Fareed Zakaria asks Iranian official if he likes Obama

Fareed Zakaria managed to get Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Manouchehr Mottaki to answer some real questions on camera about nukes and Israel, and CNN to air it. (They didn’t even add a crawl that put “Iran” in quotes to emphasize that it’s not quite a real country.) I don’t entirely love Zakaria, but he’s kind of a bad-ass these days.

As a demonstration of what is perhaps Barack Obama’s greatest tightrope-walking trick in getting to the presidency, Zakaria in the clip above gets Mottaki to comment on the issue of cooperating/negotiating with an Obama administration.

Mottaki can barely contain the only true smile of the entire interview as he parses his own words, saying, basically, that answering affirmatively to that question has caused Obama trouble in the past (is he referring to Hamas’ “endorsement?”), and he wouldn’t want to cause such trouble so he won’t answer.

But clearly, Iran favors the notion of Obama winning the presidency. Declining to respond in the way he did has the same sentiment as if he’d stated that, yes, his government would welcome a President Obama.

After seeing this, my inner wingnut couldn’t help blurting out loud in a bad Middle-Eastern accent: “Are you kidding? US president with middle name ‘Hussein’? Come on! You, FAREED, of all men, must understand! You high five me now, yes?”

Part of me can’t wait until Obama visits the Middle East and Europe, just to demonstrate how far the US reputation can improve overnight. But then my mood snaps back and doubts whether such a sneak peek is really good at all for Obama, whether instead the voters will be vulnerable to right-wing nationalists’ attempts back home to point to just such scenes as proof that Obama isn’t American enough to be trusted.

This internal conflict of mine is no doubt in part about a lingering (if futile) idealism that world politics could enter a new golden age; but realistically, it’s very much about the two main ways that the US wields its influence in the oil region as our own economic crisis matures.

Specifically, the issue is whether the Middle East remains stable long enough to make any difference in our economic fate, or whether the Saudi and/or Iranian people overthrow their regimes due to sudden lack of oil-revenue handouts. A large portion of native Saudis don’t have any skills and survive thanks to redestributionist oil budgets; Iran’s leadership also does not enjoy popular support. Internal struggles that turn violent could halt oil flow while bracketing out US influence at a time when we’re dealing with a perfect economic storm here at home.

Obama, even if only in symbol, could have a palliative effect through soft-power influence that creates room for regional diplomacy and cooperation in putting out some of the military fires that are largely ignited by perceived US intentions for long-term occupation of Iraq — the other, hard-type of influence that seems to have been our only contribution to the region in recent times.

It’s not that a sudden boost of goodwill in the Middle East towards the US government would guarantee our ability to weather our economic troubles. But it would address one very significant factor which otherwise will complicate even further a matrix of systematic failures we’re facing (which may very well prove, in total, beyond our ken to repair).

Filed under Economy, Mainstream politics, Oil, Video, War | Comment (0)

The totalitarian road to freedom

As a result of past perceived threats to “collective security,” most Americans have become desensitized to the idea of curtailing otherwise treasured rights.

For instance, we no longer debate the unprecedented actions taken by FDR in the 1930s for the sake of building a welfare infrastructure. At the time, the New Deal produced several Supreme Court cases (some of which the government lost). FDR was a known admirer of Mussolini, and Ronald Reagan is known as saying that the New Deal was inspired by fascism.

Closer to the present, I don’t need to go into much detail about the executive maneuvers of George W. Bush regarding the suspension of habeas corpus, torture, and wiretapping Americans without a warrant. While the Supreme Court recently displayed some willingness to push back, the American citizenry remains largely apathetic.

There are those who insist that the New Deal brought us out of the Great Depression, and others who claim that Bush’s eavesdropping and torture have kept us safe from terrorism. But there are equally-credible folks on the opposite sides of both issues saying that the unintended consequences of these examples of the expansion of state powers far exceed any benefits.

And so, with the imminent merger of the climate and global economy crises, we have to ask ourselves how far centralized governments will presume to go to “solve” these problems.

It’s pretty clear that the crisis likely to strike first is economic meltdown.

