Dave Chandler

Plutonium Parkway

"Rocky Flats: A Local Hazard Forever"

PUBLIC MEETING
STANDLEY LAKE AND ARVADA

Tuesday, May 10, 2011
7:00-8:30 PM
Standley Lake Library
8485 Kipling Street
Arvada, CO 80005
MAP

Plutonium at Rocky Flats - LeRoy Moore, Ph.D.

A presentation entitled "Rocky Flats: A Local Hazard Forever" will focus on the long-term danger of plutonium contamination at the site of the defunct Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant. Dr. Moore will explain why the government's plan to allow construction of a road on the refuge, and allow pubic recreation in the future should never happen. One purpose of the project is to raise awareness about dangers associated with exposure to the tiny particles of radioactive plutonium knowingly left in the soil at Rocky Flats after the cleanup of the site.

The project to implement Nuclear Guardianship at Rocky Flats is a joint endeavor of the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center and Naropa University's Environmental Studies program. It combines the arts, science and remembrance to cope with the seemingly intractable human-caused quandary of radioactive contamination. Nuclear Guardianship is a powerful manifestation of a shift away from the culture of risk, secrecy and denial we have inherited to a culture of ecological responsibility and greater democracy. The project seeks to initiate a commitment for the millennia to safeguard Rocky Flats, a pledge to our children's children's . . . children. For more details on the project, including a schedule of events and bios of presenters, see www.rockyflatsnuclearguardianship.org

Tollway Trickery

This article was published in the print version of the Denver Post's YourHub.com for Arvada, Wheat Ridge and Westminster on Thursday, February 24, 2011.

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UPDATE!

Two news reports that show how our Jefferson County Board of Commissioners engages in cronyism and corporate/special interest welfare. The commissioners sure know how to take care of themselves and their friends ... with our tax dollars.

It is conflict of interest ("a conflict between the private interests and the official responsibilities of a person in a position of trust"); it is political corruption ("impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle").

It looks like "pay-offs" are business as usual for our county commissioners.

Not surprisingly, the Jefferson Economic Council supports the beltway boondoggle discussed in my original article below.

And this at a time when these commissioners are distressed about "flat revenues".

Commissioner Feathered Nest of Future Employer | Canyon Courier - February 15, 2011

Hartman Named Director of Diversion Services | Columbine Courier - February 15, 2011

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The latest push by local government empire builders to construct a tollway west of Arvada contains a 'deal' proposing that Boulder and Golden adopt a position of "neutrality" towards the project in exchange for certain 'considerations'.

The Jefferson Parkway Public Highway Authority's 'deal' is an open space purchase for Boulder -- and for Golden a few crumbs of planning assistance (no construction funding) for future intersection improvements on highways U.S. 6 and SH93 -- improvements that are desirable whether or not a toll road is ever built.

Now a 'good deal' would involve affected parties in a negotiation with give-and-take on both sides to either get construction started; and/or mitigate the negative impacts of such a tollway; and/or to even drop an idea that has become unfeasible. On the other hand, a 'pay-off' is a deal offered by one side to make the opposing side more or less go away.

And that is what the Parkway Authority's 'deal' really is ... it is a proffered 'pay-off'.

Golden should reject this offer for the same reasons that this whole toll road idea is a bad deal for Arvada: it is an unneeded new road that would increase traffic congestion and it has every probability of becoming a money pit for taxpayers.

First, the Northwest Quadrant Feasibility Study concluded that a 'beltway' link simply wasn't necessary for expediting transportation either locally or regionally -- no matter how satisfying it may be for some to see a nice, pretty circle drawn on a map around the metro area.

Common sense tells us that such a toll road will do the opposite of easing traffic congestion through Arvada. Put it this way: how many Arvadans will pay at least $3.00 for the privilege of driving to shop at the Flat Irons mall? Or round trip, $6.00? Or will even more of us pile onto Wadsworth Blvd. and U.S. 36 to avoid the toll? How many regional drivers will do the same to avoid the toll?

Second, the Parkway Authority is scheming to find private investors to front the money to construct a tollway segment unconnected to either the Northwest Parkway or C-470. Their intent is obvious: build the middle part with expectations that taxpayers will ultimately be compelled to "finish the job" and pay for constructing the two connecting ends.

Hold on to your wallet, folks. This is yet another "public-private partnership" being marketed as a something-for-nothing project -- and it has 'bailout' written all over it.

The best plan for facilitating traffic flows though Arvada -- and that protects Golden's quality of life -- are road enhancements to Indiana and McIntyre. Such upgrades would create a pretty much straight line that could efficiently move traffic from Flat Irons to already existing SH58 and the new, improved on-and-off ramps with I-70 that already connects with C-470.

Greedy developers and old fashioned politicians on the Arvada city council and the Jeffco Board of County Commissioners should stop wasting time and money on an idea that is becoming as antiquated as the Model-T.

With better alternatives available to meet 21st century transportation needs, this tollway pay-off ploy is a really bad deal for Arvada, a bad deal for Golden ... and a bad deal for Jefferson County taxpayers.

Some Coloradoans in Denial About Peak Oil

Here is a letter-to-the-editor that appeared in Monday's Colorado's Rocky Mountain News:

Recently, our governor, Bill Ritter, our senator, Ken Salazar, and one of our representatives, Mark Udall, testified in Washington to postpone the recovery of oil in western Colorado ("Oil shale hits roadblock in Senate," May 16).

They caved in to special interests that want to prevent any exploration of oil in this country even though oil prices are skyrocketing and gasoline prices are making ordinary Americans go broke. Their acts are shameful!

It has been known for many years that there is about twice the amount of oil under western Colorado than is under all of Saudi Arabia.

