Grassroots Organization Launches Renewable Energy Act of 2006

An online renewable energy advocacy group, World Oil Boycott, has launched a major drive to see sweeping legislation in 2006 that would revolutionize the US energy industry. The initiative calls for a resurrection, expansion and re-introduction of Bill S 427, introduced in the first session of 2005. The Bill is currently languishing in committee.

The group has called for the modernization of the national energy grid – in the name of promoting international peace - via dramatic renewable energy consumption requirements by all federal offices. The broad and sweeping legislation of the revised bill would lead to:

- investment to provide research in making renewable energy technologies more efficient and more affordable;
- investment to provide businesses with tax incentives to switch to consumption of 100% renewable energy derived electricity;
- investment to provide tax incentives to home owners and businesses to purchase Energy Star rated gas furnaces and heaters;
- investment of $100 tax credit to home owners who provide receipt of their purchase of twice as many fluorescent light bulbs as rooms in their homes;
- investment to rebuild the national energy grid to include superefficient transmission lines; - investment to incentivize cities to upgrade their power lines;
- investment to fund the state construction of renewable energy 'greenways' along highways, including electric car battery swap stations and renewable fuels stations;
- investment to help all the major cities transition to clean electric powered mass transit systems, with batteries charged 100% by renewable energy;
- investment to provide tax incentives to individuals and business to purchase hybrid or electric automobiles;
- investment to provide tax incentives to the automotive industry to increase the efficiency of their gasoline and diesel-powered offerings;
- investment to provide tax incentives to the trucking industry to purchase vehicles or retrofit existing vehicle with technologies that allow them meet clean air and mileage standards;
- investment to support research in capturing energy otherwise lost in manufacturing, energy production, transportation, and domestic energy consumption;
- investment to research how to transition from a dangerous and eternally polluting nuclear fission power to clean and safe domestic nuclear fusion;
- investment to build massive solar trough farms in California and Nevada to help power California's growth and relieve them of their demand of unethically artifically expensive power from Texas;
- investment to create ultraefficient high-speed rail systems between major cities;
- legislation to require the adoption of ultra-efficient construction methods during the construction of all new federal buildings, and requiring that all new federal buildings be designed as 'green buildings';
- investment to create national awareness of the renewable energy options available to energy consumers, steps that consumers can take to reduce their non-renewable resource derived energy consumption, and the urgency of our need to transition to become a renewable-energy powered country;
- investment to export our best renewable energy technology to developing countries to assist their populations in emerging from poverty and squalor into productive populations powered by our mother the earth and our father the sky;
- requirement that all federal government offices transition to eventually consume 100% renewable energy-derived electricity by 2010, or equivalent through Renewable Energy Credits;
- requirement that all light bulbs purchased by federal agencies meet efficiency standard set by fluorescent alternatives to incandescent bulbs; - investment for a national competition among cities of >100,000 people to become powered by >95 renewable energy by 2010, with the reward being that the federal government will pay the energy bill of all citizens of the first city in the year 2010-2015.
- investment to insure that New Orleans becomes one of the first truly green cities in the United States of America.

Movie Syriana Depicts Oil Reality

With the recent Peak Oil Caucus being formed in the House of Representatives, increased media attention, and now the newly released movie, Syriana, it appears that the correlation between limited oil supplies and questionable foreign policy is being illuminated.

I plan on seeing Syriana this weekend in between finals study sessions.
The review below discusses how/why Syriana is a timely movie.

Syriana and Iraq
By Mark LeVine

Critics have been hailing "Syriana," George Clooney's latest film (Written and Directed Stephen Gaghan, Academy Award winner for Best Screenplay - Traffic) by the to take on the policies of the Bush administration, as a cinematic tour de force that has "compelling real-world relevance" and is "unsettlingly close to the truth." But what is the truth "Syriana" supposedly approaches? Put briefly, the plot traces the ramifications of a bungled assassination, authorized by the CIA, of a Middle Eastern leader who decided to sign a major oil deal with China instead of an American oil company with close ties to the US Government.

