[A-List] Re: GAO: Looming Threat to US Oil Supply

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

Melvin, production is controlled by its energy supply, and the forms of  
energy supply left destroy the livable biosphere, first and foremost of  
the working class and peasantry in the third world. 3 billion people  
would be a massive population total in the near future, without a  
radical re-ordering of-- wait for it-- production. Peak oil and climate  
change are the top manifested issues of the bourgeois dominanc over  
production, and their fucked up value system as to what is "cost" and  
what is need.

There is no proletariat without food.

--  
Macdonald Stainsby


Comment

Macdonald, the information you  have forwarded on peak oil, the current 
fights of the Indigenousness Peoples and  indeed, the body of literature of 
consistently forwarded to this virtual world  is important and instructive. If we 
were a political organization, (here's a  scary thought) rather than an important 
virtual form, the body of literature you  have sent on peak oil would - and 
other issues, would constitute an important  and substantial part of policy 
statement . . . within a programmatic line of  march, that every sector of the 
working class and a segment of the middle class  elite could raise. 

If we were an organization you would also get my  person vote, despite 
differences, which can be sharp at time, because you do not  proceed from a military 
mind set which tends to punish and imprison for  "personality flaws" and 
different dreams.  

Production - in my  estimate, is not controlled by its energy supply or 
rather I look at production  somewhat different. Production is controlled - what is 
produced and how it is  distributed (together the shape of production) 
exclusively on the basis of  property relations. Energy determines how - How, what 
is produced will take  place but does not control what is produced. 
 
I must follow the line of march over what is produced because of my  location 
in the world theater. And I hope to win other over to this line of  march 
where I happen to be. 

I am looking at this issue of peak oil  through a lens of value - which I 
argue for strenuously, but never seek to  impose on anyone, and the issue of peak 
oil appears as a question of what is  produced and what is consumed, from the 
standpoint of the most poverty  strickened sector of the world proletariat.

I do not argue against the  electro-mechanical logic that states more: ever 
increasing energy intensive  production, requires an even greater expenditure 
of initial input and tend to  have an even greater "fall off" (non convertible 
energy or unrecoverable energy  that cannot be captured and reconverted into 
an energy input without an even  greater increase in the initial input). 
 
The current fight to block the path of the bourgeoisie - my bourgeoisie in  
its energy demands, is correct. Period. This means that one is located on that  
front of struggle. 
 
I do argue in favor of fuel cell automobiles but most do not read the part  
of the argument that argues for less automobiles in the world. I was fed up 
with  the combustible engine years ago and spent my entire adult life building 
such  engines - 30 years of building the 318 for Chrysler Motors, and if you 
think  they are bad for the environment, imagine the inside of the factory that 
builds  the engine. I do not consider myself soft on the question of the 
environment or  fossil fuel. 
 
We do not need at least 50% of the products produced in our society and  they 
are produced for their commodity form exclusively. Does this solve the  
problem? Yes . . . without question, at least in its fundamentality.  

I can imagine a different world with not just energy limited devices  (saving 
energy is kind of stupid, is it not?) but a world reconfigured on  the basis 
of a complex of energy forms. Not just solar panel but integrated  complexes 
of energy limited devices.  You say "solar panels  and  someone screams "the 
world cannot run on solar panels." You say fuel cell and  someone says, "they 
are more energy intensive." 
 
Well, what about the refrigerator. Why do "you" - not you, have to have the  
two of them and a freezer in the garage?  Exactly what is in these  
refrigerators? 
 
I'm rambling but Fidel is partially correct. 
 
I have been pissed off . . . at the energy expended on the fucking  packaging 
for CD and all the real energy expended on selling - exchange or the  value 
relations, of a damn recording that can be down loaded in a cooperative  
electronic library.
 
Ok . . . I'm pissed at the bourgeois order  . . . not you at  all . I am 
working as a security guard, specifically what is called a Loss  Prevention 
Off-icier, in supermarket chains - the big ones. Now and then I write  about what is 
in a supermarket and how worthless these products are. I look at  these 
products everyday - thousand of them and have most committed to memory . .  . 
sadly. I see where is the energy is being expended in a minute way and the  system 
of production and distribution enforced by the bourgeoisie to bring those  
products to market as commodities. 
 
I am saying that I see the problem as the commodity form and not the  
electro-mechanical process in the abstract. What is produced and not how it is  
produced is what has brought the world to crisis. 
 
Do we ever add up the energy requirement for armament production by the  
bourgeois order? 
 
I do not accuse you but just saying. 

My support for fuel cell  vehicles are in a context of the destruction of the 
value system. 
 
 
Melvin P. 
 







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