The successful mining of this oil could make the United States self-sufficient. As it is, we are sending billions of dollars to countries that are our enemies to provide the oil necessary to run this country.

How could our elected officials betray the citizens of Colorado and the rest of the United States for political gain - to gain the favor of special-interest groups that want this country to move back to the Dark Ages? We need to contact our elected officials and tell them that we need this oil.

There are a couple of things I want to observe about this point of view.

First, in the age of the internet, it is astounding that folks will so blithely display purposeful ignorance. It takes about thirty seconds to find out about oil shale. Here's the Wikipedia citation: Oil Shale. So, oil shale isn't 'oil' in the first place and refining what it contains -- 'kerogen' -- into a usable liquid fuel is difficult and terribly expensive in terms of environmental costs, monetary costs and energy costs. Indeed, there is not even now an efficient, effective way to extract large quantities of kerogen from the rocks under western Colorado. In other words, because the author of this letter wouldn't take five minutes to inform his political opinion, he looks like a fool.

But, of course, knowledge and facts are beside the point ... which brings me to my second observation. The writer of the letter-to-the-editor intuits that we are in the beginning stages of what could be a catastrophic loss and tragedy for human beings, especially in the United States. What we witness in the letter correlates with the Kübler-Ross model of the 'Five Stages of Grief' on a global scale.

I see most Americans by-and-large in the first two phases of the five stages of grief concerning the arrival of peak oil. We hear 'denial' and 'anger' over the high cost of gasoline and the fact that oil production has plateaued in the face of increasing demand. 'Bargaining', 'depression' and 'acceptance' are sure to come as energy costs continue to rise and shortages finally intrude upon our everyday lives.

As in the letter, there is denial that anything we have done before has has any consequences on our present state. Waste, convenience, materialism, and insatiablility simply cannot have been an ingredient in our past behavior that has squandered a precious natural resource to the point where scarcity could be a new possibility. For all of the marvelous technological advances that derived from the hydrocarbon age, we have acted like the oil would flow forever and have wasted it equally on frivolous and unnecessary toys and endeavors.

Now, in the face of gasoline price increases, the denial becomes angry: it is the fault of environmentalists; it is the fault of government bureaucrats; it is the fault of greedy oil executives and speculators; it is everyone else's fault expect for the writer, folks like him and their gas guggling SUVs, motor boats, RVs, ATVs -- and their lust for cheap consumer goods. If only the environmentalists would go away we could drill ANWR, the Florida and California coasts. and we could strip mine all of the oil shale out of western Colorado ... then gasoline would cost pennies per gallon again -- everybody could drive Hummers and we could keep on buying greeting cards shipped in from China that cost 89 cents.

But denial and anger will not change the truth. The first news report below tells the real tale -- the third largest contributor of crude oil to the U.S. is Mexico ... and that country's petroleum production has peaked and is in decline.

The essay by James Howard Kunstler further illustrates the consequences of peak oil.

The nation is full of people these days like the writer of the letter-to-the-editor ... sadly, their denial and anger will only further injure themselves in the long run ... but you know better, of course. Don't you?

Link: Pemex Says April Oil Output Drop Biggest in 12 Years | Bloomberg.com

Petroleos Mexicanos, the state-owned oil company, said April crude production fell the most in more than 12 years as output at its largest field declined faster than the company forecast.

Crude oil production fell 13 percent to 2.767 million barrels a day in April, Mexico City-based Pemex, as the company is known, said today on its Web site. Output a year earlier was 3.182 million barrels a day. The decline was the largest since October 1995, when output fell 29 percent.

Pemex Chief Executive Officer Jesus Reyes Heroles set a goal of producing 3.1 million barrels of crude a day in July of last year. The company has only met that goal once since it was set. Output has been on a decline since reaching a peak in December 2003. Since 1999, proved reserves have been more than halved to 14.7 billion barrels of crude oil equivalent.

``There is no clear sign that this decline is going to slow down,'' said David Shields, an independent energy analyst in Mexico City. `` I don't think there is any point in trying to forecast an annual average.'' ...

... Output at Cantarell, Pemex's biggest field, fell 33 percent to 1.07 million barrels a day, according to the Energy Ministry. That was the lowest output since March 1996 at the field, which peaked at 2.192 million barrels a day in December 2003 and once accounted for about 60 percent of the company's output.

The company forecast output at Cantarell would fall 15 percent annually until 2012.

Exports fell 14 percent to 1.439 million barrels a day. Pemex, the third-largest supplier of crude to the U.S., has said it will cut exports as output falls so that it can refine more of its own oil.

Link: Shell's Shale Plans...? (or Why I Am an Oil Shale Skeptic) | Robert Rapier/TheOilDrum.com

Link: The Illusion of Vast Undeveloped U.S. Oil Resources | Roger Blanchard/ASPO-USA

Link: Wake Up, America. We're Driving Toward Disaster. | James Howard Kunstler/Washington Post

Everywhere I go these days, talking about the global energy predicament on the college lecture circuit or at environmental conferences, I hear an increasingly shrill cry for "solutions." This is just another symptom of the delusional thinking that now grips the nation, especially among the educated and well-intentioned.

I say this because I detect in this strident plea the desperate wish to keep our "Happy Motoring" utopia running by means other than oil and its byproducts. But the truth is that no combination of solar, wind and nuclear power, ethanol, biodiesel, tar sands and used French-fry oil will allow us to power Wal-Mart, Disney World and the interstate highway system -- or even a fraction of these things -- in the future. We have to make other arrangements.

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the "peak oil" story. It's not about running out of oil. It's about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis. What's more, the stress induced by the failure of these systems will only increase the wishful thinking across our nation.

