The bottom line: Oil prices are high today, not due to a temporary disruption in the global flow of petroleum as in 1980, but for systemic reasons that are, if anything, becoming more pronounced. This means news headlines with the phrase “record oil price” are likely to be commonplace for a long time to come. The only good news may lie in just how bad the news really is. Sooner or later, ever rising energy costs are likely to push the United States and other oil-consuming nations into deep recession, thus depressing demand and possibly beginning to bring energy prices down. But this is hardly a recipe for lower prices that anyone would voluntarily choose.

What, then, will be the lasting consequences of higher energy costs? For the ordinary American consumer the answer is simple, if grim: A diminished quality of life, as discretionary expenses disappear in the face of higher costs for transportation, home heating, and electricity, not to speak of basics like food (for which, from fertilizers to packaging, oil is a necessity). For the poor and elderly, the implications are dire: In some cases, it will undoubtedly mean choosing among heat in winter, adequate nutrition and medicine.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/03/17/oil/index1.html

Q: Where do you stand on the question of peak oil: that we’re on a slope of dwindling resources?
A: We believe there is plenty of below-ground resources to satisfy demand …

Q: For how long?
A: We have an outlook that goes to 2030, so we don’t see a peak in the supply. But what’s really important is, will investment be allowed to go to areas that can move supply? If investment is not allowed to go there, we could have very tight oil supply … Venezuela has significantly altered its investment climate, so investments there are not as attractive as they used to be. Mexico does not allow foreign investment [in the oil sector].

Therefore, a leading expert has no information he’s willing to share that pertains to any time frame longer than 22 years from now. This interview should not instill public confidence in the oil industry’s ability to keep providing oil long term.

He coyly refuses to answer the question in the title: How high can the price of a barrel of crude go? The availability of oil is critical to national security and we’re not getting straight answers from the oil industry.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/72491/page/1

Every day for the last month or more I’ve waited, as each piece on Atlanta ends at more or less the same point — with the dire possibility that the city’s water will soon be gone — as though hitting a brick wall.

Not that there hasn’t been some fine reportage — on the extremity of the situation, the overbuilding and overpopulating of the metropolitan region, the utter heedlessness that went with it, and the resource wars that have since engulfed it. Still, I’ve Googled around, read scores of pieces on the subject, and they all — even the one whose first paragraph asked, “What if Atlanta’s faucets really do go dry?” — seem to end just where my question begins. It’s as if, in each piece, the reporter had reached the edge of some precipice down which no one cares to look, lest we all go over.

Based on the record of the last seven years, we can take it for granted that the Bush administration hasn’t the slightest desire to glance down; that no one in FEMA who matters has given the situation the thought it deserves; and that, on this subject, as on so many others, top administration officials are just hoping to make it to January 2009 without too many more scar marks. But, if not the federal government, shouldn’t somebody be asking? Shouldn’t somebody check out what’s actually down there?

So let me ask it this way: And then?

For more, see the entire article in Salon.com. 

But it wasn’t God who allowed an outdoor theme park to build a million-gallon mountain of artificial snow while the Southeast was running dry; it was Governor Perdue and his fellow elected officials. They also allowed the wasteful irrigation of Georgia’s cotton farms and the rampant overbuilding and overslurping of metropolitan Atlanta.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1684513,00.html

Here’s another thing to consider. In Germs, Guns and Steel, Jarred Diamond convincingly argues that “advanced” civilizations could evolve because they figured out more efficient ways of growing food. Cheap food translates into an excess of human energy and creativity that can transform civilization in numerous ways (hospitals, libraries, science and technology). http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1459 What we’re going through now is a reverse of what allowed this evolution of our civilization. Cheap oil & water = wonderful cultural possibilities. Lack of cheap oil & water = societal decay.

Urinals without water. Fountains without water. A waterfall without water.

Dry is the goal as United Parcel Service Inc., Coca-Cola Co. and other companies in the Atlanta area rally to cut water use in response to the region’s most extreme drought since at least the 1920s. Metropolitan Atlanta, which has added more new residents than any other U.S. city since 2000, may face limits on growth if the shortage persists, business officials said.

For the full article from Bloomberg’s, go here.

It is downhill all the way for oil, according to a study by the Energy Watch Group (EWG) in Berlin, Germany. It reported this week that world oil production peaked in 2006 - far earlier than expected.

EWG analysed oil production figures and predicted it would fall by 7 per cent a year, dropping to half of current levels by 2030. The announcement comes as oil prices reached record highs last week, at more than $90 a barrel, and contradicts optimistic projections by the International Energy Agency in Paris, France.

The report also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production. The group warns that supply shortages could cause “a meltdown in society”, leading to scenes of mass unrest, such as those that took place in Burma earlier this month when the government pushed up fuel prices.

For full article, go here.