[lit-ideas] Re: WSJ -- Ode to Oil -- thoughts?

'Will the world work together in mutual self-interest to "reshape the battlefield"?'
That's wholly different ballgame (if I can be alowed to change metaphors). Bush attempted to justify Iraq on the basis that Saddam represented a global threat. That Saddam might have wanted to is a long way from whether he would have been able to. Converesely, Hitler, without sufficient oil supplies, represented a global threat that brought the world (or a large majority of it) together.
There are many independent thinkers in the world that would argue for the US as the one malevolent threat combining oil resources and military might, that may well invoke child indoctrination (if the religious fundamentalists have their way), but which doesn't need to be sold anything.
Will Obama change perceptions (because it's perceptions that count for the most in the wider world)? To be honest I have doubts that he can and would. Despite the movement he has created, I believe him to be a centrist operating securely within the framework of a two-party system backed by global economic interests. He'll tinker and probably tinker well, but not much more. 

I'll be very happy to be proved wrong.

Cheers

Simon
----- Original Message ----- From: "Eric Yost" <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx> 
To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, November 30, 2008 7:40 PM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: WSJ -- Ode to Oil -- thoughts?



>>the US is often the worst culprit and will seek to
re-shape the battlefield and dislodge the players for its own ends.
In the fullness of time, the US will no doubt lose its "worst culprit" status and the world will have a new Worst Culprit. The claim about the US is merely that it is for the moment the most powerful of the players, and therefore capable of worst culpriting in energy-based havoc. 

Our bad. Someone else's bad later.*
Wind generators are great. In the 1980s, my father used to have an orchard in the Pennsylvania countryside. One of his neighbors had a wind generator. That guy powered his farm with wind power and sold the excess electricity to the utility company. Back then, the law forced utility companies to purchase excess electrical production. Sometime during Clinton's reign, lobby groups managed to overturn that law. Now -- or at least the last time I investigated -- utilities are not obliged to purchase an individual's excess production. Let's see if Lama Obama reverses that bad law. 


Eric

_____
* Post-Iraq, what if ages hence the world faces a truly malevolent nation that combines great oil resources with great military might? Some countries of the Middle East already have all sorts of child-indoctrination techniques already in play -- children educated in martyrdom and the need to exterminate all Jews, little cub scouts of jihad and religious war to the end. Plus there will always be nations and groups willing to sell weaponry to these totalitarian regimes. What then? Will the world work together in mutual self-interest to "reshape the battlefield"? 
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