And that's the worst part of our quandary: the American public's narrow focus on keeping all our cars running at any cost. Even the environmental community is hung up on this. The Rocky Mountain Institute has been pushing for the development of a "Hypercar" for years -- inadvertently promoting the idea that we really don't need to change.

Years ago, U.S. negotiators at a U.N. environmental conference told their interlocutors that the American lifestyle is "not up for negotiation." This stance is, unfortunately, related to two pernicious beliefs that have become common in the United States in recent decades. The first is the idea that when you wish upon a star, your dreams come true. (Oprah Winfrey advanced this notion last year with her promotion of a pop book called "The Secret," which said, in effect, that if you wish hard enough for something, it will come to you.) One of the basic differences between a child and an adult is the ability to know the difference between wishing for things and actually making them happen through earnest effort.

The companion belief to "wishing upon a star" is the idea that one can get something for nothing. This derives from America's new favorite religion: not evangelical Christianity but the worship of unearned riches. (The holy shrine to this tragic belief is Las Vegas.) When you combine these two beliefs, the result is the notion that when you wish upon a star, you'll get something for nothing. This is what underlies our current fantasy, as well as our inability to respond intelligently to the energy crisis.

These beliefs also explain why the presidential campaign is devoid of meaningful discussion about our energy predicament and its implications. The idea that we can become "energy independent" and maintain our current lifestyle is absurd. So is the gas-tax holiday. (Which politician wants to tell voters on Labor Day that the holiday is over?) The pie-in-the-sky plan to turn grain into fuel came to grief, too, when we saw its disruptive effect on global grain prices and the food shortages around the world, even in the United States. In recent weeks, the rice and cooking-oil shelves in my upstate New York supermarket have been stripped clean.

So what are intelligent responses to our predicament? First, we'll have to dramatically reorganize the everyday activities of American life. We'll have to grow our food closer to home, in a manner that will require more human attention. In fact, agriculture needs to return to the center of economic life. We'll have to restore local economic networks -- the very networks that the big-box stores systematically destroyed -- made of fine-grained layers of wholesalers, middlemen and retailers.

We'll also have to occupy the landscape differently, in traditional towns, villages and small cities. Our giant metroplexes are not going to make it, and the successful places will be ones that encourage local farming.

Fixing the U.S. passenger railroad system is probably the one project we could undertake right away that would have the greatest impact on the country's oil consumption. The fact that we're not talking about it -- especially in the presidential campaign -- shows how confused we are. The airline industry is disintegrating under the enormous pressure of fuel costs. Airlines cannot fire any more employees and have already offloaded their pension obligations and outsourced their repairs. At least five small airlines have filed for bankruptcy protection in the past two months. If we don't get the passenger trains running again, Americans will be going nowhere five years from now.

We don't have time to be crybabies about this. The talk on the presidential campaign trail about "hope" has its purpose. We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it -- by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don't figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.

Coloradoans: Take Heed of Our Energy and Population Future

Filling up the Prius at the Safeway gas station in Arvada, Colorado, still costs me less than thirty dollars. The family owns two of these hybrids and an 80 mile per gallon scooter for getting around. Peak oil and overpopulation have been on my mind for the past ten years and we have planned and made decisions accordingly.

Nevertheless, I haven't posted in a few days because I have been mentally and emotionally digesting a look again at University of Colorado professor Dr. Albert Bartlett's lecture on exponential growth, population and energy. In light of recent economic developments, Bartlett's talk takes on new immediacy -- that is -- the end IS near.

Please look at the "Most Important Video You'll Ever See" below ... make sure and take a little time and view the continuing parts on YouTube. Our destiny is all there.

However, in this post I've included some other important links, news, graphs and articles. They are all corroborating evidence and analysis for the fact that there are too many people making too many demands for the Earth's resources -- a breaking point has or will soon occur.

The tragic part of this is that we've know about this problem for years now ... but we (the human species as a whole) have done almost nothing to mitigate the coming disaster. It is now too late. Though it is unfashionable, even considered impolite by some to speak plainly of our dismal future, I will certainly not indulge in 'feel good' optimism for the sake of causing anyone to remain in their state of comfortable denial.

The truth is that world population is now estimated at over 6.7 billion people, the U.S. at over 300 million -- and everyone of us wants/needs food, shelter and clothing. Shortages are occurring in the resources that provide basic necessities ... check the first link ... and we all have heard by now about insufficiency of grain supplies around the globe.

But it is oil that makes the modern world go 'round. You may have plenty of rice in Brazil but if you cannot reasonably afford to ship it to Baton Rouge because the cost of a gallon of diesel fuel is skyrocketing, then there are going to be shortages of supplies where they are needed or shortages of ability to pay.

I still believe that 'knowledge is power' which is the great value in reading and viewing the information imparted here. You will know what is really going on and what is about to happen -- your ability to make wise decisions is therefore greatly enhanced.

Whether a giant crash suddenly plunges us into the abyss or we slide slowly into the post carbon energy world, the important lesson we can take away from the Bartlett lecture and the other items posted here is that it is happening ... now.

Link: Energy Shortage Web Site

Link: The Price of a Barrel of Petroleum - Around the World

Link: Reality | Mark A. Goldman/Information Clearing House

These are interesting times. With oil trading above $100/barrel, a larger portion of our national wealth is being spent on the cost of energy.

We are very near or already at what geologists call peak oil. Peak oil is the point at which the maximum rate that oil can be extracted from the earth’s crust can only relentlessly decline from that point forward, due to geological and technological realities. Prior to peak oil it was usually possible to extract as much oil as we needed to meet growing demand while keeping prices relatively low. After peak oil it will be impossible to do that. From now on, oil will become increasingly scarce. The black gold will still be allocated according to price, but as supplies dwindle and prices increase, more and more people will become less affluent, i.e., poorer than they used to be. The age of cheap energy is over. Unfortunately, soon this will be true for all non-renewable resources as well.

