that women can’t have sex without being victimized (which is essentially what an anti-porn stance amounts to) seems decidedly non-feminist to me.

^† Sexperts? How often do you actually get to use that term? Okay, I know it’s not a real term. I already told you this blog lacks wit.

Apropos of nothing, check out this video of a guy doing push-ups with a raw egg under each hand. Holy cannoli.

Incidentally, this reminds me of things you should NOT do:

Once I was at a party with a very good friend of mine. I told him how great the integrity of an egg is, and how it was essentially impossible to crush it in one’s hand. He expressed skepticism, so we went to the fridge and got an egg. He held it over the sink while I watched him try and crush it.

Now, the reason an egg cannot be crushed by human hands is because of its dome shape. This distributes pressure efficiently across the surface, so that only by a very, very great force or by concentration of force on a single point can you crack the egg. The normal human hand cannot do this, simply because of the way the fingers wrap around it. However, if you have long fingers with oddly-shaped knuckles, it’s possible to apply enough force at a single point to crack the egg. Continued application will result in catastrophic collapse, sending yolk and egg whites squirting out across any bystanding friend’s kurta-payjama.

This now goes on the list of Really Stupid Things I Will Never Live Down, along with that time I tipped over my kayak in the Charles River (”It’s nearly impossible to tip a kayak,” I told my brother. “Watch!”), and that time I took the bus the wrong way home from Arsenal Mall.

For example, here are two likely candidates appearing in one press conference:

President Bush on Friday ruled out raising taxes to pay for Gulf Coast reconstruction, saying other government spending must be cut. “You bet it will cost money, but I’m confident we can handle it,” he said.

…

[Later he said] “As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality.”

So, let me get this straight: we’re going to cut taxes for the rich, increasing inequality, then cut social service programs to rebuild the shattered New Orleans. Which legacy is he talking about?

But don’t cast your vote yet, people. Vladimir Putin was at the same press conference, and HE said:

“The old Soviet Union had lived by the rule that money should not be taken from the pockets of future generations, Putin said. “But we never thought about the existing, current, present generations. And at the end of the day, we have destroyed the country not thinking about the people living today,” he said.

“Therefore, of course, yes, we need to spend money,” the Russian leader said. “There is no two ways about it.”

Chee! And here I thought you destroyed the country by privatizing every damn public industry into the hands of irresponsible gangsters and running away with wheelbarrows full of money (thank you, Jeffrey Sachs).

Meanwhile, does anyone want to mention the corpulent, ruling-class-shaped^* elephant in the living room? Egad! We couldn’t possibly address inequality by, err, addressing inequality, could we?^†

^† Anyone mocking my Marxist wealth-redistribution schemes, even in their heads, will be condemned to the hell where you have to peel onions for all eternity, with a really dull peeler. And no goggles.

^‡ I am fully aware of the contradictions of having a pinniped-shaped elephant. Pretend it’s an elephant seal.