rudis dot net

Steven Mufson has a great piece in the Washington Post on the current state of the oil industry and the BBC has another interesting tidbit on China's Godzilla-like PetroChina (it's now worth $1 trillion USD).

Much like John Gruber's argument that Apple Needs A Nikon, I purport that big oil needs one as well – meaning they need real alternative energy competition. Traders seem to be behind this pricing bubble that – despite fudged economic statistics – is causing real economic damage across much of the world. They justify it by saying the speculation is based on real fears, but there is a great deal of evidence that it's all about having a playground for vast sums of currency.

Oil is a dirty, greedy, corrupt, environmentally damaging business that makes a small number of rich people and companies even richer at the expense of everyone else. Oil workers in Saudi and Nigeria are practically slaves and see little of the profits their masters accumulate. To ensure the product flows freely, we have to employ our military vessels (and this has nothing to do with the Iraq situation...it predates it by a wide margin) and the product itself seems to make rulers into madmen (Venezuela, anyone)?

The US is not without it's own madmen...Exxon and other companies continue to make a ludicrous amount of money, but complain when their profit margins are squeezed, even though they justified the huge gains by "times will be tough at some point". It's all about money, and there's only one game in town when it comes to fueling the engines of society.

The world needs an energy alternative –preferably more than one, to avoid another monopoly situation – and it needs it now. The problem is that if we do manage to find one (and I firmly believe we have a few in holding), it will plunge many of these third world countries (and I include Saudi, Iraq, Iran, China, Nigeria, etc in that description) into utter chaos and destabilize many, many regions. We (the US) are responsible for letting it get this far (we have a history of greedy white males doing stupid things for profit) and we have to be willing to take the chance of some temporary global destabilization to break the globe free of our dependence on this slippery black beast.

[REF: Ethanol's Boom Stalling as Glut Depresses Price]

But companies and farm cooperatives have built so many distilleries so quickly that the ethanol market is suddenly plagued by a glut, in part because the means to distribute it have not kept pace. The average national ethanol price on the spot market has plunged 30 percent since May, with the decline escalating sharply in the last few weeks.

“The end of the ethanol boom is possibly in sight and may already be here,” said Neil E. Harl, an economics professor emeritus at Iowa State University who lectures on ethanol and is a consultant for producers. “This is a dangerous time for people who are making investments.”

While generous government support is expected to keep the output of ethanol fuel growing, the poorly planned overexpansion of the industry raises questions about its ability to fulfill the hopes of President Bush and other policy makers to serve as a serious antidote to the nation’s heavy reliance on foreign oil.

This is a article of gratitude:

Thank You! President Bush for one of the worst energy policies in the history of America and trying to take the easy way out of a complex situation.

Thank You! Farmers of America who traded good farming practices for dollar signs, knowing we'd be there to bail you out.

Thank You! Farmers for contributing to wheat and other crop shortages because you thought we could all live on corn and ethanol.

Thank You! Farmers & Bush for executing so well on your ill-conceived plan that you drove prices up for so many other products that a large number of folks in America cannot afford them anymore (luxuries like beef, milk, ...)

Thank You! President Bush for actually solidifying our reliance on foreign oil rather than incenting real innovation in the energy and transportation industries.

Thank You! Congress for rubber-stamping the subsidies for our sheep-like, gold-rush farmers instead of challenging the status quo and actually *doing* something.

And, finally,

Thank You! America for electing and keeping these folks in power. You may have received what you deserved, but the rest of us are impacted as well.

I'll post more later, but The Morning Call has our green family story online. Never thought I'd hear us described as:

...three generations of fun jam-packed into an old Victorian house in Lower Nazareth Township