NationStates Jolt Archive


Former CIA director, SEC DEF and Energy Secretary - We are all Peakists now!

PsychoticDan
18-09-2007, 17:42
James R. Schlesinger has been chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Director of Central Intelligence for six months under President Nixon, Secretary of Defense (1973-1975), and the first Secretary of Energy under President Carter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Schlesinger

David Strahan, website
Former US Energy Secretary Dr James Schlesinger today claimed that the intellectual arguments over peak oil had been won, and that in effect ‘we are all peakists now’.

In the keynote speech at the first day of an oil depletion conference hosted by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil in Cork, Schlesinger said that the oil industry executives now privately concede that the world faces an imminent oil production peak, and argued that a recent report by the US oil industry grouping the National Petroleum Council constituted “a backdoor admission that in the next decade or two we face a moment of truth”.

In a wide-ranging interview with Lastoilshock.com, Dr Schlesinger - who was also Defence Secretary and CIA Director - explains why he thinks “the battle is over, the peakists have won”, and discusses the delusions of US energy policy, Iraq, Iran and $100 oil.

Hear the interview with Dr James Schlesinger.

BA: Excerpts from the interview:

David Strahan: ...You said today in your speech that conceptually the battle is over, the peakists have won. That's an astoundingly bold claim. I was astonished. What did you mean by that?

James Schlesinger: If you speak to people in the industry, they will concede that "whatever my company may say publicly, we understand that we are facing a decline in our own production and that world-wide we are not going to be be able to produce more fuel liquids or crude oil in the near future."

And if you look at pronouncements by governments, including the Energy Information Administration in the United States, the National Petroleum Council (NPC) what they show is that by the early 2020s we are going to have peaked out in terms of conventional oil productions. And that is an immense change from what we have seen before in the attitude of the industry.

DS: But it's not what we're hearing publicly, is it? From the executives, from governments, from environmentalists? All seem to be in denial or ignoring this issue, don't they?

JS: Well "denial" may be too strong. "Ignoring" is probably right. One does not want to be the bearer of bad tidings. Cassandra has never been an appropriate role model for politicians. You do not ask the public to make sacrifices. If you concede that indeed the peak is coming, that we ought be making adustments, the adjustments will be costly and the public will bear the cost, which means that other things being equal, a decline in the standard of living. That is not the way to successful re-election.

... I was recently at a conference in New Mexico, sitting next to one of the recent CEOs of a major oil company. In response to a question from the audience, he said: "Of course I'm a peakist. It's just a matter of when it is coming." ... Once one is retired as a CEO, one is freer ... to say I am a peakist. And what you hear privately from almost all people - is we're coming to it.

...the American public has been coached into believing that we can have energy independence, which is not obtainable as long as we have the internal combustion engine, and at the same time as we get energy independence, we can lower the price of energy. These are simply unattainable, but they are regularly promised.

...There is not going to be a turnaround [in U.S. energy policy] until you have public support and the public has got to be frightened by a serious crisis which persuades them that indeed the wolf is at the door.

... I think that many of these politicians will ultimately find that the public blames them for [their] failure to warn them. Of course in a sense the public is responsible because it's the present public attitudes to which politicans play up - tell them what they want to hear. But when the view of the world changes, what the public wanted to hear some time ago is no longer what they want to hear in the future.

[Asked about Greenspan's assertion that Iraq was about oil]

The reality is that concern about the supply of oil is always a consideration because the Middle East contains so much of the oil... What some people are suggesting is that the invastion was to get control of Iraq's oil supply. No, we were determined to leave it up to free market pressures. And To the extent that they thought the United States was reaching for control, it is plumb wrong.

... I want to state quite clearly, that war is not the way to increase production near-term.

... We should be helping oil prices rise, particularly for gasoline.

... We are going to face a great difficulty in the near future. Whether or not it is defined as a crisis depends on how you define crisis. But there is difficulty, great difficulty ahead.

http://www.energybulletin.net/34868.html
The South Islands
18-09-2007, 18:53
God damn Chinamen.
PsychoticDan
18-09-2007, 23:10
aside from the days of cheap energy are over...who cares.

I guess you kinda have to recognize the consequences of the end of cheap and abundant energy. It doesn't just mean you won't be able to drive to the mall as often.
Verdigroth
18-09-2007, 23:11
aside from the days of cheap energy are over...who cares.
The_pantless_hero
18-09-2007, 23:18
It isn't that cheap energy is over, it's that everyone has been dicking around refusing to start searching for and developing alternatives to fossil fuels and by the time we run out of fossil fuels, we will be fucked because we won't have any alternatives.
Kyronea
18-09-2007, 23:46
Well, it's about damned time. Now can we finally see something done about this?
UNITIHU
18-09-2007, 23:50
It seems odd that we are all glad about someone being the bearer of ill tidings.
Oh well.
YAY!
PsychoticDan
18-09-2007, 23:54
That's not it. What we should be happy about is that people in power--more specifically, people that others in power listen to--are finally realizing the seriousness of the situation. This means that more will finally be done to rectify the situation.

We'll see. Personally I doubt this administration's ability to do anything right. Bush will react with the same deer-in-the-headlights stare he did when that Secret Servicemen whispered inot his ear on 9/11.
Kyronea
18-09-2007, 23:55
It seems odd that we are all glad about someone being the bearer of ill tidings.
Oh well.
YAY!

That's not it. What we should be happy about is that people in power--more specifically, people that others in power listen to--are finally realizing the seriousness of the situation. This means that more will finally be done to rectify the situation.
Kyronea
19-09-2007, 00:23
We'll see. Personally I doubt this administration's ability to do anything right. Bush will react with the same deer-in-the-headlights stare he did when that Secret Servicemen whispered inot his ear on 9/11.

Yes, that will stymie things for a while yet, but hopefully the next administration will seriously take control of this issue.