The Blue Voice

Monday, August 15, 2005

Over a Barrel

Here I am on another hot humid Monday morning, about to quote a conservative who has been around as long as I can remember. One of the early heroes of conservative commentary, in fact. But always smarter, with a far better vocabulary, than most of the current crop - William F. Buckley. When Buckley starts getting worried about an approaching oil crisis and talking about energy conservation policies, maybe some of the scoffers will at last listen up. Buckley is not talking about peak oil in this essay, noooo - he's blaming the deal we made with the Saudis twenty years ago: "It was 20 years ago that the Saudis and the United States arrived at a deal. The Saudis would set prices so as to protect the U.S. oil industry. And the U.S. would protect the Saudis' independence. We regret that, and should make the Saudis regret it also."

He's read a book by Raymond J. Learsy, called: Over a Barrel: Breaking the Middle East Oil Cartel, and it's woken him right up. He is now writing the same scenario that Thom Hartmann, Richard Heinberg, and others have written, only Buckley sees it as a temporary emergency, not one that has no end. Here's some of his visions of a future where oil costs $100.00 a barrel, which when you see how quickly it jumped to almost $70 per barrel, is not an unlikely possibility:

Commuters suddenly forced to pay double for a gallon of gas begin to brown-bag their lunches, inching away from restaurants and sandwich shops. Americans who can still afford a vacation go on shorter trips, putting a major dent in the tourist industry. Trucking companies hauling everything from wines and spirits to furniture to automobile parts impose a hefty surcharge on shippers, who pass it on to their customers, who then pass it further down the line to the retail buyer if they can.
...........
With the break-even point for airlines a distant memory at $31 a barrel and carriers already operating with skeleton staffs, sharp fare boosts are the only option. Traffic spirals into a tailspin, and one airline after another declares bankruptcy.
.........
Foodstuffs of every kind -- from beef in the butcher case to fresh fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle, to milk and cheese in the dairy section -- reflect the higher costs incurred by growers and shoppers.

And there's more where that came from. His thoughts on how we conserve oil are interesting, and a good deal more draconian than anything that's yet been suggested. You can, you should, read the whole piece, Looking Ahead: Oil.

posted at 9:44:00 AM by marigolds2

| +Save/Share | |