Given the increasing numbers of Americans who believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the country to justify the Iraqi invasion, many film-goers will no doubt be willing to accept the film's argument that America's thirst for oil—not the threat of terrorism, and certainly not a concern for human rights—drives the country's policies in the Middle East, even when those policies violate our core ideals. But is the movie really a case of art imitating life, or does "Syriana" veer towards the kind of hyperbole and exaggeration that marred Oliver Stone's "JFK”? The evidence would seem to speak for itself. It includes:

• Newly discovered documents, reported in the Washington Post, revealing that as early as February 2001 senior executives of at least four of the country's biggest oil companies, ExxonMobil, Conoco, Shell and BP America, met with Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force.
  
• Documents from these meetings obtained by the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch—including a map of Iraq and an accompanying list of "Iraq oil foreign suitors" revealing Iraq to have been a major topic of discussion. This is not so surprising, as that country has perhaps the world's second largest oil deposits. Indeed, the map erased all features of the country save the location of said deposits, while the list of suitors revealed that dozens of foreign companies were either in discussions over, or in direct negotiations for, rights to them.
  
• As important as what was discussed was when the meeting occurred: at precisely the moment when scientists and industry leaders began increasingly to worry that the "age of peak oil production"—when it will no longer be possible to extract enough oil from the earth to replace what we consume—was approaching faster than previously assumed, portending a potentially explosive competition for the world's remaining supplies.
  
• In such a scenario, ensuring American access to—and, where possible, leverage or even control over—the world's major oil deposits would be a natural concern for an administration umbilically tied to Big Oil, especially in the context of escalating competition with an aggressive, energy-hungry China.
  
• A 2002 report by Deutsche Bank explained the major US companies would lose if Saddam made a deal with the UN, whereas the Europeans, Russians and Chinese would come out ahead. But in a post-Saddam Iraq, the report argued, the US oil majors—specifically, according to the report, ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco, the very companies involved in the disputed meetings—could manage the country's resources.
  
• At the very moment the first Energy Task Force meetings with industry officials were held, in February 2001, the National Security Council issued a directive telling staff to cooperate with the Energy Task Force in the "melding" of new "operational policies towards rogue states" with "actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields." No place on earth was more amenable to such melding than Iraq.
  

Two and a half years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration continues to resist calls for a major troop withdrawal, despite the fact that most intelligence reports, and most Iraqi politicians, confirm the presence of those troops to be the main motivation for the insurgency.

With American losses and expenditures mounting daily, the threat of WMD disproved, the promise of peace and democracy seeming increasingly pollyannish, it's hard to think of many good reasons for the US to maintain a long-term presence in Iraq. Two that come to mind, however, are oil and military bases—subjects that remain largely unbroachable in polite discourse in Washington or Baghdad.

What else would constitute the "core interests" that both the Bush administration and leading democrats (most recently Sen. Joseph Biden) argue will be threatened by an American withdrawal from Iraq any time soon.

It took roughly fifty years for the CIA to admit that it organized the overthrow of Iranian President Mossadeqh when he dared to nationalize his country's oil industry. Our government also helped organize coups that put the Baath Party in power in Iraq twice, in 1963 and 1968. There's no doubt who was behind the toppling of Saddam. The question that remains, however, is: What was the real reason we invaded Iraq? On that score, "Syriana" hits closer to home than most politicians either side of the aisle would care to admit.

Mark LeVine is a Professor of Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine, and author of Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (Oneworld, 2005). See www.culturejamming.org.

Peak Oil Caucus Formed in Congress

I’ve been relatively silent for a while on the Peak Oil front, but I promise I’m keeping tabs on as much as I can – the economy, real estate, metals market, international events etc. The global landscape of frenetic human activity serves as clues. I have some breathing room since the majority of my papers are out of the way and soon it will be time for finals preparation.

I've posted articles recently, but did not have a chance to send emails prompting you to check them out, so if you have time scroll down and take a peak – no pun intended, honest!

This is good news. Congress has recognized Peak Oil! This means there’s a conscious minority within that body who has recognized the crisis. Some of them probably understand it better than others, and perceive that no combination of alternative energy sources will ever allow what Dick Cheney calls “the American way of life” (assuming mass consumption and assuming continuous growth through infinite supply reservoirs) to continue. But they will educate each other and, we can hope, the rest of the House.

