RE: [A-List] US imperialism: global oil stitch-up

["Mark Jones" <markjones011@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This shows the (sorry) stupidity of Monbiot, who was briefly on this list
but not long enough to follow the arguments about energy politics,
evidently. when he says things like:

> Tony Blair
> has also flatly rejected both an effective energy reduction policy and a
> massive investment in alternative power. The only remaining way of meeting
> future energy demand is to import ever greater quantities of oil and gas.
>

this shows the mindless, panglossian, shallow optimism which inhabits most
of the left and almost all of the Greens and which truly believes there are
"alternatives" somewhere out there and the only thing that doesn't prevent
humankind from living like cuddly rabbits in sustainable, green-powered
warrens is the devious cruelty of the oil corps and Blair, who insist we
burn oil instead. Unfortunately, there just are no alternatives; Blair has
been there, done that, in the first years after he came to power in 1997,
and now he knows it even if Monbiot doesn't: the real sad thing about
Monbiot's stupidity is that he doesn't grasp that the 'massive investment in
alternatives' which he and the foolish Greens demand, is actually only
another way of adding greenhouse gases, speeding up climate warming, and
consuming the remaining oil even more quickly and to even less purpose;
because most of the so-claled 'alternatives' turn out on inspection to be
not energy-sources but energy-sinks, that is, they require more consumption
of irreplaceable hydrocarbon fuels to manufacture them than the ever
actually produce in new energy. The whole alternatives business, like
nuclear power, is actually nothing more than a gigantic scam, a gigantic
cross-subsidy of *energy* investment from oil/gas to nuclear, windpower,
photovoltaics etc. Despite all the blether about how the alternative are
getting more efficient all the time, and how new nuckes are safer/more
eocnomical etc, the hard facts speak for themselves: there are no
alternatives to oil and gas; so the real alternative is going to be a
harsher, bleaker world with far fewer humans alive in it. No conception of
socialism which doesn't deal with these fundamental realities of the
post-oil world, is worth a cup of warm spit.

Then when Monbiot rambles on to this:

> As
> available reserves decline, the world's oil-hungry nations are tussling to
> grab as much as they can for themselves. Almost everywhere on earth the
> United States is winning. It is positioning itself to become the
> gatekeeper
> to the world's remaining oil and gas. If it succeeds, it will both secure
> its own future supplies and massively enhance its hegemonic power.

Like wow, Monbiot, like John Bellamy Foster evidently, has caught up with
the idea of imperialism. Better late than never, eh? But this is not a
victory for US imperialism but a gigantic and world-shatering crisis which
is certain to sweep imperialism and the whole rotten capitalist system away.
What Monbiot should do is start from there: the futureworld of final
capitalist crisis, amid pandemics, ecosystem collapse, runaway global
warming and energy (and food, and water) famines--and work back from there
to where we are now. If he did that he would see that the next step is not
more puerile, muckraking articles for the agony-aunts of intellectual
liberalism like the Guaridna. The next step is to embrace the path of
revolution.

Mark