The unconservative Dick Cheney

Oil is running out. We're now at or near peak oil. As for alternative energy sources, renewables, except maybe hydroelectric, are non-starters for producing more than a few percent of needs. That leaves coal and nuclear.

The alternatives I see for the future are roughly like this:

1. Collapse: The survivalist dream/nightmare. Petrol stations empty, lights go off, governments fall over. Mayhem and cannibalism ensue, and the population falls by 95%+ within 5 years. Your chance of surviving depends on being armed to the teeth and being more than a full tank of petrol from a city. I don't see this as particularly likely. However, I wonder what it felt like in 390, as a well-to-do provincial Roman in London or Paris - 20 years later your civilisation has collapsed, and the population has fallen by 90%.

2. Semi-collapse: Something along these lines:

"Imagine, for example, a world forty years from now in which rates of annual production of oil, coal, and natural gas have dropped so low that only countries that produce them can afford to use them at all, and then only to meet critical needs. Half the surviving population in the nations with remaining fossil fuels, and 90% in the others, labors at subsistence agriculture, and most of the remainder work in factories converting salvaged materials into needed goods with hand tools. Worldwide, dozens of nations have collapsed into violent anarchy, and whole populations are on the move as sea level rises and rain belts shift. In America, the old canal network is being reopened by men with shovels, as fuel shortages hit a rail network that never recovered from its 20th-century dilapidation. Meanwhile army units face guerrilla forces in the mountain West, while refugees from starving Japan, packed into the hulks of abandoned container ships, ride the currents en masse toward the west coast" (http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/)

3. Partial decline: Broadly similar to now, but with a somewhat lower standard of living, based on electricity, mainly from nuclear and coal. There are few private cars, and no flying, but the public transport system has been upgraded, and the countries that have done best are those with green-tinged left-democrat politics.

4. The hippie-Gandhian or agrarian-mediaevalist dream: Everyone cycles everywhere, grows their own food, and lives happily on beans and cabbage, wearing hemp trousers. This is what I would prefer to happen (although there are streaks in me that want 1 or 3), but I find it the least likely of the four.

There is nothing even remotely conservative about the current administration, but let's look at the facts: what politician is going to stand up and say: "drive less, buy less, consume less. Live more like your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents did. Quit acting like toddlers that have had their lollipop (cheap hydrocarbons) stolen, and basically grow the hell up." That's the ultimate answer. There is not enough energy on this planet for everyone to have an SUV and a McMansion and an iPOD.

Um, what's conservative about deliberately amplifying the effects of peak oil, throuch drilling bans, to force others to live according to your social and aesthetic preferences?

Because, even by Oil company estimates (which you know is, if anything, high), the entire domestic oil 'potential' (remembering most of this is estimated) is 112 billion barrels. Not all of that from new sources, that's EVERY source, including the ones we're already tapping into now.

Of that, approximately 11 billion barrels in ANWR, as an example. Now, we use (just the US), 12 MILLION barrels.. per DAY.

Usually, I take our total oil and divide it by our total usage to get the 15 years of oil available. But that's not really the issue. It is about this supposed infinite pool of oil we have in ANWR and on the continental shelf that is the issue. The other stuff.. we're already using now, so doesn't really count when it comes to where we drill.

That means the oil in ANWR, that will, again, by oil company estimates, take 10 years to get operational, is going to last our needs for... less than 2 years.

They estimate 10 billion barrels of oil from that. Looks like a familiar (and smaller) number, doesn't it. Yep, another less than two years from that.

4 YEARS of oil, for both. Again, assuming that its used JUST FOR US (remembering that the company lobbying for it is BP. That's BRITISH Petroleum, and that once its in storage, all gas looks the same.)

Now, you could say.. but the increased production might lower prices. (Assuming that prices were directly related to current short falls in production. Anyone come across an empty gas station lately?)

You could say that it'll last longer if we use less of it. And sure.. it'd last forever if we used none, too. If we had the discipline, en masse, to do so, we likely wouldn't be having this discussion at all.

