I didn’t know that Alex Kapranos studied theology at university.
Wonderful.
Some say you’re trouble, boy
Just because you like to destroy
All the things that bring the idiots joy –
Well, what’s wrong with a little destruction?
And the Kunst[?] won’t talk to you
Because you kissed St Rollo Adieu
Because you robbed a supermarket or two
Well, who gives a damn about the prophets of Tesco?
That last line might be ‘profits’ of Tesco of course…
Tesco want to build a ‘Tesco Express’ store at 1 Barfield Road. On the face of it this doesn’t seem too terrible. Let the competition commence! If Tesco can provide cheaper food to the residents of Mersea – and the residents of Mersea prefer that cheaper food to what the other local stores can provide, then so be it. It’s merely reflecting what the people want, isn’t it?
Well, there are certain assumptions embedded in that line of argument, and in this article I would like to tease out what I think is the most important, and why allowing Tesco to set up shop in Barfield Road would be a remarkably short-sighted and damaging decision. The story takes me via Burgan oilfield, in Kuwait.
Burgan is the second largest oilfield in the world. Two months ago the Kuwaiti authorities announced that it had passed ‘peak’ – in other words, the rate of extraction from the field had reached its limit, and would now go into decline.
This is what happens with an oilfield. When the field is discovered, the oil flows easily. Extraction builds up to a ‘peak’, and it then declines – the oil becoming harder and harder to extract – until the field is exhausted. This also applies to the amount of oil available on a world-wide scale – it will be extracted easily to begin with; it will build to a ‘peak’; and then it will decline.
But isn’t there lots of oil left? No. There isn’t as much oil as we have been told, and the issue isn’t about running out of oil so much as the consequences of a decline in production.
Official figures tell us that there is plenty of oil left in the ground, particularly the ground in the Middle East. This is based upon the published ‘reserves’ allocated to, in particular, Saudi Arabia. But those reserves are fraudulent. Imagine you had a bank account which had a £1000 in it in 1990. Since then you’ve been spending £100 a year from that account – and now, when you go to the cash machine to find out how much money you have left, you discover that there is still the very same £1000 in it that you started with. That is what the ministers of OPEC would like us to believe is the case with the ‘bank account’ of their oil reserves.
The powers that be, however, have started to realise that something is wrong. Matthew Simmons, a US investment banker, has published a detailed investigation of the Saudi Arabian oilfields and his conclusion is that – just like the Kuwaiti field – the major Saudi fields are at ‘peak’. Each year we will start getting a little less. Simmons, as well as being the leading investment banker to the US energy industry, also worked as an advisor to George W Bush from 2000-2004 – from which you may draw your own conclusions. This is also why Mr Blair wants to build a new generation of nuclear power stations – probably including one at Bradwell – because he knows that our present infrastructure, based on oil and gas, is going to be untenable in around ten years time.
So we’re hitting a ‘peak’ of oil production. Why is that a problem – surely that means there’s as much oil left as we’ve already used? It just means that as oil gets more expensive we’ll start switching to alternatives?
You can’t use nuclear power to fly a plane (it was explored in the 1950s). Nor can you use electricity. Oil hasn’t simply been an incredibly cheap source of energy for the last several decades – a virtually free source in fact – it also has some remarkably useful properties. It is dense – with the exception of uranium it is the most dense source of energy that we know – and it is easy to handle, being a liquid at normal temperatures. That’s why our transportation industry has been built up around it. ‘Peak Oil’ is only secondarily an ‘energy crisis’. It is primarily a ‘liquid fuels’ crisis – and our present economic system is based upon those liquid fuels.
In February this year the US Senate received a report on this problem (it will be much worse for the US), and the report said: “The world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and long-lasting. Previous energy transitions (wood to coal and coal to oil) were gradual and evolutionary; oil peaking will be abrupt and discontinuous.” (Text of the Hirsch report available at http://www.netl.doe.gov/otiic/World_Oil_Issues/Oil_Peaking_NETL.pdf)
Which brings us back to Tesco, and Barfield Road. You see, the assumption being made to allow Tesco to come into the community here in West Mersea is that the business model is sustainable. Tesco is able to offer cheaper prices as a consequence of economies of scale – it purchases worldwide, and its purchasing power enables it to provide food cheaply. Yet it is entirely dependent upon an oil-based transport system.
The ‘peak’ of oil production will mean that the cost of oil will rise massively, and it will force businesses that depend upon transport into bankruptcy. Our transport system – and therefore our food distribution system – is based upon the ready availability of cheap oil. When that cheap oil is taken away – which it will be, on best estimates, in around five years time – then the business will fail. But in those five or so years Tesco will have hollowed out the life of our town, forcing the local businesses to fail – and then we will be a ghost town. The only prudent course for our community to take is to build up a locally based food and energy system.
Some enlightened governments have started to actively pursue this – the government of Sweden, for example, has committed that nation to going ‘off oil’ by 2020. They have realised what is at stake. Other smaller communities have started to try and reduce the risk of oil-dependency, such as the town of Kinsale (population 2000) on the south coast of Ireland. That is what we in Mersea need to do – to strengthen all the institutions in our community to enable us to withstand the crisis that is coming in our direction. To allow Tesco onto the island would be like cutting off a leg in preparation for a marathon – insane.
