Five Dollar Gas

> The problem is not that we might run out of oil, that's a trivial
> economic problem of the sort capitalism solves with ease, it's that
> governments might decieve the market about how much oil is left, thus
> preventing the price mechanism from working. A sudden production drop
> that the market had no way to anticipate would result in market
> participants not having enough time to adjust their behaviour to
> minimise use. This could be very bad and the economic dislocation
> both severe and long term. So we have a deception problem (maybe) not
> an energy problem.

Your comment is very insightful. I like it. But, IMHO you need to add
the notion of monopoly (or at least cartel) to your statement. Yes, in
theory, (regulated) markets could easily solve the energy problem one
way or another (my feeling is for ground based PV) but the energy cartel
has been using trillions of dollars of economic muscle to stand in the way.

For example, I knew a solar energy pioneer who was involved with
building a solar demonstration house in New Jersey --- all solar down to
a solar oven (built in the late 1950s if I recall correctly -- she told
me about it more than 15 years ago, so my memory is a bit fuzzy on the
exact details). An oil company bought it and demolished it according to her.

And there is the well documented purchase of energy and resource
efficient light rail systems in the 1930s by oil, automobile, and tire
companies and they subsequently destroyed them. Before that happened,
you used to be able to travel almost coast to coast on streetcars. See
for example:
http://www.trolleycar.org/observations/ronaldkotas/kotas010821.htm
"At one time Milwaukee County had an efficient, well operated streetcar
system that covered the entire city and its suburbs. There was an
interurban system that connected Milwaukee with Port Washington,
Sheboygan, Watertown, Oconomowoc, Waukesha, Burlington, East Troy,
Kenosha and Racine. This was a fine interurban line run by Milwaukee
Electric. If the interurban systems had been kept, they could have been
easily extended to Madison, serving a need that still exists today. If
the streetcars and interurbans were still in operation, they would be
really appreciated now. But they were destroyed by shortsighted
politicians and greedy men. Inspired by Roosevelt's contrived 1935
Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, automobile manufacturers
conspired to bring about the death of the streetcar systems in the
United States. General Motors, Standard Oil and Firestone Tire and
Rubber were responsible for destroying 100 transit systems in 56 cities
in a 25 year period. After the streetcar lines were eliminated, General
Motors substituted buses. GM soon sold the bus lines and started other
operations that worked against rail, streetcar and interurban systems.
These corporations continue to this day with their anti-light rail
activities."

So, there has been active opposition to alternatives. And worse, the
growth patterns since then have built the US into a very difficult to
defend and operate situation, with sprawling cities and suburbs that are
highly automobile dependent. Light rail no longer makes as much sense,
given these unusual development patterns relative to the rest of the
world where cities tend to have clearer zoning boundaries and land
speculation is controlled. So these companies really have addicted the
USA to the automobile, and that will be a tough addiction to break (the
internet is helping some though, for telecommuting and online purchasing).

But of course, monopolies and cartels are also in a big sense
anti-capitalistic -- but in those cases, pretty much only big government
(well, big "by the people government" not possibly what we have right
now) has the size and power to step in and make the cartels and
monopolies play nice for the people's benefit.

And naturally, monopolies and cartels then also have the power to
operate in secrecy and with misdirection, including in the past I have
been told getting the government to classify public information such as
oil or coal reserves on federal lands as proprietary information.

--Paul Fernhout