ALB
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Actually, that’s the only valid reason against Brexit — that it’s going to make it more difficult for people in Europe to move from one country to another, a step backward from the current situation. I already have an Irish passport (all you need to show is that at least one of your parents was born on the island of Ireland) so it’s not going to affect me so badly. It’s clear that, if Britain leaves, people from other European countries (apart from the former British colonies of Ireland, Cyprus and Malta) are going to be treated worse by being harassed by the search for “illegal” migrants that people from outside the EU have to put up with already. British people living in the EU can expect reciprocal treatment. As you say, stupid nationalism.
There won’t be a war of the US with Britain in tow against Iran. Iran doesn’t need nuclear weapons. Its ‘nuclear option’ is to close the straits of Hormuz, through which 20% of oil passes. Even a hawk like Bolton is not going to risk that and Trump will probably prefer a top level meeting with the chief Ayatollah if his diplomatic record is anything to go by.
That’s not necessary, Bijou. There is no real problem over doing the administrative work that can only be done at Head Office (e.g. opening letters, sending out Standards and literature orders, answering phone calls, dealing with enquiries, paying bills, archives, library,etc) or with maintaining and cleaning the building. This is done by London and Home Counties comrades.
Other administrative work is done by members in the Provinces. For instance, all the members of the Standing Orders Committee, Membership Application Committee, Internet Committee, and Blog Committee are from the Provinces, as is the management of our Paypal account. Others could be, e.g. Central Branch Secretary, Advertising Committee, Campaigns Committee. Recent changes to the computer technology at Head Office now allow remote access, which means that even more Party work can be done by members from their homes outside London.
The problem is not with back-up administrative work. It’s a seeming reluctance of members to engage in physical political activity or even discuss it, and not just in London and including even the EC. The EC meets once a month for three or four hours, with 3 coming down from the Provinces. But they have twice rejected a proposal that, in the absence of a functioning Advertising or Campaigns Committee (arguably the most important committees in terms of what used to be called “propaganda” activity), they themselves should take over direct responsibility for these. That is something they could usefully do after getting through the routine admin stuff (trouble is that is what they love dragging out with endless discussions on terms of reference and the Data Protection Act). After all, there are more members present at EC meetings than at most branch meetings.
At the moment the main field of outside-directed Party activity is the internet and social media which I would say is going well and where members who don’t attend branch meetings (to discuss EC reports and deal with Conference and ADM agendas) take part. It is physical activity that is the problem. It’s all very well members from afar saying we should cover various events and demonstrations in London. The sad truth is that there are only 4 or 5 London members prepared to do this and not all of them are always available, though with a bit of effort and persuasion this could probably be doubled.
Apart from the occasional public meeting, the only physical political activities the Party engages in are regular street stalls (but by only three branches) and elections. We should be able to do one outside or near Head Office once a month, but no one took the initiative this summer. Come to think of it, Bijou, this is something you and your mates could help out with if they want a trip to London. Trouble is mid-winter at the end of January isn’t the best time of the year for one. But why not organise one up North on a regular basis? There are a dozen or so members in Yorkshire with nothing to do.
Anyway, if you want to come down at the end of January I am sure we can round up half-an-dozen members for a meal and a bit of craic (if we can find a quiet pub, which you can’t in Clapham).
Here’s a couple more articles from the time we last had to do battle with these people (Malthusians and Neo-Malthusians) in the 1970s:
“just intuitively you would agree that in order to get oil which is gushing from a well in 1919, you don’t need nearly as much energy/work as in order to squeeze oil from shale rock using tonnes of water and sand that you have to transport from somewhere else, no?”
Of course. But the real nut to crack to become independent of fossils fuels, as minerals whose extraction becomes more and more difficult quite apart from the effects of burning them rather than using them more rationally, is an efficient system of electrical storage. In his 1962 book Profiles of the Future Arthur C. Clarke saw this as happening towards the end of the 1980s. It didn’t and we are still not there but progress towards it is being made. Once the technology to do this has been mastered, humanity will never have any problem with energy since it will be able to be captured from the Sun’s rays and stored for later use. Of course its rational use depends on a society based on the Earth’s resources having become the common heritage of all humanity and used to produce directly to satisfy people’s needs and not for sale on a market with a view to profit.