If you are interested in this, and would like to know more about ‘Peak Oil’ in particular, come to the Parish Church Hall on Saturday January 7th at 9:30 am. I will set out in more detail what Peak Oil involves – what it means for Mersea (Tesco and Bradwell) – and what we need to do now to prepare for it. If we plan consciously to move away from oil, then the transition to the post-oil economy need not be too painful. However if we continue as we are, and proceed blindly into the future, then may God have mercy on us all.
Here.
I’ve been waiting for this. Alison is wonderfully intelligent and lucid, as always.
I enjoy horror films. Somewhat bizarre tastes for a clergyman I suppose (a legacy of a secular youth) but I find them cathartic (classic horror is deeply conservative – there is a peaceful status quo; there is a violent interruption to the status quo; the violent interruption is repudiated). My taste tends more to the supernatural thriller side of things (Seven, Silence of the Lambs) than the gory schlock (Friday 13th, Elm Street) but I can enjoy most of them – particularly if I find myself in need of such catharsis (which all this preoccupation with PeakOil has definitely given me a need for). Sometimes I can get really tense and a good ‘Aaaagh’ is effective therapy.
So I watched ‘Saw’ last night. It was rather good, especially the twist at the end, which I hadn’t been expecting.
Lots of ‘Aaaagh’….. (grin)
This was an interesting film which I enjoyed, and which I felt was of high quality, but I came away from it thinking ‘and so…?’
It was well acted throughout (good in particular to see Julia Roberts against type) but I think ultimately for a film to be satisfying for me a) it must have at least one sympathetic character to identify with – these were all more or less sociopathic, and b) there must be some sense of character development and either redemption or judgement, ie the story must cohere in the end with an archetypal shape – even if it plays with that shape, there must be reference to it. Neither of these conditions were met.
Misanthropic, but worth watching.
“When they said ‘repent’… I wondered what they meant”
2nd Sunday of Advent: John the Baptizer comes preaching repentance. As Cohen sings – we don’t know what repentance means. So often we think of a stern moralistic preacher wagging his finger in judgement, predicting the doom of our civilisation.
Funny that, given all I’ve been reading up on in the last month or two.
From today’s Epistle: “Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation”. The thing I’ve been worrying about most is timing. How much time do we have to lay plans for alternative forms of life? What’s the shape of the slope on the other side of Hubbert’s Peak? How bad is it going to get?
“The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare”
Thing is, as Tom Wright often argues, this language is not about the prediction of heavenly events, but of the collapse of present day political structures. The ‘elements’ in 2 Peter are the powers that be.
There is a longing – and it is there in residual form in much secular doomsaying – for God’s judgement to come and for a spectacular end to our world. That is what the Book of Revelation is about after all. Yet it is also the case that Jesus defers the expectations, for ‘about that day and hour nobody knows’.
It’s a displacement of our own – often deeply buried – awareness of our own sin, that is, our own awareness of how far we have fallen away from what it is to be truly human. Our culture is so profoundly inhuman, not least in the monopoly of time, and deep down we know this. We want it to end, and so we long for it to collapse, and we long for the father figure to come in and sort it all out for us. Yet we also fear such a judgement for the very same awareness of our wrongness implicates us in the wrong doing itself. So in our terror we offer up sacrifices to appease the wrath of the vengeful deity “Lord spare us”.
The religious authorities recognise the power that this gives to them. They wag their finger and engender the terror. They exult in the coming judgement. They set up temples and demand sacrifice. They exist, parasitically, on the guilt and sorrow of the meek.
Into this situation comes the baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. It is an invitation into life, it is not a death sentence, for “He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.”
Repentance – turn your life around – worship a living God – choose life – life for a community here and now, not the salvation of an individual soul at the end of time.
This offer of forgiveness comes first (like the resurrection) – no wonder they chopped off his head.
It’s all about time. The living God wants us to return to him, to break our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh, to become the community that we were called out of Egypt to be – and to be a blessing to the world, to show forth God’s blessing through that very same way of life which we show and which we share.
There is judgement – but it is not the judgement of a vengeful and wrathful deity. God’s wrath is simply when we experience the consequences of our own actions. God’s grace is when we are spared.
In the years to come we will experience the consequences of our actions (Kyrie Eleison) and many in positions of authority will seek to claim that this is the wrath of God – giving themselves authority at the same time.
Let us not believe them.
Instead, let us remember that Advent is the time for penitence (choose life!) and for hope – hope in the God of grace and love and vulnerability, revealed when he came to earth as a baby.
“With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day”
In the darkness of these days that are passing away, let us set all our hope on the mercy of Christ, and look “forward to a new heaven, and a new earth, the home of righteousness”.
Good article here about US politicians waking up to peakoil. Blair’s move towards nuclear shows that he has realised the scale of the problem.
(hat tip to Energy Bulletin)