This means that our economy, which runs on oil, will not be able to sustain past levels of growth indefinitely, if at all. Pundits on TV are discussing how long it’s going to take before the current recession will turn around and we come out the other side ready for the next round of growth. In my view, this recession is not going to end any time soon and without appropriate leadership it might not end in our lifetimes. The result might easily look like an economy in the middle of a very long slow motion train wreck.

If this sounds like a dire prediction, it doesn't have to be... but it very well might be. Americans, in general, seem averse to contemplating reality. Up until now it’s been easy to get away with it, for as long as energy was cheap we were all free to pursue personal interests and put most everything else out of our minds. But soon reality is going to confront us at every turn. For some, it's already happening.

For example, without cheap oil our food supply will begin to contract. American corporate agriculture runs on oil. It takes oil to prepare the earth, it takes oil to fertilize the fields, it takes oil to harvest the crops, it takes oil to kill the bugs, it takes oil to ship the produce, it takes oil to keep things cold, and it takes oil to cook our food. Meanwhile, bees are dying, bats are dying, while our oceans are being over-fished, polluted with non-biodegradable plastics, and poisoned with PCBs and other chemicals.

Now consider, the cost of fuel is not going to go down except for short-term market fluctuations. Producing energy efficient cars will help, but our oil based, combustion engine based economy, is coming to a close. Replacement technologies are not in place and it takes time to build infrastructure. The longer we delay the development of enlightened energy and transportation strategies, the longer and deeper economic dislocations will be.

A lot of people don’t have much money now and they have less credit and are less credit worthy than they used to be. We are the only industrialized nation with a zero to negative savings rate. Very few industries do not in some way depend on energy and at the same time nearly every corporation in America is committed to growing their profits at double-digit rates. There is not going to be double-digit growth in America. If significant growth occurs it will probably take place in emerging markets but only to the extent that energy allows. In the US, where citizens, government, and corporate executives are somewhat delusional, without society reinventing itself, the economy will decline or stagnate. You can argue these points with me, and I'm always open to it, but in the end, reality will settle the argument.

As corporate executives confront this reality, one can only imagine what kinds of strategies they will use to try to insure their double-digit goals. Their strategies have been evolving for a long time. Look how much effort and money they expend corrupting government policy and officials with their teams of lawyers and lobbyists. Why do they do that? Because they don’t know how to earn double-digit growth legitimately. The only way they can do it is to dip into our pockets and extract our wealth through deceit, corruption and back door government collusion.

Peak oil has been kept a corporate and government secret since 1956. We could have been planning for it all along had not a cadre of corporate and government power brokers diverted our public wealth into their self serving strategies.

So now we have some very severe problems facing us. From government we get lies, secrecy, and obfuscation to prevent what citizens might do if we only understood how we’ve all been cheated.

Officials are not stupid or uninformed… They know and accept that we are in Iraq to control resources. They knew if they had told us what they were up to in the beginning, we wouldn’t have let them get away with defacing the Constitution, murdering a million people and injuring and displacing millions more to take control of the oil. They sugar coat and lie now about almost everything they do. No matter what the politicians tell you, we are not leaving Iraq, at least not until we are sure that we will have certain unfettered access to the oil… or until we have some enlightened leadership.

It’s important to understand this: If we approach these problems with anger, fear, and knee jerk responses, we will surely make things much worse. And yet for an awful lot of people, that will be the initial response to being confronted with, and being awakened by-- reality. The problems we face are solvable. Human beings are capable of great creativity, compassion, and sacrifice. But we can’t solve problems if we are afraid to talk about them, and we can’t manifest a creative environment for developing solutions if we are afraid to tell the truth. The truth about what? In this case, the truth about everything! It should be obvious by now, that you can’t lie about some things and expect that those lies will not eventually poison or corrupt most everything else. The health and well being of every human soul is in some way dependent, interconnected and related to ever other.

We can’t arrive at optimum solutions if we are so afraid to think for ourselves and examine our preconceived ideas and accepted myths. I don’t think we will be able to find meaningful solutions to the problems we face, unless the great majority of us become willing to change our interests, our habits, and our attitudes. This is not going to be easy.

At first, very few politicians, corporate executives, or religious leaders will look kindly on the prospect of examining the delusions and myths we grew up with. In fact they will probably go to any extreme to tell you what I’m saying is just a lot of nonsense. No one who has influence and power over others will want to give it up. But make no mistake… as Dr. Barlett1 says, the problems are all going to get solved… the only question is how painful is it going to be and will these problems get solved with any semblance of compassion, justice and fairness?

If we attempt to look out only for ourselves, we can be pretty sure that’s what others will do too. And if we do that, I can assure you, the suffering will be unprecedented. We are all members of one family. We need to remember that and realize that every one of us has a stake in finding viable solutions, where no one is left out, and where no one will be asked or be required to sacrifice their basic rights or dignity.

To U.S. readers ... this chart means that we have the furthest to fall and we will have the hardest landing.


Oil Production Per Capita -- We peaked years ago by this metric.
With greater energy demands coming from growing populations and economies in China and India,
the impact of this reality is enormous.

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The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See
By Dr. Albert Bartlett

Click on the YouTube link to get to the next parts of this lecture.

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Link: Is Oil Headed for $200? | Calgary Herald

Twenty short weeks ago, the world was struggling to digest the idea of $100 US oil.