Yes, those who argue that the Earth has a fixed human carrying capacity and that it has been or will soon be exceeded are making the same mistake as Malthus and his followers of assuming that humans are like other animals and have to accept what the environment throws at them. All that other species can do if they exceed an area’s carrying capacity is for some of them to die off and/or some of them to move to another area. Humans are different. We can control both our fertility and our environment. And did, proving Malthus wrong even in the 19th century. What both Malthus and they leave out is technology.
The article mentions Paul Ehrlich who became notorious for his 1968 book the Population Bomb in which he claimed, in the words of his Wikipedia entry, that
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate….which categorically stated that the world’s human population would soon increase to the point where mass starvation ensued.”
See also this review of his book Population Resources Environment in the April 1971 Socialist Standard.
I see that, despite being completely discredited at the time, he was still peddling his misanthropic views 30 years later. The wikipedia entry on carrying capacity quotes him as pontificating in 2004 that
“for earth as a whole (including those parts of it we call Australia and the United States), human beings are far above carrying capacity today.”
Despite their concern for the environment these people are not on our side.
Thanks but having looked at the Wikipedia entry on “Energy Return on Energy Invested” I am not that much the wiser as to what exactly it is.
Linguistically, it ought to mean the ratio of the actual direct energy as such used at the last stage of production (e.g. electricity to drive the drill or the nodding donkey) to the amount of material produced useable as energy, But that would be a pretty pointless measure as obviously it will be greater than 1 since such direct energy inputs are only a part of the total inputs to production. At the other extreme, it could be the ratio of all the energy used in producing all the materials used to produce the material, which could possibly be less than 1. But, as the wiki entry, asks:
“How deep should the probing in the supply chain of the tools being used to generate energy go? For example, if steel is being used to drill for oil or construct a nuclear power plant, should the energy input of the steel be taken into account? Should the energy input into building the factory being used to construct the steel be taken into account and amortized? Should the energy input of the roads which are used to ferry the goods be taken into account? What about the energy used to cook the steelworkers’ breakfasts? These are complex questions evading simple answers. ”
Indeed. The entry goes on to say that in practice a simpler method is used:
“However, when comparing two energy sources a standard practice for the supply chain energy input can be adopted. For example, consider the steel, but don’t consider the energy invested in factories deeper than the first level in the supply chain. “
OK, but that would be a quite different measure giving a quite different result.
I suspect that the figure that both you and they cite that “n the beginning of XX century EROI of oil was close to 100, and since then it has been steadily decreasing, being around 10 now, or even less for shale oil” will be a reflection of (a) the rising cost of extracting a mineral like oil as the easiest sources are exhausted and more difficult ones have to be used, and (b) increasing mechanisation, which means more energy used up in the course of making the machines.
This latter is not a problem, but then EROEI would just be another way of measuring what bourgeois academic economists call “increasing capital intensity” and what Marxian economists call “the increasing technical composition of capital”. Normally, this is a good vthing as it means that more can be produced with less human work, though in the case of mineral sources of energy such as coal, oil and gas this is countered by having to work more difficult to extract sources.
At some point, I suppose, it is theoretically possible that the increase of productivity through mechanisation could be wiped out by the fall in productivity through having to use more difficult sources. I wouldn’t have thought, though, that we are anywhere near there as the fact that some goal, oil and gas production is still profitable (on the basis of MROMI).
Going by what the wiki entry says about some theorists using EROEI to explain the fall of the Roman Empire and of ancient civilisations in Mexico and Cambodia, it seems to have been hijacked by doomsters who think we’re currently in or nearing the same position. Even if that were true, fortunately, humans have other sources of energy than mineral ones. Even if there is “peak oil” (which is open to question) there can be no question of “peak energy”.
<sup> </sup>
“!
“EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). This is what ultimately determines the ability to extract oil, not price. It can cost millions per barrel, and still no one will get into business of getting the rest of oil if it takes more oil to get it out than what you will receive in the end. “
That sounds an interesting concept but I imagine that, like Marx’s labour theory of value which talks about the labour-time value of a commodity being the amount of necessary labour embodied in from start to finish, it is difficult if not impossible to calculate. Obviously, nobody is going to use more actual oil to produce it if they are going to end up with less than they started with (and of course the oil industry doesn’t do this), so we are talking about converting the other materials used in producing oil into “oil” or “energy” equivalents (presumably the amount of oil or energy used in producing them from start to finish (are we?)