You could also say that we could A. Reserve it entirely for our own use (good luck enforcing that one), and B. Use the funds for development of new alternatives. (See A.)

The fact is, environmental concerns aside, ANWR and the Continental Shelf have functioned for years as a big old security blanket. Made us feel that in the end, we had this cushion that.. when all other sources began to fail, or we didn't have the access to it, we could fall back on it.

But, unlike the boogey man, the need for energy sources is real. And LIKE a security blanket, in the end, the protection that these sources provides is mostly emotional, not actual.

4 years of oil production from all that. Not counting the oil it'll take to get to it, to get it from where it is to where it can be refined, and what it'll take TO refine it. What it takes to get it from the ground to your car.

We need to look into something a little more... long term.

Karen Brown - From now on, I'm outsourcing replies to "let's drill ANWR & the continental shelf" to you. A couple of quibbles: 1) I don't really see where you're getting "4 years of oil" from the 112E9 bbls currently available. 2) We do have hundreds of billions of barrels of oil shale; but as I understand it, exploitation would cost more (money & energy) than current sources of oil.

James P. - I agree that we need more nukes, and more conservation. As for algae biodiesel, I agree we should R&D it, but I'm not overly sanguine about its near-term prospects. See here:

i-r-squared.blogspot.com/2007/05/algal-biodiesel-fact-or-fiction.html

Karen Brown, Of that, approximately 11 billion barrels in ANWR

We don't know what's in ANWR; it could be nothing or ten times this. These numbers are rank speculation based upon a few classified test wells and data scraps (that have been fairly well suppressed, interestingly). There is simply no way to know what's un ANWR until we explore, something liberals have irresponsibly stopped.

What's criminal is that the liberals have taken the worst wasteland in the world (the one place in the world we should be drilling to protect the worldwide environment) and put it off limits due to earth worship...rather than cutting their own personal consumption.

But have no fear: we will drill everywhere before it's over. Once the price gets high enough at the peak, the political pressure will become overwhelming as those same liberals squeal. Of course, by then it will be too late. But we certainly can blame liberals for the time lag; ANWR should have been drilled in the '70s, and it's our lack of knowledge regarding oil reserves that is what will put us in a bind: Saudi and wacko envionmentalists both have equal blame. Cheney is one of the good guys here - a parent dealing with Americans as they are, not as we wish they were. I always challenge people who don't want to drill by going over their personal consumption - so far, I've never met a single one who was serious about cutting their consumption. Yet they are quick to reach for a government solution.

Link to WSJ's Dan Henninger, saying it much better than me-

http://online.wsj.com/article/wonder_land.html

Bugg - Thanks for the article. Very educational, despite the author quoting climate-change. ;)

I definitely agree with you on the nuclear front. Especially since my state of Colorado has plenty of uranium to be mined. In fact one is opening about thirty miles from here soon. They just need to jump the hurdles the small group of NIMBYs have set up for them. Most of us are just fine with having jobs related to growing energy demand.

Considering the stance most of the loyal bushies have taken especially toward removing rights like habeas corpus I have trouble defining them as a conservative the way reagan defined it.

I hope all the "tree-huggers" hold ANWR hostage until actual progress is being made in alternative energy. The only hold-up is both sides of the aisle trying to come up with the best way to profit off any alternative energy. I've all ready voiced my choice in other posts (even if I am not technically savvy enough to explain it or even know for sure if it can be done, yet.)

If the oil companies get their paws on ANWR now, we will just be discussing this in another 10 years, or less if Karen Brown is correct, and personally I believe she is.

Never in his speech, from what I have read, does he say that we need to reduce consumption. Could one argue that this borders on moral blindness?

No, because it's not the job of politicians to scold us all about how much oil we can and can't use. It's our job as individuals to live our lives responsibly. Politicians should not presume to be better judges of what's right for you than you are. It's the job of politicians to try manage the government well for the population that actually exists, not the one he/she wishes existed.

I'm sorry, but a consumption-reduction plan based on the idea of "electing a new population", by means of sanctimonious politicians morally lecturing the existing one about their excess, is foolish and utopian. And one based on forcing them to use less oil is socialistic and totalitarian, and not the least bit conservative.

