Execllent articles. Thank you. May I offer an alternative reason for “the geopolitical circumstances that may have been used to rationalize these unfortunate decisions”

My view is based primarily on the belief that most major acts of terrorism, including the attacks against America on 911 have been sponsored by those who control governments. Terrorism and crisis are primary tools of governmental control. They are historically used to manipulate populations. If you do not appreciate those facts, you are likely to spend a lot of effort spitting into the wind while trying to get the bad taste of peak oil out of your mouth.

What follows is the outline of my thesis that the approaching energy crisis is intended as just such a tool of control and manipulation. If you find this idea of some interest, I’d be happy to email or post a fuller discussion containing sitations to supporting materials. At this time I do not maintain a proper website on which to post the complete document.

Here’s the substance of my thoughts. Thanks again for your research and efforts, and best wishes.

Davido

The coming Energy Shortage is well planned. Crisis is intended. It will enable the ruling elite to control the public and manipulate support for wars designed to secure sufficient global control of strategic resources to ensure their rule over the world.

One question has bothered me continually in regard to Peak Oil. Why wasn’t our government preparing the nation for a smooth transition to alternatives? If a typical citizen can see the energy shortage coming, then our political leadership can see it too.

Yes, there are a few political voices in the wilderness like congressmen Roscoe Bartlett, Wayne Gilcrest, and Tom Udhal of the Congressional Peak Oil caucus. However, most of congress is quiet on the issue of peak oil. Global political leaders mention it, but raise no alarm. Ultimately, most of our populace remains unprepared.

Why is there not a major program to prepare the nation and the public for the crisis ahead? Indeed, why have our national policies over the past few decades served to make the U.S. ever more dependent upon foreign energy sources?

To say, as many do, that it is not politically expedient for a politician to deal with a crisis before it arrives; is to say, in essence, that we lack leadership. I only wish our situation was that simple? Unfortunately, the more probable conclusion is that what we face something much worse than a lack of leadership. We face powerful leaders with evil intent.

U.S. policy is being controlled by very purposeful leadership. The problem is that those who control our national policy are not our elected officials. Worse, they intend for Americans to experience crisis. Indeed, they need crisis, because they are planning war.

The American public will face the energy crisis –purposefully unprepared, because those directing U.S. policy intend for crisis’s to occur. The deeper the crisis, the better suited energy shortages will be as a tool of political manipulation. Since tools of political manipulation are highly sought by those seeking power, the looming energy crisis is likely to be severe.

Energy and economic crisis will serve at least two great purposes. First shortage and crisis will be used to further consolidate governmental control -especially over the American people. Second, fuel shortages and the social-economic crisis that will result will be used to motivate Americans to go to war. Those who are driving US politics plan war to ensure their control of the world’s remaining strategic resources. Liquid fuels will be among the chief strategic prizes because liquid fuels are critical to mobilize a modern military force.

Ultimately, around midcentury, North America’s immense riches in unconventional fossil fuel resources will enable the elite to implement a long term strategy to control the world. America’s current actions in Iraq and Afghanistan bear partial witness to the ruling elite’s multi decade plan to control and/or drain the conventional liquid oil resources of the Middle East and Central Asia. By midcentury, the entire world will be surprisingly dependent upon liquefying the unconventional North American fossil fuels that remain.

Basically, those who control US policy plan to let energy shortages stop American cars and trucks, bring down our power grids, and leave our homes dark and unheated –long enough for the public to demand action. When the American public is crying for action, “evil” foreign oil producing countries will be made the scapegoat. We will be told that certain oil producing nations have plenty of oil but are greedily withholding their bounty with no regard for the pain, suffering, and death of Americans and of the American economy.

Any country rich in conventional oil that does not cooperate with the ruling elite’s plan for global domination will be blamed for our troubles. War will be promoted as the solution.

The controlling elite have known for decades that oil would eventually be in short supply. See http://channelinghubbert.com/2008/03/08/chase-manhattan-predicted-peak-oil-in-1956/. Further, they have been acting on that knowledge quite forcefully- as in Afghanistan and Iraq. An unpublicized energy policy is being implemented. The plan of U.S. power brokers is evident to the careful observer. They intend to control and drain the conventional (liquid) oil resources of the Middle East and Central Asia, while the U.S. preserves most of its remaining conventional oil.