I wouldn’t have thought that this would be something a capitalist company would be interested in calculating before deciding whether or not to invest in producing (more) oil. They apply rather MROMI (money return on money invested), i.e. nobody is going to invest money in producing something if they’re not going to get more money back in the end. I suspect that, if at some stage of the EROEI calculation prices are used, then the two might in practice be the same. I don’t know. I’m asking you. How is the oil equivalent of a drilling rig or a nodding donkey calculated?
Don’t you remember the leaflet we issued at the time of the big Countryside Alliance march to protest against the ban on fox hunting, in 2002 I think it was, which we headed “The Right to Hunt Landowners” and which began:
“The good old English sport of sending hungry hounds to chase aristocrats through the woods, catch them and rip them to pieces, has been slow to take off as a popular pastime. Despite claims that these predatory parasites are a foul rural presence, serving only to infect the countryside with their conceited greed and indolence, it has been hard to find dogs with sufficient brutality to enjoy this so-called sport.”
and stated:
“Their protest for the right to hunt and murder animals for fun is no more worthy of support than a campaign to reintroduce slavery or to bring back the deportation of criminals.”
I don’t think it was distributed on the Countryside Alliance march though …
In the meantime China has started a “currency war” with America by letting its currency float down (devalue). This may force the US authorities to let the dollar float down (weaken) too. But why should we support either side in this currency war any more than we would or should in a real war — unless you agree with Lenin’s position that in a war you should always want “your” state to lose as the prospects for seizing power are better in a defeated state, Machiavellian schemer that he was? Which of course we don’t, but which you sound as if you might, Admice. Anyway, it’s not a question of indifference, but of opposing both sides.
I tried one of those vegan “sausage” rolls just to show I’m not prejudiced. Nothing wrong with them. They taste like stuffing. That’s alright.
“When shale oil industry finally goes belly up, it will trigger a huge price spike, and a worldwide recession.”
But that’s not what the link you give says. The US shale industry is in trouble because, apart from the easiest to extract beginning to be exhausted putting up costs, the price of oil has fallen. The news item talks about the present being “a time when oil prices more broadly are in freefall” and “oil prices languishing below $60 per barrel” and quotes a shale company executive as saying:
“Sheffield said that he doesn’t see global oil prices staying below $55 per barrel over the next few years. That would likely mean WTI would be under $50, which he says is just too low for shale companies to be making money.”
In other words, if the US shale industry does go belly up this will be because oil prices generally have fallen and remain low. Its demise would not trigger a huge price spike. In fact, if there was a huge increase in the price of oil (which, if it was sudden as with the outbreak of a war in the Persian Gulf, Gulf, could well trigger another world recession) this would make the shale industry profitable again.
The real price of most goods tends to go down over time due to increasing productivity. The exceptions are minerals extracted from the ground. The easiest seams are exploited first but, once these have been exhausted, productivity falls and costs rise as more difficult seams have to be exploited; the price rises.
Oil is in this situation. As the easier sources are used up, if demand remains the same, its real price rises. If demand increases, the price rises further and other sources become profitable. In fact it was precisely because the price of oil had risen that marginal sources like shale became profitable.
This is where the concept of “peak oil” is a bit dubious or at least needs careful defining. Of course the amount of oil on Earth is limited and so in theory could eventually be all used up but this is not an immediate prospect. What is is that, at some point, the cost of extracting oil will become so high that it will no longer be profitable to extract it rather than use other sources of generating energy (e.g. nuclear, solar, wind power, etc). This could be said to be the point at which “peak oil” was reached but it wouldn’t mean that all oil reserves had been exhausted, only that the reserves that could be profitably exploited start to decline.
Whether or not this point has been reached is a matter of controversy and in any event depends on the price of other sources of energy which can also fluctuate, though, not being based on a mineral, the cost and so the price of renewable energies such as solar and wind is decreasing all the time as productivity increases.
It only remains to add that, in a socialist world, energy policy would not be based on such irrationalities as the changing price of alternative sources of generating energy relative to each other, as it is today under capitalism. Given the fact that burning oil contributes to global warming, a socialist world will be in a position to decide to use it to make plastics instead of burning it to generate energy. A capitalist world can’t as long as it is profitable to burn it.