Today, with oil prices breaching new records almost daily, even ordinarily circumspect soothsayers are talking about the prospect of a super price spike that could cause a run to $200 -- a concept that would have been virtually unthinkable 12 months ago.

And when some of the finest economic minds on the continent -- people like Daniel Yergin, Matthew Simmons and Jeff Rubin -- are willing to openly discuss the permutations and ramifications of life in the shadow of $200 oil, it's hard not to think that a scenario that was once a pipe dream may actually be on the horizon.

After a week in which oil prices set new records daily while passing through two so-called psychological barriers -- $120 and $125 -- before settling in at $125.96 Friday, it's easy to see why the oil bulls are running wild and the bears are nowhere to be found.

"Oil will go through $200 like a hot knife through butter," insisted Simmons, the chairman of investment bank Simmons and Co. International and one of the main champions of the controversial "peak oil" theory, which holds that virtually all of the significant oil pools we are likely to discover have already been found.

Rubin, the outspoken chief economist at CIBC World Markets, has gone so far as to predict oil prices will average $225 a barrel by 2012. Two weeks ago, when he made that call, there were more than a few sniggers around the investment community.
Nobody is laughing today. Since the start of 2008, the price of oil has jumped 25 per cent. Year over year, it has more than doubled.

Not surprisingly given those statistics, oilpatch stocks were also on a tear all week, setting records of their own and pushing the TSX energy index to a year-to- date high of 3941.11 before falling back to end the week at 3922.55.

That oilpatch bellwethers like Canadian Natural Resources Ltd., EnCana Corp. and Suncor Energy Inc. have been rolling out record or near-record first-quarter earnings, and reports that show them to be awash in cash, has only helped fuel the buying frenzy.

Ditto for natural gas prices, up more than 50 per cent since the start of the year and threatening to revisit record highs of their own should summer demand reach anticipated levels. That's a scenario that would produce a so-called "perfect storm" for companies like Canadian Natural, which is heavily gas leveraged but has substantial oil interests and is poised to bring its Horizon oilsands project on stream this summer.
Even unprecedented gasoline pump prices across North America -- not to mention soaring jet fuel and diesel prices -- have been unable to put a damper on the Black Gold Rush of 2008.

Nor, more importantly, have they yet caused consumers to dramatically change their behaviour.

At some point that will happen, insists Yergin, chairman of the prestigious Cambridge Energy Research Associates and one of the most respected energy analysts on the continent.

"Price really matters," Yergin told reporters last week. "It doesn't happen overnight but the laws of economics have not been abolished."

His point is well taken. But clearly, we haven't reached that point -- and hence the renewed conjecture about $200 oil.

Ironically, as OPEC secretary general Abdalla Salem El-Badiri reiterated again last week, there is no shortage of oil in the world.

Nor is there any reason for OPEC, which produces 40 per cent of the world's petroleum, to increase production levels, in spite of U.S. President George W. Bush's promise he will once again ask cartel members to up their output -- a silly political gambit that ignores OPEC's own repeated admissions that it can no longer move global markets or prices at will.

What there is, however, is a widespread fear that geopolitical instabilities could disrupt the flow of oil to consuming nations at any time.

Consider the evidence: Nigeria, the 11th largest oil producer in the world, is in a state of loose anarchy. Iraq, with the fourth-largest reserves in the world, is a war zone. Iran, third-largest reserves in the world, is a powder keg. Venezuela, second most important supplier to the United States after Canada, is at war with international oil companies.

Add in the unfettered consumption of oil by China, India and an emerging Middle East economic bloc, and it becomes apparent that the global dynamics of oil supply and demand are in the midst of an unprecedented restructuring.

As ARC Financial senior economist Peter Tertzakian likes to say, when it comes to oil consumption in the aforementioned countries, their leaders are not going to be able to put the genie back in the bottle.

In other words, don't expect a fall-off in the global demand for oil in the months and weeks ahead.

Ultimately, as Yergin argues, when oil prices get high enough, there will be a shift to alternative fuel sources.

But as we've also seen in recent weeks, global shortages in basic foodstuffs caused by the sudden reallocation of agricultural production to biofuels underscores the complications of any widespread move away from oil.

It also serves as a pointed reminder that any meaningful attempt to replace oil as a primary source of energy in the developed world will not happen overnight. In fact, most observers agree it will occur only after an entrenched period of high prices convinces investors that a new world energy (pecking) order must be established.

That equation has not gone unnoticed by global investment fund managers who, knowing a good bet when they see it and anxious to make up for the impact of the devaluation of the U.S. dollar on their portfolios over the past year, are one of the primary forces behind oil's meteoric rise to record heights.

Do all of those considerations pave the way for a run to $200 oil?
The jury is still out. But the betting is heavy that oil prices will almost certainly go markedly higher before they settle or, dare we say it, perhaps even fall back.

© The Calgary Herald 2008

Consequences of Colorado Sprawl

When I was running for Arvada city council in the 1990s, one of my main themes was that the "irrational exuberence" of local government and homebuilders clearing land for new suburban subdivisions everywhere would eventually lead to a decline in the quality of our lives.

I proposed that in Arvada's case we needed to slow down, give more consideration to the environment, and understand the consequences of sprawl on future city services. Of course, the homebuilder's political action committees funded my opponents with thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to stop my notions from ever actually being considered as part of official city council deliberations. (And, then as now, I refused to take campaign contributions from corporate special interests.)

The analysis below by nationally-known social commentator, Jim Kunstler, expresses in a very literate and nearly poetic way, the consequences of suburban sprawl -- to us as a non-existent community and to us economically.

The inability of the city administration of Arvada to effectively deal with the recent snow storms is a prime example of too many houses, too many cars, and too many streets demanding service that the government just cannot provide -- logistically or financially.