In due course, Middle Eastern oil will be depleted. Then, around the middle of this century, the majority of the worldwide production of liquid fuels will come from unconventional fossil fuels. The unconventional fossil fuels which will remain long after conventional oil is depleted will be almost entirely within North American grasp. Those unconventional fossil fuels – from which liquid fuel can be synthesized, are Canadian tar sands, US oil shale, Venezuelan extra heavy oil, and North American coal. The majority of each of these resources will be solidly under the control of a North American government.

The Hirsch report calls for a prompt and massive unconventional synthetic fossil fuels construction program. What Hirsch does not mention, is that in 4 to 6 decades, when conventional oil production is down to less than half its current level, from today’s 75 GB/yr (billion barrels per yr) to less than 40GB/yr, liquid fuel production from North American unconventional liquid fuel sources will exceed the rest of the world’s conventional oil production.

The future will therefore hold a dramatic turnaround for American prospects, from a declining -even a collapsing American economy during the next two decades, to an ascendant powerful North America by midcentury. The future economic turnabout resulting from combining our military superiority with immense North American fossil fuel reserves will likely be stunning. Near the middle of this century North American fossil fuels will be the source of the majority of the world’s fossil fuel liquids.

Though the Middle East currently holds nearly 2/3 of the world’s conventional oil supplies, the world’s annual conventional oil production will diminish to less than half of its current production in just the few decades between now and 2050. The declining supplies of conventional oil (liquid oil flowing from wells) will be replaced by liquids synthesized from unconventional fossil fuel resources. At midcentury North America (together with Venezuela) will hold 80+% of the recoverable world resource base of these unconventional fossil fuel resources.

The ruling elites have not only been planning America’s response for decades past, they have also planned their energy strategy far into the future. Around the middle of this century, North America will become the undisputed world leader in liquid fuels production. Until then, the ruling money powers intend to manipulate the politics, military and energy reserves of North America so that our military and energy resources can be used to consolidate their control over the world through a planned world government. Liquid fuels are a prerequisite to utilizing military might; those who control liquid fuels will achieve military domination and ultimately hegemonic worldwide political control.

The U.S. already has by far the world’s largest most powerful military. By controlling global access to liquid fuels, the elites will be able to prevent any military challenge to its supremacy. Those controlling liquid fuel production will constitute a de facto, and likely overt, world government.

However, control of the American military is necessary. The support of the American people for war, or at least our tacit consent to war, is critical to their plans to control the world’s strategic resources. It is largely the coming energy crisis that will be their tool to gain popular support. The bigger the energy and economic crisis, the more support there will be for wars promulgated as a means to resolve the crisis.

The existence of great fossil fuel reserves in North America will enable those controlling them to secure control over the liquid fuels necessary to mobilize military forces. Toward that end, the coming U.S. energy (and economic) crisis is planned as a tool to consolidate the globalist elite’s control over the American populace and to motivate Americans to support yet more foreign wars over oil. The greater the coming energy crisis is, the greater will be the average citizen’s motivation to support foreign military intervention and to acquiesce to ever broader restrictions of our own liberties.

The rest of this essay addresses historical examples of how governments use of crisis and terror to manipulate public opinion.

As Joe McMullen noted in his comment, Hubbert referenced this paper in his 1956 paper “Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels” for his seminal speech. I have updated the article to reflect this.

Many people have not heard about this or the many sordid tales associated with U.S. energy policy history because of the disconnect between science and social history. The majority of people in the peak oil movement have focused their energy on the science and what can be done. At the Hubbert Tribute, we believe that we ALSO need to better understand the path we have traveled to inform our current and future decision making and help develop a mandate for responsible energy policy now. The age old adage “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” (George Santayana, 1905) certainly applies.

We believe we need to fully understand the discourse or patterns of thinking within which we are operating. Paraphrasing Einstein, the significant problems we face cannot be solved within the same discourse that created them.

I’m a lay observer of peak oil, but I have been fortunate enough to have had a great geology professor, Craig Bond Hatfield, who was one of the lone voices in the 1980s warning of the current crisis.

I never learned of peak oil in his classes, but later came to know his writings, after I got acquainted with the term.

He wrote articles for various newspapers and Nature magazine, anticipating to the “T” the crisis we have on our hands today.

Let’s not forget the testimony of such people as Hatfield. These voices were “crying in the wilderness” long before “peak oil” was even a term.