I had read an article claiming that we'll be screwed in our lifetime if there was not a consorted global drive towards an “Apollo Project” revolved around alternative energies. In a previous post, “Natural Gas is Yummy” (scroll down), I had described how 95% of power plants constructed in the US since the 1990s use natural gas to generate electricity – natural gas is non-renewable.

The resolution below states that: “the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency of the `Man on the Moon' project to develop a comprehensive plan to address the challenges presented by Peak Oil.” And there it is...let's get this game on track before that fat lady sings

(Disclaimer: Fat lady references is a figure of speech and is not intended in anyway to discriminate against horizontally endowed individuals or Kripsy Cream Calendar models)

Here's the info from Congress provided by:
http://www.globalpublicmedia.com

A peak oil bill has been filed in the House of Representatives with the support of the newly formed Peak Oil Caucus, founded by Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (Rep, MD) and a number of co-sponsors. The members of the caucus are James McGovern, Vern Ehlers, Tom Udall, Mark Udall, Raul Grijalva, Wayne Gilchrest, Jim Moran, Dennis Moore.

Co-sponsors are Tom Udall, Virgil Goode, Raul Grijalva, Walter Jones, Tom Tancredo, Phil Gingrey, Randy Kuhl, Steve Israel, G.K. Butterfield, Mark Udall, Chris Van Hollen, Wayne Gilchrest, Al Wynn, John McHugh, Jim Moran, and Dennis Moore.

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the `Man on the Moon' project to address the inevitable challenges of `Peak Oil'.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES October 24, 2005
Mr. BARTLETT of Maryland (for himself, Mr. UDALL of New Mexico, Mr. GOODE, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. TANCREDO, Mr. GINGREY, Mr. KUHL of New York, Mr. ISRAEL, Mr. BUTTERFIELD, Mr. UDALL of Colorado, Mr. VAN HOLLEN, Mr. GILCHREST, and Mr. WYNN) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce

________________________________________ RESOLUTION

Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency that was incorporated in the `Man on the Moon' project to address the inevitable challenges of `Peak Oil'.

Whereas the United States has only 2 percent of the world's oil reserves; Whereas the United States produces 8 percent of the world's oil and consumes 25 percent of the world's oil, of which nearly 60 percent is imported from foreign countries;

Whereas developing countries around the world are increasing their demand for oil consumption at rapid rates; for example, the average consumption increase, by percentage, from 2003 to 2004 for the countries of Belarus, Kuwait, China, and Singapore was 15.9 percent;

Whereas the United States consumed more than 937,000,000 tonnes of oil in 2004, and that figure could rise in 2005 given previous projection trends;

Whereas, as fossil energy resources become depleted, new, highly efficient technologies will be required in order to sustainably tap replenishable resources;

Whereas the Shell Oil scientist M. King Hubbert accurately predicted that United States domestic production would peak in 1970, and a growing number of petroleum experts believe that the peak in the world's oil production (Peak Oil) is likely to occur in the next decade while demand continues to rise;

Whereas North American natural gas production has also peaked;

Whereas the United States is now the world's largest importer of both petroleum and natural gas;

Whereas the population of the United States is increasing by nearly 30,000,000 persons every decade;

Whereas the energy density in one barrel of oil is the equivalent of eight people working full time for one year;

Whereas affordable supplies of petroleum and natural gas are critical to national security and energy prosperity; and Whereas the United States has approximately 250 years of coal at current consumption rates, but if that consumption rate is increased by 2 percent per year, coal reserves are reduced to 75 years:

Now, therefore, be it Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives that--

(1) in order to keep energy costs affordable, curb our environmental impact, and safeguard economic prosperity, including our trade deficit, the United States must move rapidly to increase the productivity with which it uses fossil fuel, and to accelerate the transition to renewable fuels and a sustainable, clean energy economy;

and (2) the United States, in collaboration with other international allies, should establish an energy project with the magnitude, creativity, and sense of urgency of the `Man on the Moon' project to develop a comprehensive plan to address the challenges presented by Peak Oil.