This recently appeared in Wendy Williams' blog. She is coauthor of the book Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Class, Politics, and the Battle for Our Energy Future on Nantucket Sound, now out in paperback -- a fascinating and horrifying read.
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I've been giving lots of talks about Cape Wind around the country, and I can tell you -- the American people are getting really angry. Both Democrats and Republicans are equally disgusted by what they read in our book about Cape Wind.
At this point, they're angry about a lot more than Ted Kennedy and Mitt Romney getting together behind the scenes or over dinner to plot about how to kill Cape Wind.
The average American has caught on to the fact that the above behavior is happening in every sector. Corporate behavior is simply out of control. The airlines behave as if passengers are little more than cattle. The insurance companies have doubled and tripled their prices. Food prices have sky-rocketed, while the farmers who grow the food see little in the way of increased money. (It mostly goes to speculators.) Gasoline prices are doing real harm to rural people, who have little in the way of discretionary income in the first place.
Meanwhile, the folks in Washington fiddle and fiddle.
There are some simple things a leader -- a genuine leader, that is -- could do to bring things under control.
How about, for starters, suggesting that all Americans who own a car give up one automobile trip this coming Sunday. Since a good deal of the current price of gasoline is due to speculators' trading, imagine what would happen to the speculators if that happened. The price of gas would drop immediately.
And if a leader helped ensure that Americans kept up that kind of genuine grassroots pressure (as opposed to the "astroturf" emanating from fossil-fuel-funded outfits like the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound), the people themselves, with the right leadership, just might be able to bring this problem at least a little bit under control.
That won't happen though. That's because "leadership" is afraid to step out. Or more likely, just doesn't want to be bothered. After all, if they want to travel somewhere, all they have to do is call up someone with a corporate jet, and they're ready to ride ...
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Russ Posted 5:04 pm
21 Jul 2008
While I support any and all conservation measures as simple common sense, and as being physically and financially healthy for the conserver himself, the above is simply not true, and we shouldn't be parroting right wing talking points here.
The price of oil is driven mostly by the confluence of skyrocketing global demand and shrivelling supply. This is the nature of Peak Oil. Speculation may drive the price up somewhat further, but the main force is simple supply-demand fundamentals, and marginal reductions in American gasoline usage (or meager increases in domestic supply, as advocated by the pro-drilling pirates) cannot significantly affect this.
"Speculation" - have you wondered why the right wing normally denies there's any such thing as "bubbles" (i.e., by definition any price behavior is simply the genius of the market and is automatically correct), but in the current case of oil they're falling all over themselves to blame speculators for bubbling?
It's because the foundation myth of technological civilization, global capitalism, and the growth ideology is that oil will always be cheap and plentiful, and that the supply will always increase. The supply has to always increase, since the whole machine is predicated on demand and consumption always increasing. If consumption ever failed because supply failed, the whole vicious structure would come crashing down.
This prospect now looms, but no one can admit that, since it would shatter the fantasy. So they go looking for phony explanations (speculators are to blame) which can afford phony solutions (hearings and legislative proposals to rein in speculators). So everyone can hide their heads in the sand a little longer.
I didn't say all this to beat up on the original post. Like I said, I like any conservation proposal. But we really need to be clear that oil prices are soaring NOT because of the machinations of speculators, but because of ineradicable Malthusian limitations we are now running up against.
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symonds88 Posted 12:13 am
22 Jul 2008
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symonds
Addiction Recovery South Carolina
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amazingdrx Posted 1:33 am
22 Jul 2008
Obama is starting to clear up this controversey. Is it speculation that is to blame for the sudden spike in oil? The inevitable oil supply/demand mismatch due to shortage would not push prices up this quickly.
Obama used the word "manipulation" instead of speculation. Speculation is a normal part of market trading. Insider trading manipulation is the source of the corruption that has taken over energy markets.
Phil Gramm going way back to the first bush administration is the culprit, McBushs' former economic advisor. He pushed deregulation of energy markets, then futures markets (his wife was head regulator of futures), then mortgage markets.
Will re-regulation solve the energy problem? Of course not. But it will help to get the economy going again so we have the financial confidence and vigor to re-invest in renewable/conservation energy/agriculture revolution.
Re-regulate, get rid of this whisper insider trading that has destroyed any market "efficiency" in addressing changing conditions in energy supply/demand. Give renewables and conservation a fair and really free market playing field on which to compete.
Wall street rats are squirreling away our capital offshore at record rates because of shills like Phil and his wife watching over supposedly "free' markets. They are free alright, free sources of cash for the worst kind of market operators.
Close the loopholes, starting with the infamous Enron loophole. We want to see some people more culpable for these continuing bubbles and bailouts than Martha stewart marched off to a nice golf course white collar "prison", this time around.
Start with Phil and his wife, then keep filling those country club prisons until they are camping out in tents.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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amazingdrx Posted 1:40 am
22 Jul 2008
Get your family and friends to back off this bull shit or admit you don't deserve the position or reputation you claim as a real environmentalist.
If you can't even lobby these people to get with the renwewable energy program, how can you be trusted to do that behind the scene in DC?
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Jon Rynn Posted 1:46 am
22 Jul 2008
Close the loopholes, in fact, put in a Tobin tax on each financial transaction (remember that idea?) and use it for solar/wind energy. While we're at it, create a string of municipal/infrastructure banks, and move the entire financial system over to them. Nationalize the oil companies, like most other countries. But it still won't bring back the oil -- we should follow Matt Simmons' suggestion, and put a floor on the price of oil, so people aren't lulled once more, as they were in the 1980s, into thinking that Happy Motoring is here forever.
As for Cape Wind, my suggestion is to put little coal-fired power plants on the beaches in Cape Cod to provide their electricity.
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amazingdrx Posted 2:38 am
22 Jul 2008
Speculation is not the culprit here. Speculation cushions market shocks, it "hedges" (as in hedge funds) against risk. The speculators take a gamble, sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. but they smooth out the shocks for the rest of us, who can't tolerate a sudden doubling of our energy expenses.
For assuming that risk they get a part of the money spent on energy, maybe 5 to 10% would be fair. By manipulating markets with a cell phone whisper or text message to their fellow crooks, unregulated, unwatched hedge fund thieves have taken maybe between 30 and 50% of what we pay for energy and sent it to offshore havens from legal recovery.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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Wolverine Posted 7:24 am
22 Jul 2008
Furthermore, there's absolutely nothing wrong with supporting natural aesthetic values and opposing projects that harm them. Other animals beside humans have eyes, and these things ruin their views, too. It's not just about the people who live there.
I find this ignoring of aesthetic harms to be a gross lack of sensitivity and caring toward the natural world. If you don't know or understand why placing wind generators, solar panels, oil rigs, mines, or any other unnatural objects in a natural area is wrong, you are out of touch with nature.
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amazingdrx Posted 7:55 am
22 Jul 2008
But these Cape Wind opponents who mainly blight the coast with obscene development like mcmansions and golf courses? Total zeroes as far as any environmental credibility.
Industrial fishing concerns, masquerading behind local fishermen, likewise. They lobbied to destroy the fish and seafood and fishing families incomes with overfishing, for decades.
You can consistently oppose the secenry being blighted, but not that crowd.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
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