In Arvada, I suspect, we have started to see the end of the 'ponzi' scheme of new building fees paying for the services of the houses just built last year. The house building splurge is over and now the residents will have to deal with the results of reckless and irresponsible decisions made by greedy politicians -- who will soon be term-limited out of office.

It will all be somebody else's problem.

Link: Housing Fetish | Jim Kunstler

Martha Stewart was not an accident of history. She came along in the late 20th century as a kind of spirit guide to a society whose bad choices and misinvestments had led to the wholesale destruction of any place in America that people called home. And by this I mean the towns, neighborhoods, and city districts of our land, not just the individual dwellings.

By the 1980s, America had been converted, with monstrous efficiency, into what I have called a geography of nowhere, a panorama of identical highway strips, malls, big box warehouses, fried food out-parcels, and free parking wastelands -- all serving the endless new subdivision pods of single family houses. The ultimate result was a landscape full of places no longer worth caring about.

The program was carried out ruthlessly by big corporations and their hand-maidens, the road-builders, the house-builders, and the brotherhood of traffic engineers, but it was fully supported by the public at large and their elected local officials on the planning and zoning boards. It was both an "emergent" economic ecology -- a systemic response to decades of cheap oil and favorable geopolitics -- and a consciously mapped-out attempt to create a kind of Utopia, in this case a suburban Utopia of Happy Motoring. Whatever it was, nothing like it had ever been seen before.

It had many consequences but one of the worst was the impoverishment of public space. From the social point-of-view, it turned out that housing pods and highway strips lined with strip malls were a poor substitute for main street towns or walkable neighborhoods. Under the insane dictates of single-use zoning, each individual was trapped in a car for hours each day, often in vexing traffic with other isolated individuals, and also often in the company of little children with a low tolerance to being trapped and vexed. Older children lacking drivers' licenses lost access to other social realms beyond the subdivision of houses. The adventurous ones assembled in the bosky berms between the WalMarts and the KMarts to smoke a variety of drugs, worship Satan, and torture kitty cats. The rest were relegated to the room at home with the one-eyed-monster, the television.

The case was not much better for the adults. By the 1980s, both parents had to be out of the house generating income to pay the mortgage and especially to pay for the multiple cars needed to service the family headquarters. Mom went to work not because Betty Friedan said that actuarial science was more fun than managing a house, but because wages were stagnant and Dad could no longer make the family's ends meet.

Out of this sad and desperate circumstance, Martha Stewart arose. The promise of Stewartism was that if the public realm was now inaccessible or meaningless, then one should make the most of the private realm. This was accepted as self-evident by enough people to make Martha extremely wealthy. Luckily for Martha, her job was at home. She didn't have to drive thirty-eight miles to a cubicle in the billing office of Ramjack Medical and spend eight hours each day minutely examining spreadsheets on a computer monitor.

As her wealth and success increased, Martha's resources for doing things in and around the house enabled her to spin a fantasy of uber-homemaking that America found irresistible -- despite the fact that everyone else spent so much time away from the house that it was nearly impossible for them to emulate the goddess of hearth and home. Instead, they devoured her many publications and TV shows, finding consolation in all the beautifully portrayed scenes of Martha enacting the fantasy for them.

History is full of ironies and paradoxes, and one of them is that this avatar of home-making was relentlessly hunted down by federal prosecutors for allegedly scamming $40,000 on an insider stock sale, while true major league corporate CEO grifters walked off legally into their golden sunsets with hundreds of millions in back-dated stock options and other booty winkled out of feckless boards of directors.

It is also an ironic coincidence that at the exact time Martha Stewart went off to jail, the American home fantasy went totally off the rails. The systematic shut-down of America's manufacturing sector led policy-makers to insidiously try to replace it with a hyped-up housing industry. They kicked off the program by dropping the prime interest rate as close to zero as possible, making money extremely cheap to borrow. Everybody need a home, the logic went, including those who ordinarily wouldn't have qualified for regular mortgages that required substantial down payments, proof of employment, and other formalities. So the answer was to engineer a financing modality that would allow anyone to buy a house -- and thereby ramp up the "homebuilding" industry into super-hyper-turbo-overdrive, which would incidentally generate even more potential house-buyers among the many framers, trimmers, plumbers, electricians, painters, real estate agents, and sellers of Corian countertops, who made good wages or commissions on delivering the "product." Meanwhile, the new housing pods in evermore remote locations, where there were no towns, could be accessorized with all the requisite service infrastructure -- new highways, strip malls, Pizza Huts, WalMarts, Best Buys, and video rental joints, all of which had to be built by somebody, making for additional contracts, incomes, and potential house-buyers.

Meanwhile the financial wizards "innovated" methods for dispersing the risk associated with iffy loans (made to people with poor prospects for repayment) by bundling the mortgages into odd-lots and repackaging them as tradable securities, which could be used to "leverage" other finance "plays" yet more exotically abstracted from the actual making-and-selling real things of value. At the same time, the wizards converted the mortgage insurance business into a casino of swappable risk, materializing more fees and profits for themselves out of thin air.

This extremely complex racket worked well for a brief period of time, namely the period when the price of houses steadily increased, year after year, promoting the expectation that rising house "equity" was a permanent condition of life, and that the dependable annual increase in value could be "put to work" in the form of borrowing more money against it. The supposed increase in value protected those trafficking in swappable risk, since increased value banished the risk of loss, and the notion of moral hazard disappeared into the dumpster of history.

