Petey's
Pipeline E-zine
Issue #16
October 3, 2005
Contents
Business
First Editorial A Peek at Peak Oil
Random Ramblings and Miscellaneous Musings
Sane Fiscal Policy or Grand Delusion?
Write Thinking Understanding
Context
Business
First (Editorial)
A Peek at Peak Oil
You've
probably heard about "peak oil;" it's been in the
news, often, as of late. But what is peak oil? And how will
peak oil affect your business?
Peak
oil does not mean that oil supplies will soon be gone, it only
means that oil production has peaked, that there are no new
oil reserves of significant size waiting to be discovered. It
also means that "easy" oil has already been extracted
and that from this point on, pumping crude out of the ground
will be both more difficult and more expensive.
As
oil supplies dwindle, and production tapers off, demand for
oil will continue to rise, at least for the short term, driving
prices upward. Gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, heating oil,
and all products that derive from petroleum, or depend on petroleum
for their manufacture or delivery, are going to cost more in
the future, inflation notwithstanding. It's safe to say that
no business will be unaffected by higher energy costs.
The
transition from fossil fuels to biomass fuels and other renewable
energy resources won't be totally painless, but that doesn't
mean the pain has to be so great that it paralyzes the global
economy. With a myriad of options available, one's choice (or,
more likely, combination of choices) of energy to power business,
household and transportation systems will be dictated by climate,
geology and geography as much as by anything else. It all boils
down to practicality and affordability.
So
where is the energy crisis? Perhaps there isn't one. It's possible
that what appears to be a major energy crisis looming on the
horizon will turn out to be nothing more serious than a minor
pain in the ass. One thing's for certain; whatever pain an energy
crunch delivers, it will deliver more generously to those that
are ill prepared or unprepared.
Now
is the time to plan and prepare for the aftermath of an energy
crisis. Become an adept at adapting and adopting; adapt
to changing circumstances by adopting new (or old) methods and
new (or old) technologies. Don't let a critical thinking skills
crisis or a lack of imagination crisis compound the effects
of what may or may not be an energy crisis.
Copyright
© 2005 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
Random
Ramblings & Miscellaneous Musings
Sane Fiscal Policy or Grand Delusion?
by Phil Hanson
A
sustainable economy and sustainable culture go hand in hand.
It's impossible to have one without the other. That the U.S.
economy (and, by association, the global economy) is a house
of glass attached to a framework of cards secured to a foundation
of quicksand overlaying a substrata of greed and deception supported
by an abundance of ignorance and self-delusion is about to become
apparent.
That's
crazy, you say. Damned right it is, and it just keeps getting
crazier. U.S. fiscal, economic and social policies are so far
out of sync with reality that one wonders if they can stand
side by side on the same planet. In truth, they can't, for long.
A
ballooning federal budget deficit enters the neighborhood of
$800 billion. The Bush administration compensates by raising
the spending limit to $1.3 trillion. Yeah, like that's really
going to help.
And
what about the ballooning national debt? It's at near-record
levels, now, if it hasn't already exceeded them. How much longer
can we expect other nations, primarily China and Japan, to pick
up our runaway tab? What shall we do when our creditors demand
payment in full, plus interest?
How
many wars can our overextended military fight at one time? I
have a feeling we're about to find out. Technically, we're still
at war with Korea; our troops are occupied in Afghanistan, and
occupying Iraq. If Iran persists in acquiring nuclear energy
(it takes only a small leap of the imagination to picture Iran
with weapons of mass destruction, probably the same ones we
couldn't find in Iraq) we'll soon be at war with them, too.
And don't let's forget about Hugo Chavez and the sovereign nation
of Venezuela, from whom we get about 20 percent of our oil.
With right-wing extremists making overt threats and possibly
taking covert action against Chavez, it seems entirely feasible
that Chavez could retaliate by turning off the tap. In that
case, we'd have to invade Venezuela, too, to liberate our
oil.
Then,
there are multitudes of domestic issues that place the economy
in further jeopardy. Consumer debt is at an all-time high, unemployment
(post-Katrina/Rita) is once again on the rise, and the percentage
of Americans living at or below the poverty line increased from
11.3 percent, in 2000, to 12.7 percent, in 2004. I know a measly
1.4 percent doesn't sound like much, but, assuming a total population
of 300 million, it works out to 4.2 million people—a substantial
number any way you want to count it.
Some
40 million working Americans don't have medical insurance or
access to affordable health care. A favorite tactic of unscrupulous
companies, retailers in particular, is to hire an excess of
part-time employees, lay off full-time employees, then hire
them back as part-timers, working them just enough hours to
disqualify them from unemployment benefits, but not enough hours
that they qualify for medical and dental benefits.
American
companies routinely send jobs overseas, where labor costs are
low and environmental laws are few. As lucrative manufacturing
and high-tech jobs move away, it's a race to the bottom as disenfranchised,
displaced workers compete with less-skilled workers for lower-paying
jobs in the service sector. The whole process is reminiscent
of "bump day" at the Indy 500, where the less qualified
continually move toward the back of the field until they're
no longer in the race.
A
shortage of living-wage jobs and increasing real estate prices
team up to swell the legions of homeless. It may well be impossible
to get an accurate count of the number of homeless people in
the U.S., but one thing is certain; the real estate bubble has
added to the numbers. The inevitable bursting of the real estate
bubble will only add to the misery.
Of
the myriad problems signifying an economy on the brink of catastrophic
collapse, these are the most noticeable; less apparent problems
also add their weight to the collective, making it extremely
unlikely that economic meltdown can be averted.
Sadly,
but also justifiably, American citizens are about to reap the
hurricane of American profligacy. One can only hope that those
who build a new economy atop the rubble of the old fully understand
the meanings of "economy" and "sustainable."
Copyright
© 2005 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
Write
Thinking
Understanding
Context
Context
refers to the parts of any piece of writing that precede or
follow a word or passage and significantly affect its meaning.
Without context, there is no cohesion, no continuity, no coherence;
writing becomes a meaningless collection of disjointed thoughts
whose only purpose is to confuse the reader.
Nothing
destroys the context of an article or story more effectively
than do sound-alike words that have different spellings and
different meanings than the intended words. Here's an (extreme)
example:
The
pour trucker rowed his breaks all the weigh from the summit
of pikes peek to the bottom.
Fortunately,
there's enough information contained in the sentence so that
we can infer its meaning and put it in context. Rewritten correctly,
our sentence reads:
The
poor trucker rode his brakes all the way from the summit of
Pike's Peak to the bottom.
With
the elements of the sentence now in context, the sentence makes
sense.
Words
of warning: When you use wrong words that are spelled correctly,
a word processor's spell checker won't catch the mistakes. Only
a knowledgeable human editor or proofreader can do that.
Sometimes
an error gets by because of an editor's oversight, or the untimely
blink of a proofreader's eye. A rare typo is easy to overlook.
But when the same people make the same errors time after time,
their writing and publishing efforts take on an aura of incompetence.
As
writers and editors we can—we must—do better than
that. It's our responsibility to make sure we're saying exactly
what we think we're saying. Knowing the meanings of the words
we use and how to spell those words are good ways to start.
Copyright
© 2005 by Phil Hanson
All rights reserved.
