Keep Buying Your Toys
“What are they thinking? They’re thinking we’re running out. We’re running out and ninety percent of what’s left is in the Middle East. So if you look at the whole progression from Versailles, through Suez, 1973, Gulf War One, Gulf War II, it’s really shaping up as a fight to the death. So what they’re thinking is keep playing, keep buying your toys, keep spending fifty thousand dollars a night for your hotel room, but don’t invest in your infrastructure, don’t build a real economy, so when you finally wake up, they will have sucked you dry and you will have squandered the greatest natural resource in history.”
— Bryan Woodman in Syriana
“It may be pure coincidence that, just as the world’s biggest oil producers are reaching a historic turning point signaling the end of the energy regime that has held since the end of US production dominance in 1970, a war has erupted between Israel and a militant organization supported by a nation the US plans to attack anyway in order to maintain dominance of world oil supplies going forward. History is full of such coincidences. But coincidence or not, it will be difficult to keep these unfolding realities from rebounding off one another, undermining attempts at a peaceful resolution.”
— Richard Heinberg, Aug 2006
“Depletion is an easy concept to grasp. Think of an Irish pub full of happy people. Think of their pleasure at the first sip from a full glass. Think of the frowns that begin to cross their faces when their glasses are half-empty. They know they have drunk more than is left. It is the turning point. Watch them savour the last drops. While they can order another round of drinks, they know in the back of their minds that eventually closing time will come when there are no more to be had. That is the meaning of depletion. We need to know how big each glass - or oilfield - is, and we need to think of closing time, and judge how many oilfields are left to find.”
— Colin J.Campbell
“My father rode a camel. I drive a Rolls Royce. My son flies a jet aircraft. My grandson will ride a camel.”
September 9th, 2007 at 8:45 pm
I wish I could at least take some (albeit twisted) pleasure in thinking ‘I told you so..’ to all those who trumpeted for George W as he conquered and occupied Iraq out of the goodness of his heart, to ‘rescue its people from an evil dictator’ and to defend the U.S. and the world from the evil dictator’s ‘weapons of mass destruction’. Well, there’s no pleasure to be had, not of any kind - it’s just a sad, sad situation. The saddest part is that so many intellectuals and highly educated people are still totally in the dark!
September 9th, 2007 at 8:47 pm
I have a dumb question… shouldn’t a security word be written in some sort of distorted script so that a machine can’t read it?
September 12th, 2007 at 5:15 am
still totally in the dark or 1) in denial 2) afraid to go up against the most powerful [yet stupid] administration in the world 3)waiting for others to do something about it.
a machine reads text.. security words are actually images of the words.. try to highlight the words.. you cant cuz theyre not text!
September 12th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
I didn’t mean in the dark as opposed to actually ‘DOING’ something about it.. I meant as opposed to not worshipping the droppings of the USA!!
Aah.. so it’s an image then..