The whole racket floundered when several things changed or went awry. One was the sheer saturation of markets. Sooner or later, everybody who might possibly buy a house, got a house. The racket had had the perverse effect of stealing demand from the future by making house-buyers of those who were not really ready to buy -- e.g. very young adults with no savings or people with bad credit records. And not every immigrant from Bangladesh, El Salvador, or the Central African Republic could be positioned as a house buyer -- even under the now nearly nonexistent lending standards.

The next thing that went wrong was affordability. If absolutely everybody's house rose ten percent in value every year for years and years -- including every "pre-owned" raised ranch shitbox -- then sooner or later every house in America would cost at least half a million dollars. And with wages stagnant among the 90 percent who worked outside the financial services industry, sooner or later no house would be affordable to that 90 percent majority under even the most supernaturally lax lending provisions.

The final problem would come when central bankers had to raise interest rates so that customers for debt would accept the risk of investing in a national economy that was increasingly seen to be based on the engineering of modalities to get something for nothing.

This is the point we're at now. The whole system was greatly underwritten by the final peaking of available energy, chiefly oil, which made it possible in the first place to sell so much real estate in the farthest-flung outlands of the American landscape, including not only desert and swamp, but also prime farmland. The housing bubble began to collapse at exactly the moment that the world reached its all-time oil production peak: the summer of 2005.

Now the house market is both saturated and wildly mis-valued. Most of the new houses were built in places that will be logistically unfavorable as motoring becomes less affordable. Many of them are too large to heat as home heating becomes less affordable. The houses are overpriced. Those who must sell must drop their prices. Many such sellers will have to sell for less than the obligations still owed on their houses. The speculators have necessarily fallen by the wayside, because speculation is not possible in a falling market. Those who expected to sell old houses in older places for a half a million dollars or more to buy new houses in new places will have to stay put. As prices fall, the few potential buyers still left will step back in anticipation of further price drops. This "death spiral" will be self-reinforcing and take years to play out. As it occurs, many of the creatively-engineered contracts will be welshed on. Lenders will choke on "non-performing" mortgages. Mortgage-backed securities will lose their credibility and turn into junk or worse (worse-than-junk being certificates with no value whatsoever, not even pennies on the dollar). Bets, plays, leverages, positions, and hedges based on the idea that all these loans would continue performing will be wiped out.

The final result will be a dashed American Dream -- of a safe life in a happy home. Poor Martha Stewart will be seen as the goddess who failed. Well, she already has, really, having gone to prison and afterward retreated into her omnimedia fortress of corporate refuge (basically joining the enemy). As the middle class chokes and gets crushed under the weight of its unpayable debts and falling standards of living, Martha may be lucky to avoid getting eaten, along with a long list of other celebrity porkchops that an angry and grievance-filled public will turn on.

Finally, the idea that people could live happily ever after in "homes" devoid of any larger community context, or reality-based economic context, will fail. Perhaps we will even stop calling houses "homes" -- as we have been conditioned to do by the realtors hoping to manipulate all our subconscious desires for safety, familiarity, and order in this world of chaos and sorrow.

Chandler Supports Global Warming Awareness

Yesterday, Colorado 7th district Congressional candidate, Dave Chandler, joined over 100 local citizens each holding blue umbrellas to create a giant aerial S.O.S image and call for local Congressional action to, “Save Our Snow!” and stop global warming.

The photo gathering was held to highlight Global Warming International Day of Action.

With 19 of Colorado’s 20 hottest years occurring in the last quarter century, hotter and drier summers and decreasing mountain snow pack have become harsh realities for Colorado. Scientific evidence indicates that these trends correlate with the more pronounced weather extremes directly associated with global warming.

The event was held yesterday at Parfet Park in downtown Golden.

More information on Global Warmimng Awareness at www.ProjectHotSeat.org

UPDATE! Aerial photo of participants with blue umbrellas spelling out "Save Our Snow".

PHOTOS BELOW
1) Dave with polar bear.
2) Dave Chandler address the gathering about his pledge and commitment to deal with global warming.
3) Hannah Chandler, Dave's daughter, expresses her commitment to the Earth's environment, too.

Fearmongering, A Lobbyist and Perlmutter

For Immediate Release
September 26, 2006

Chandler Charges Perlmutter With Fearmongering

(Arvada) - Seventh Congressional District candidate, Dave Chandler, today called upon Democrat Ed Perlmutter to “stop the fearmongering” over the Deer Trails hazardous waste landfill near the town of Last Chance in Adams County.

“Perlmutter is way out of bounds with his rhetoric when he talks about ‘dumping of nuclear waste’ and ensuring ‘that the 7th District does not become a radioactive sacrifice zone’,” charged Chandler.

Perlmutter made those claims in a press release issued last week and in a recently run television ad.

Chandler, himself, toured the Deer Trail hazardous waste landfill owned by Clean Harbors Environmental Services, Inc., last Tuesday.

“This landfill is now licensed to accept waste products like the sludge from the treatment of some of our drinking water that has very small amounts of radioactivity,” said Chandler. “They can accept nothing that measures over 2000 picocuries -- a picocurie is a trillionth of a curie -- not much more than the normal background radiation that we all live with every day.”

“That hardly deserves conjuring up fearful images of burying nuclear power plant fuel rods in Adams County,” said Chandler. “What Ed is saying is clearly deceptive and seems to be meant to scare people. He should stop it right now.”

Chandler said that it is particularly interesting that a lobbyist, Charles N. Malick, specifically mentioned as a supporter on the Perlmutter web site, has been retained by American Ecology, a competitor of Clean Harbors based in Idaho.

“That looks like a lot of influence from a lobbyist on this issue,” said Chandler. “We need a member of Congress for this district that does not appear to be so easily swayed.”

Chandler said that the responsible environmental position is that we must accept the consequences of our daily activities that produce hazardous waste.

