..and the Robo/ExtraEconomy
Tensions are rising around the world, between Japan and China, the US, Russia and Europe over Ukraine. Most fights we have seen recently can easily be explained in terms of oil and gas ambitions or dependencies.Everyone with oil or gas should share it with the world according to the US, the world of the Petrodollar where the US can always buy it by printing money (as it does copiously today). Anyone that refuses to deliver will face war, because they are implicitly demonstrating they are not allies of the US (as bush said, “you’re either with us, or against us”). This bellicose strategy however has its limits. It ultimately drives up tension amongst all competing parties that vie for strategic oil reserves, until something snaps. And then Armageddon, or so it appears..
A nice aspect of a increasingly carbon fuel starved world is that it’s very hard to fight world wars in it. The logistics become complex and vulnerable, there is no way to sustain the presence without a steady supply of a liquid energy source like oil. Today already the US depends on sources that can be easily pinpointed, considering development of pipelines and gas terminals that can be bombed out of existence in no time.
Gas guzzling hummers
As Rommel asserted in WO II, without oil armies can’t fight. If the oil runs out or becomes hard to come by the armies will turn into piles of useless steel hulks, Industrial warfare evolved because of and depends totally on fossil fuel.
The bravest men can do nothing without guns, the guns nothing without plenty of ammunition, and neither guns nor ammunition are of much use in mobile warfare unless there are vehicles with sufficient petrol to haul them around.” Rommel
All armies have been looking for alternatives. Germans had synthetic oil, and many options have been invented since then. Recently Jetful made from solar-split CO2 and H20 was announced, as was making various hydrocarbons from seawater and electricity (either solar or nuclear perhaps).
“The Army is looking to generate 2.1 million megawatt-hours of renewable energy a year from projects on its millions of acres of land in the United States”(source)
“Scientists at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory are developing a process to extract carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce hydrogen gas (H2) from seawater, subsequently catalytically converting the CO2 and H2 into jet fuel by a gas-to-liquids process.” (source)
The irony of this development is that armies are not realizing there is no need for war if one maximized the use of renewables, because there is plenty of energy to be harvested. So much it can enable a recycling of raw materials that makes supplies less necessary and so it removes the need to ‘rob’ fertile or rich territories abroad. Only if China f.i. had the ambition to populate the US or Europe there’d be a reason to fight, but that doesn’t seems very likely. Onceresistance by oil dependent banks and politicians is borken there will be an obvious alternative to fighting over fossil fuels : Move beyond them.
Global Standdown
It appears that any leader that sees through the financial bruha and understands the temporary nature of any victory and the level of destruction (and waste) the ultimate battle over fossil fuels would involve, will favor a global standdown of all large armies, missile systems, naval vessels and subs (of course this will sound simplistic to the average Janes addict ). The idea is simple, the enemy is not in Iran or North Korea, it’s at the gasstation. It’s not in China, it’s in the coal fired power plant. It’s the fossil energy we depend on, that was like manna from heaven. It is the people that hand us that manna (the bankes by issuing credit) that can’t seen to shake off their messianic syndrome, as in reality they lead the world into a new Holocaust (which means sacrifice by fire). I-ron-y.
Loyd Blankfien of Goldman Sachs : “We do gods work”, but he is a Holocaust enabler.
Steps toward a global standdown would involve secret communication amongst all armies, culmination in a moment where all announce they won’t go to war against anyone anymore, but will only work to protect those who will bring the transition and ecorestauration about. Even be a small but superior alliance could achieve this, of f.i, de BRIC (Brazil Russia India China and South Africa).
Nuclear weapons have been used as fuel in nuclear power plants since Reagan made a deal with Gorbatchov. We’re not for nucear, but we are for the removal of the weapons. Can you buy off the use of a warhead with the wealth it generates in a nuclear power plant?
All fossil fuel sources will need to be brought under control of one authority, and used according to the most effective climate strategy (which means use as little as possible and stop once enough renewable capacity is reached). Any straglers would quicly find themselves outgunned and outfueled and defeated. Thus the central authority would create a shared fate between all people on earth. All industries depending on oil, including agriculture, would find themselves struggling to exist in the high carbon intensity fashion of today.
Shell is delusional
The standdown would present hardships for many, but not comparable to the ravages of a nuclear world war. It would create two types of economies, one free, the roboeconomy, and one run like an enterise, an extraeconomy. The old economic system would be collapsed as far as possible to save emissions and fuel for climate action. Why collapse? Becuase normal economics is 100% dependent on fossil fuels.
Extra/Robo economics
We write about ExtraEconomics and RoboEconomics elsewhere. Under the global protective command the world would know its direction and it would experience increasing wealth as renewable energy sources where brought online. Wealth beyond that affordable with fossil fuels. The theoretical potential on land is already 2250 times what we use today. The economy would have to use different principles, which we outline in other posts. The RoboEconomy would be the free high tech eco restoration oriented economy, which would resemble our current one for centralized energy sources, and a new one for owned renewable sources. The ExtraEconomies would be territories out of contact with the global market, soley dedicated to carbon capture and storage or ecorestauration.
So : Swords to plowshares, implying the restoration of farm production instead of looting (and burning it) with the sword.
Links to RoboEconomics and ExtraEconomics follow..
The Control Paradox and the Global Standdown
The Global Standdown or How each of us knows what it takes to be a Messiah