The End of the World as You Know It…....and the Rise of the New Energy World Order

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



The End of the World as You Know It
…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order
By Michael T. Klare

Oil at $110 a barrel. Gasoline at $3.35 (or more) per gallon. Diesel fuel at $4 per gallon. Independent truckers forced off the road. Home heating oil rising to unconscionable price levels. Jet fuel so expensive that three low-cost airlines stopped flying in the past few weeks. This is just a taste of the latest energy news, signaling a profound change in how all of us, in this country and around the world, are going to live -- trends that, so far as anyone can predict, will only become more pronounced as energy supplies dwindle and the global struggle over their allocation intensifies.

Energy of all sorts was once hugely abundant, making possible the worldwide economic expansion of the past six decades. This expansion benefited the United States above all -- along with its "First World" allies in Europe and the Pacific. Recently, however, a select group of former "Third World" countries -- China and India in particular -- have sought to participate in this energy bonanza by industrializing their economies and selling a wide range of goods to international markets. This, in turn, has led to an unprecedented spurt in global energy consumption -- a 47% rise in the past 20 years alone, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE).

An increase of this sort would not be a matter of deep anxiety if the world's primary energy suppliers were capable of producing the needed additional fuels. Instead, we face a frightening reality: a marked slowdown in the expansion of global energy supplies just as demand rises precipitously. These supplies are not exactly disappearing -- though that will occur sooner or later -- but they are not growing fast enough to satisfy soaring global demand.

The combination of rising demand, the emergence of powerful new energy consumers, and the contraction of the global energy supply is demolishing the energy-abundant world we are familiar with and creating in its place a new world order. Think of it as: rising powers/shrinking planet.

This new world order will be characterized by fierce international competition for dwindling stocks of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium, as well as by a tidal shift in power and wealth from energy-deficit states like China, Japan, and the United States to energy-surplus states like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela. In the process, the lives of everyone will be affected in one way or another -- with poor and middle-class consumers in the energy-deficit states experiencing the harshest effects. That's most of us and our children, in case you hadn't quite taken it in.

Here, in a nutshell, are five key forces in this new world order which will change our planet:

1. Intense competition between older and newer economic powers for available supplies of energy: Until very recently, the mature industrial powers of Europe, Asia, and North America consumed the lion's share of energy and left the dregs for the developing world. As recently as 1990, the members of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the club of the world's richest nations, consumed approximately 57% of world energy; the Soviet Union/Warsaw Pact bloc, 14% percent; and only 29% was left to the developing world. But that ratio is changing: With strong economic growth in the developing countries, a greater proportion of the world's energy is being consumed by them. By 2010, the developing world's share of energy use is expected to reach 40% and, if current trends persist, 47% by 2030.

China plays a critical role in all this. The Chinese alone are projected to consume 17% of world energy by 2015, and 20% by 2025 -- by which time, if trend lines continue, it will have overtaken the United States as the world's leading energy consumer. India, which, in 2004, accounted for 3.4% of world energy use, is projected to reach 4.4% percent by 2025, while consumption in other rapidly industrializing nations like Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Turkey is expected to grow as well.

These rising economic dynamos will have to compete with the mature economic powers for access to remaining untapped reserves of exportable energy -- in many cases, bought up long ago by the private energy firms of the mature powers like Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP, Total of France, and Royal Dutch Shell. Of necessity, the new contenders have developed a potent strategy for competing with the Western "majors": they've created state-owned companies of their own and fashioned strategic alliances with the national oil companies that now control oil and gas reserves in many of the major energy-producing nations. .......(more)

The complete piece is at (scroll down a bit): http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174919/michael_klare_oil_rules_

[Extend a Hand]

1. It is foolish

to think that things (here in the US) will be able to continue on as they have. I can't see the rest of the world sitting by and accepting the US with 5% of the world population using 25% of the oil. It just isn't going to happen.

[The2ndWheel]

2. It's a crazy world alright

What really has to happen is all countries have to merge into a single country. You can't have energy exporting countries as single entities, using the money they get from energy importing countries to either pay for social programs or to crack down on their citizens. You can't have energy importing countries as single entities, giving all their money to energy exporting countries at the expense of their own citizens or social programs.

If other sources of energy could make each country energy independent, then countries can be separate or together, it doesn't really make any difference. However, in a globalized world, where every place has to be standardized for the purpose of the efficient flow of capital and production, then we still have to merge all countries and corporations together. If we don't do that on a global scale, then we will have nothing but conflict. We can't have countries doing their own thing. There has to be a global standard for environmental regulation, a global standard for worker protection, a global standard of tax, a global system of politics, a global standard for anything and everything you can think of. A global military so that it won't wage war on itself. A global election. There can't be individual presidents and senates around the world. There can't be anything called national interest, it has to be global interest. The wealthy and the poor have to be the same thing. There can't be a division between corporation and union, that creates conflict. The corporation and the union have to be the same thing. The corporation and the government have to be the same thing, otherwise we get what we have now.

[4dsc]

3. To many people praying to the technology gods

Lets face, although high every prices are finally getting the sheeple's attention, they are being bombarded with a aray of propaganda ranging from technology will save the day to biofuels can make us energy independent.. It going to be a tough sell to convince most people we have a coming enery crisis. It would seem our leaders don't want to take the lead on this issue and would rather bury their collective heads in the sand hoping someone else will save the day..

[diane in sf]

4. Time to crank up the plug-in vehicle research and generate clean, local electricity

to run our vehicles.

[gear_head]

5. the electric car is coming. n/t