The permanence of expensive oil, and the hyperinflation it could produce will be real and extreme pain for everyone. The cries for the government to “help” will be ubiquitous and deafening. It’s probably not exaggeration to imagine the following:

• Massive subsidies for “alternative fuels”
• Aggressive deportation of immigrants
• Radical mandatory conservation
• Price/profit controls
• Rationing (food and fuel)
• Internment camps for rioters and subversives

If the economy were to survive such sudden and extreme changes (which seems doubtful) and we were to make it to the second round of crises — climate change — we might see:

• Travel bans
• Nationalization of natural resources
• Advertising bans to lower consumption
• Surrender of national sovereignty
• Forced abortion/sterilization

Richard Heinberg, author of The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, and Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World, has an interesting thought on his blog:

Ultimately … the central authorities would have to self-destruct in favor of local autonomy, because the energy base would no longer be present to support long-distance systems of command and control.

And here, Heinberg takes the thought experiment in a new direction. He sees centralized efforts as impotent as Rome in its final days — in fact, they would precipitate the very thing they seek to prevent: the complete breakdown of any kind of sustained social order. He then flips to outright optimism:

I can imagine future generations living in small, technologically modest communities. They would have memories of the events of the 21st century to serve as a cautionary tale embedded, no doubt, in new myths, so they would be highly motivated to keep population levels low–perhaps a few tens of millions of humans total, globally. Of course, life would go on, and there would be the inevitable mistakes and conflicts. But once the oil is gone I doubt if another generation will ever be capable of the exuberance and arrogance of ours.

I guess Ted Kaczynski is worth another look.

Aside from the childless, godless maniacs looking forward to our future primitivism, we have some denial issues, folks.

We now live in a world built by cheap oil, and its resulting economic abundance sustains our planet-long supply chains and our suburbs and exurbs where families dwell. The raw shock of adapting to the end of the era of cheap oil is not being fully grasped by commentators or the public. What abstract liberties would you be willing to shrug off in order to protect your family’s survival? We’re not used to thinking about issues of survival, but the Great Depression gave us such conditions where we did.

Alas, some commentators have dared to imagine the arrival of an even worse desperation:

This condition is partly disguised by both the loss of credibility of US currency and real-world scarcities of oil and food, but the upshot will be something at least twice as bad as the Great Depression of the 1930s: people with no money in a land with no resources (with manpower that has no discipline), hardly any family farms left, cities that are basket-cases of bottomless need, comatose small towns stripped of their assets and social capital, an aviation industry on the verge of death, and a railroad system that is the laughingstock of the world. Not to mention the mind-boggling liabilities of suburbia and the motoring infrastructure that services it.

Filed under Climate, Law, Mainstream politics, Oil | Comment (0)

Pinch points and oil pirates

The new issue of New Scientist magazine has some fairly horrifying scenarios looking at ways we could experience a sudden global oil shortage. Since world output is just keeping pace with demand, any drop in production will mean immediate effects:

In the days when oil producers had more leeway, they could make up for a disruption somewhere in the system by quickly raising production by around 3 million barrels a day… That crucial reserve capacity has now fallen below the daily output of some producers - meaning that if the taps were turned off in any one of a number of unstable oil-supplying nations, such as Nigeria, Iraq, Iran or Angola, the impact would be felt almost immediately.

Focusing on “pinch points” (see this cool interactive map) in the transport of oil by sea, New Scientist suggests a single act of sabotage in one of these places could send the world economy reeling. In 2003, the ship Dewi Madrim was boarded by pirates in the Strait of Malacca, an especially narrow pinch point. They took over the bridge, steered for a bit, then zipped off in their speedboat as suddenly as they’d appeared. It’s widely seen as a practice run for a future attack, which today would be enough to send oil prices intergalactic given the precarious condition of the current market. According to Time magazine:

…the strait is traversed each year by some 50,000 ships carrying one-third of the world’s trade and half its crude oil, including 90% of Japan’s oil needs. Its narrowest point, near Singapore, is barely 2 km across, making passing ships easy targets.

Aside from the obvious crackdown on anti-Western groups all over the planet that would instantly ensue should such an attack occur, consider the ripple effects of fuel shortages, and how our attempts to take decisive action and finally “solve the problem” could make things even worse. How would the international markets respond to rationing, for instance? Would there be massive public investment in biofuels at further detriment to the hungry stomachs of the world’s poor, causing more food riots? And what would massive, emergency, deficit spending do to the value of the dollar, and inflation, etc.?

Filed under Law, Oil | Comment (0)

Americans will shun cars?