If we're really hitting "peak oil", then the population will have to come to grips with that eventually and modify their behavior accordingly themselves. In the meantime, it's up to the politicians to handle the situation as best they can. Let them mind their business and us ours.

When people talk about ANWR as a solution, its usually in response to discussions about alternative energy.

Frankly, inertia is a default. Its always easier to keep doing what you are doing, and not have to change. Especially when there's the expense, risk, and change of behavior involved in both conservation and development of legitimate alternatives.

Frankly, if the time and resources are spent for the ten YEARS it'll take to get to the 2 years worth of oil in ANWR, wouldn't that be better used in development?

Actually, again, since there's 2 years worth of oil in each of those areas, of we spent the time and effort in the 90's, there'd be no discussion about it now, you're right there.

Because it'd already be gone.

"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy" That's Cheney on conservation and conservatism too, for that matter. Profligate waste has been a part of modern American life for so long that conservation seems quaint and old-fashioned. And the tragedy is not that Cheney is not conservative, the tragedy is that his arrogance is shared by so many other nominal conservatives. Like his overt lies about Iraq, his lies of omission prevent the general public from understanding the true nature of our energy dilemma.

The man is national disgrace and should be impeached and removed from office.

Well, MI, the 112 bbls is total. That's full domestic potential oil. That includes places we CAN and do access now. Like the current Alaska pipeline, wells in, well, wherever we currently have wells.

Since those places are already being used, and are likely to continue to be used, I instead separated out the new oil that people want to access from places like ANWR and the Continental shelf. THOSE sources are only equal, combined, to 22 bbls of oil.

And THAT we'd go through in less than 4 years.

given that Cheney is talking about the "hydrocarbon economy"...
I can give about 3 trillion good reasons to drill drill drill...
it's like this...
say the continental shelf reserves are "only" 25 billion barrels...
multiplied by $120 dollars per barrel...
= $3 trillion...
so...
it's not just about having enough to heat houses and run cars...
there's a little bit of benefit to the American economy...
and...
there MIGHT be lots more than 25 bbl in reserves...
shouldn't the American oil companies find out?
ya think?

wealth faith hope love joy peace to all...
Forgive God...

I'm going to point something out, and people on either side are going to respond rather poorly, but I'm going to point it out.

ANWR will eventually be drilled, and it will have absolutely no effect on anything.

Oil is fungible. That oil isn't magically going to go 'to us', because when we start using less world-wide oil, the oil that would have gone to us will go elsewhere. If we pump enough, even the oil in ANWR will go elsewhere, for all intents and purposes. It's not going to give us oil for two years past other countries, like we can show up on the world market when we're done with ANWR and collect our last two years of oil we didn't use. Markets don't work like that. (Although if you're paying attention you'll notice that, relatively speaking, the more oil costs on the world market at that time, the better off we are.)

It's just going to slightly lower prices, like all developed oil reserves do. If we can pump it fast enough, we can cut back some and hold OPEC over a barrel and demand that they lower prices or we'll pump more. (1) This would be very nice, pricewise...

...but do absolutely nothing about the total supply of oil, which ANWR wouldn't make any noticable dent in. In fact, mixing in lower price oil and causing the average price to go down might result in more usage.

See, there are people in this discussion who pretend 'Oh, all those people who want alternative energy won't develop ANWR', like those have anything to do with each other. We need alternative energy because oil is finite, and, just as importantly, increasingly hard to get, and opening up a single field isn't going to do a damn thing to change that.

Worrying about ANWR is like demanding overtime in football...when your team is 400 points behind. Look, we're going to 'lose', oil will run out. ANWR may make us lose slightly later. That is not incredibly helpful to worry about, and it's bordering on f***ing criminal negligence to hold up development of alternate energy because of that inanity. ANWR. Is. Not. Important.

1) Which, if the administration actually cared about oil prices, would be what they were doing with the National Petroleum Reserve...creating a hoard of oil and threatening OPEC with it. However, they don't care about that at all.