“'Out of sight, out of mind' is not progressive environmental policy,” said Chandler who is running on the Green Party ticket. “We all drink water, we all use electricity generated from burning coal that produces low level radioactive bottom ash. It isn’t responsible to think that such inconvenient by-products of our modern lives should all be shipped out of state.”

Chandler says that if he is elected to the U.S. House of Representatives for the 7th Congressional District, he will always look to protect the health and environmental safety of area residents. He also said that because he will reject any and all gifts, honorariums, junkets and campaign contributions from lobbyists, he will be able to put the best interests of the citizens of the 7th district first.

Contact:

Dave Chandler

303-424-9897
[email protected]

Action Needed on Global Warming

Global warming is real and we must take it seriously.

Every month or so, a new study is released that says scientists are surprised at how quickly the global warming phenomena is happening.

The news report linked to below is just the latest to provide us with important information about the impacts of global warming.

There are large, worldwide and national actions that can be taken to mitigate the effects of global climate change. The United States should sign-on to the Kyoto Accords, for instance. We need to have renewed international discussions about the impact of the growing human population on this planet. We also should initiate talks and research into the 'Peak Oil' phenomenon and what consequence there may be on us and on the global environment of diminishing sources of 'cheap' petroleum.

In our country, I am supportive of mandating the there be increased fuel efficiency for all new cars sold in America. This is important because a legal requirement equalizes the marketplace for all automobile manufactures. It is entirely possible that simply by increasing miles per gallon by ten percent, our reliance on Middle Eastern oil can be significantly decreased. The other benefit to this course of action is the emission of less carbon per mile -- contributing to less greenhouse gases being placed into the atmosphere.

As the owners of two Toyota Prius hybrid cars and a scooter for short trips, our family can testify that it is not necessary to have any particularly noticable change in one's quality of life by using more fuel efficient vehicles.

I support efforts like the Apollo Alliance and would be in favor of significant and substantial increases in funding for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), headquartered in Golden, to move us forward quickly to energy independence and start ending our reliance on fossil fuels. The day will come in the not so distant future when we will need alternative energy sources to fuel our economy -- the sooner we make a major, top priority commitment to this effort, the better off we all will be.

For Colorado (and the nation), I would also be supportive of 'emissions caps and trading' as a market oriented approach to achieving reductions in the release of carbon dioxide by business and industry. Legislation to implement this kind of program was just recently passed in California.

Finally, we can all do our small but important part in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases set lose into the environment by conserving our use of energy. Our family replaced almost every regular incandescent light bulb in our home years ago with energy efficient fluorescent bulbs -- and we have hardly noticed any difference in quality of lighting of our home. These light bulbs use "66% less energy than a standard incandescent bulb and last up to 10 times longer." And ... that means a bit less coal is burned and a bit less carbon dioxide is emitted into the atmosphere.

If I am elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, protection of our environment will always be very important ... because this wonderful state of Colorado and this beautiful planet is where we live -- the condition and health of our natural environment determines how well we and our posterity live and thrive.

Link: Scientists Find New Global Warming 'Time Bomb’ | Associated Press

Global warming gases trapped in the soil are bubbling out of the thawing permafrost in amounts far higher than previously thought and may trigger what researchers warn is a climate time bomb.

Methane - a greenhouse gas 23 times more powerful than carbon dioxide - is being released from the permafrost at a rate five times faster than thought, according to a study being published today in the journal Nature. The findings are based on new, more accurate measuring techniques.

‘‘The effects can be huge,’’ said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks said. ‘‘It’s coming out a lot and there’s a lot more to come out.’’

Scientists worry about a global warming vicious cycle that was not part of their already gloomy climate forecast: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.

‘‘The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle,’’ said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who was not part of the study. ‘‘That’s the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off.’’ ...

Local Global Warming News

The seriousness of the global warming issue can hardly be overstated. The reality of this event is self-evident. It took hundreds of millions of years for fossil fuels to accumulate in the Earth, yet humans have burned massive amounts of those resources in just the past 150 years. Common sense tells you that this kind of 'sudden' release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will have significant consequences.

There have indeed been many, many good things for humanity that have come about because we have been able to utilize this energy source, but there is clearly also a problem side. We are seeing that side manifest itself now in pollution and global warming.

If I am elected to the Congress, one of my top priorities will be to deal positively with energy and global warming issues. One of the first things we can do is mandate greater fuel efficiency from automobiles -- that should help with gasoline prices as well.

Then, of course, we must immediately start a crash program to create and use alternative non-carbon-based energy sources.

As a Green member of Congress, I will be uniquely positioned to advocate for needed cultural, governmental and technological changes to help us survive global warming -- because I will not be obligated to any special interest group. Greens do not take corporate PAC money and we limit the size of the contributions we do take. My only duty, therefore, if elected, will be to do what is in the best interests of ALL the people.

Link: Record Levels of Carbon Dioxide | Rocky Mountain News

Atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, the gas largely blamed for global warming, have hit record highs and appear to be rising at an accelerating rate, a Boulder scientist said Thursday.

Each year the burning of fossil fuels pumps more than 7 billion tons of carbon into the air in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas, or CO2 .

The preindustrial carbon dioxide level was 278 parts per million. The current concentration just hit a record 381 ppm, said Pieter Tans, an atmospheric scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Boulder. That's a 37 percent increase. ...

"It appears to be accelerating," Tans said of the atmospheric CO2 buildup.

He will present his findings Wednesday at a meeting of atmospheric scientists in Boulder.

"What we're seeing in the atmosphere reflects the fact that we're burning more fossil fuel and we're burning it faster," said NOAA atmospheric scientist Russell Schnell.