As mentioned, the end of cheap oil is one of those concrete, society-wide phenomena that causes the masses to “wake up” and see a looming danger, and thereby let go of quaint political (and other) ideals. Permanently high gas prices have, today, led the Wall Street Journal to declare that “poor Americans” will abandon automobiles as if they were Europeans, once fuel inevitably hits $7/gallon. Which poor Americans?

The 57 million American households that have both cars and access to something resembling public transit. Gasoline at $7 begins to approach prices Europeans have paid for years, meaning that chunk of America “will start to act more and more like Europeans,” Mr. Rubin says. Not soccer moms in a minivan—soccer fans, searching for tokens…

But the dumping of the car for mass transit is only the beginning of the story. Such a shift will place a massive burden on the poorly-designed and indequately-managed transit systems of US cities at a time when the very cause of people’s behavior change, high fuel costs, will be draining government coffers because of the resulting recession/depression. So there’s that.

Worse still, what happens to all the folks who don’t live within the service range of mass transit and are too poor to move to a place that is? Do they begin bum-rushing the cities anyway, creating squatter communities and shanty-towns that are currently a symbol of the failures of the developing world?

The loss of the viability of cars is being hailed by some in the privileged class as a boon to everyone. But the ripple effects of this phenomenon on societies which are fundamentally predicated upon the existence of cars and cheap oil cannot be understated. They will be obvious and radical. And on top of the nightmarish logistical clusterfuck, will be the actions of inept governments local, federal and international to step in and try to “do something,” which will only exacerbate the crisis (or fulfill it, if you’re in the camp that sees all this as pre-determined given the loss of our key energy source).

Filed under Cars, Law, Oil, Urbanism | Comment (0)

Tipping points

This clip features a scientist who claims there’s a 50/50 chance that this year we may see the total loss of summer sea ice from the North Pole, for the first time ever. This could be huge, as far as how the masses perceive climate change. The satellite time-lapse imagery is very powerful (“…visual, quantifiable, measurable,” as the scientist says).

Granted, it would be more overwhelming if there were large populations of humans living there, but the next-worst-thing to seeing human hardship has to be seeing polar bear hardship! And that there is, if the ice goes bye-bye.

One thing that fascinates me is if/when the general public begins to clamor for massive state involvement to “save” our society, in defiance of long-treasured civil liberties (especially “economic” ones). This is less a political fascination than an aesthetic one — I don’t have the special drive that activists possess to shout loudly about stopping certain trends. I do have a rubbernecker’s awe when witnessing large shifts in the relationship between state and individual.

The “War on Terror” has been one such shift, with regards to habeas corpus and wiretapping. Climate change is another; so is the end of cheap oil. I believe the world population will quickly abandon any and all “idealistic” values regarding meddling by the political class when imminent and widespread harm is demonstrated in concrete terms.

Filed under Climate, Law, Video | Comment (0)

Intel chips outlawed due to high oil prices?

A tech industry journalist thinks that American chip manufacturers could find their technology outlawed in Europe once rising oil prices threaten the global economy with meltdown:

The straightforward argument is that the more expensive oil becomes the more expensive is power in all its forms. And that is as true for notebook computers as it is for mobile phones and basestations…

So power, green and recycling conscious have we become, there is even the prospect that Intel processors could become first unfashionable and then in an Orwellian European Union, illegal.

Sounds a bit hysterical, yes. But, wait…

The advent of ecodesign legislation in Europe directly targets power-consuming electronics products. For now the legislation is focused on the waste caused by standby operation, but increasingly the tone of the documentation is that designers must show that they have taken appropriate steps to reduce the power consumption of their products. And if they cannot do that there is the risk that the products will not be allowed to be marketed within the European Union.

Indeed, according to the “Energy” section of the European Commission’s website:

Apart from the user’s behaviour, there are two complementary ways of reducing the energy consumed by products: labelling to raise awareness of consumers on the real energy use in order to influence their buying decisions (such as labelling schemes for domestic appliances), and energy efficiency requirements imposed to products from the early stage on the design phase. (emphasis added)

Once the reality of a world without cheap oil starts to sink in, no doubt there will be many ways in which we will not recognize our current notion of the role of the State, the meaning of rights, and the nature of commerce. I tend to think there would be a bit more opposition to this kind of presumptuous intervention in the States compared to Europe, but honestly, when our backs are to the wall, who knows?

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