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EVDebs said:
All oil-related activities are distractions (even the Iraq adventure) from what the world should have been doing for the past decade...searching for and implementing conservation of energy measures and implementing alternatives to oil.

All else is thumb twiddling. Plan B 2.0 by Lester Brown shows us that the world has until 2031. I think that timeframe is charitable, IMHO. We have even less collective time to get our acts together.

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It's worse than thumb-twiddling, really. It's naked profiteering by people who graduated from Economics 101 and recognize that supply and demand are optimally arranged when it comes to fossil fuels. A finite resource like gold or other precious metals is often used to illustrate supply and demand effects, but the supply in those cases diminishes only because buyers hoard it, leaving less for others to acquire, so that what's left sells at a higher price. Once the price gets high enough, the hoarders open up their vaults and make more of their stash available, increasing supply until the price cools down again. In the end, the total supply stays the same, and these markets remain more or less stable because there's balance to the equation, with people just trading the same metals around over and over again.

Not so when it comes to fossil fuels, where the supply is finite but the users consume it, effectively taking it permanently out of the equation. The opportunistic profiteer realizes that in a situation like this, there's a one-time opportunity to make more money than anyone can imagine, because the supply and demand equation is unbalanced. Demand is increasing as more of the world becomes industrialized, and supply is dwindling as we run out of dead dinosaurs to turn into oil. There's no balance factor, so the price of oil is only going to continue to rise, since there's always someone who'll be willing to pay for it--until there's finally none left for anyone. Every mutual fund on the planet (apart from a few "eco-friendly" portfolios) invests in oil stock because it's the safest bet around.

By that point, the major investors in the fossil fuel industry will have made their trillions, and only then will they be willing to invest in alternative energy sources--which at that point will become the new profitable industries, so long as they're based around supply-side controls. "Free" energy sources like wind and solar aren't easy for financiers to control (it's just selling you the hardware and maintenance, like a consumer appliance), but something like hydrogen fuel cells fits neatly within the supply-side model, since you can't make those yourself and you'll have to buy them (and refill them) from a company that produces them.

If you look at the ever-changing projections about when the oil supply is finally going to be exhausted, you'll find that the figures change solely due to technological advances in finding and reclaiming oil. With better sensors on earth-mapping satellites, oil companies are able to spot potential drilling locations more easily, even if they happen to be in hard-to-reach places. With more advanced processes, they can now extract oil from oil-soaked sand, akin to squeezing the last drops of water from a sponge. Unfortunately both of these "innovations" are expensive in terms of the energy costs they require--it takes fuel to find and make more fuel. Mounting a drilling platform in a hard-to-reach part of the globe may be prohibitively expensive--until the price of oil rises high enough to justify the cost. Similarly, oil-sands reclamation is much less efficient than getting the crude straight out of a well in the ground, but once the price of oil gets high enough, it finally becomes worth doing.

Never mind the fact that oil-sands reclamation also happens to be a huge pollution generator, or that getting access to every last drop of drillable oil might involve destroying delicate ecosystems in previously-protected parts of the world. To the profiteers, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to squeeze every last dollar out of the wallets of energy consumers (i.e. all of us), and they figure that it'll all be over in a few decades anyway, so the environment will eventually recover.

To talk to some of these oil profiteers, you'd think they were altruists doing us a favour. If it weren't for investors like them, they'd argue, we would have run out of oil decades ago. Their influx of capital paid for these technological advances that have stretched the limited remaining oil supply by a matter of years, and we should be grateful to them for it. Besides, the capitalist's creed is that "if I don't do it, somebody else will do it." To that mindset, the dwindling oil supply is an undeniable reality that someone is going to profit from, so why shouldn't it be them? Not coincidentally, that's the same justification many criminals offer when asked about their crimes. Someone is going to pick your pocket, so why shouldn't it be me?

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EVDebs said:
I'm a bit too cynical but have faith in the ordinary man who eventually will get the truth.

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I fear that the "ordinary man" is a drudge so preoccupied with eking out a living that he has little or no energy left at the end of the day to do anything about the truth, even if and when it finally becomes apparent to him. He has enough to worry about in the microcosm of his own life--being able to pay the rent, put food on the table, afford braces for his kids, and make payments on all of the credit cards and loans he's had to take out in order to stay afloat in a culture that tells him he's a failure if he can't provide his family with this year's crop of consumer electronics.

His nose is so close to the grindstone that when his world comes to an end, he'll be the last to know it. He doesn't have the time to study what's going on in the next state, much less a foreign country. He may mistrust the media, but he doesn't know who else he can trust, so in the absence of any trustworthy news source he gives up and figures the issues are out of his hands, too big for a guy like him to do anything about anyway, and so he shrugs and goes back to work.

It's a class issue, without a doubt. The "ordinary man" is a serf, used to living in a world where his betters make all of the important decisions about governance and world affairs. He may be entitled to a vote, and that vote may give him a feeling of empowerment, but his betters decide who he can vote for, and by controlling the list of names on the ballot they effectively make a mockery of his "power." He may even realize this one day, if he can come to see past the state's propaganda telling him how lucky he is to be living in such a great country.

But recognizing the truth is like taking the red pill--it's a ticket to despair when he realizes at the same time that he's powerless to do anything about the situation. All he can hope to do is show other "ordinary men" the truth and fantasize about a day when enough "ordinary men" in his position are desperate enough to band together and rise up in a revolt against the Bourgeoisie. And if he takes his inspiration from Washington, or Robespierre, or Marx, or Guevara, or Khomenei, he might even succeed at rebooting the democracy-tyranny-revolution cycle that Plato described, for at least one more turn of the wheel.

Working against this, of course, are his betters, who desperately want to avoid a revolution. It's in their interest to ensure that the "ordinary man" never reaches such depths of despair and depression about his lot in life, because a man who feels he has nothing to lose is capable of anything. The "ordinary man" must thus be entertained and reminded at every opportunity that he lives in the greatest country on earth--and how grateful he should be that he doesn't have to live anywhere else. Given his bread and his circuses, the "ordinary man" finds comfort in the lies, and doesn't work too hard to unmask them--the truth is unsettling, and makes him feel like a powerless dupe. The state's propaganda makes him feel like a hero, though--an asset to his countrymen, a winner who should be proud of his accomplishments and his contributions to the state's economy. Given the choice, he's going to listen to news that makes him feel good about himself, rather than news that depresses him. The blue pill, after all, has a sweet candy-coating.

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EVDebs said:
Forty-five percent of American adults surveyed in a Zogby poll think that the September 11, 2001 attacks should be investigated anew.

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Well sure, and I'm sure a similar number think there's more to the JFK assassination than the official version would have us believe, but I don't think the "ordinary man" has any realistic hope that the truth will ever be revealed in a manner that can be proved conclusively, or that the guilty parties in such a conspiracy will ever face justice.

The pollsters should have followed up their question with: "Do you believe we will one day know for sure whether there was a conspiracy behind the events of 9/11?" and "If there was a 9/11 conspiracy, do you believe that the guilty parties will be brought to justice?" Those would be telling statistics to match against the 45% of respondents who smell something fishy.

My take on the "ordinary man" is that he's cynical enough to mistrust authority figures (we all know by now that politicians lie for a living), but while he may believe full-well that he's being lied to, he also recognizes that he's powerless to do anything about it. He figures the rich and powerful will always get away with whatever they like, limited only by the actions of other rich and powerful people.

To the "ordinary man," it's all a kind of theater playing out at a level he can only view from the cheap seats. He can talk with others about his conspiracy theories in coffee shops and on forums like this one, but with no more determination than others might discuss theories about what's going on on Lost. It's intellectual entertainment, rather than a call to arms.

The "ordinary man" doesn't expect a just outcome (at least not in this world). He's seen the rich and powerful get away with anything and everything, and if Zogby's people had asked the right questions they'd probably have discovered that he expects the events of 9/11 to remain shrouded in mystery for the indefinite future, without resulting in any conclusive proof of conspiracy, and without sending any of the truly guilty parties to prison (patsies and scapegoats excluded, of course). Forty years on, he'll expect no more closure on the 9/11 case than we have today on the JFK assassination.

The real problem is that the "ordinary man" feels he's impotent against the power of the state. Even if 45% of the adult population believes the government is lying to them about the events of 9/11, their collective sense of powerlessness inhibits them from doing anything about it. They shake their heads and mutter something derisive about politicians, then head back to the polls in a few more years to elect another liar--or the same liar, if they figure all liars are essentially the same. You might as well have Zogby ask the "ordinary man" whether he trusts politicians--the percentage may be strikingly low, but it doesn't seem to motivate anyone to fix the system.

The "ordinary man," I'm afraid, is a force for inertia, grounded in the status quo and resistant to change. It takes more than a shocking truth to motivate him; as little as he's got, it means the world to him, and he's desperately afraid of losing it. His life must become truly unbearable before he'll ever be willing to make a stand. Until then, he's content to remain cynically entertained.

But then, I'm an optimist

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