Speaking yesterday in Aspen former Fed head Alan Greenspan said, "If the world oil industry were to get into very serious difficulty, its impact on the world economic system would be very difficult to absorb."(see:
http://www.denverpost.com/...). The bulk of Greenspan's talk consisted in entertaining just this possibility and in outlining market-based solutions. Greenspan inadvertently highlighted the seriousness of US hydrocarbon dependence when he stated that he supported the Iraq war because it prevented Saddam Hussein from controlling a key oil shipping route.
Most Americans walk around in a cable television fed dreamworld where words are no longer used to say things but, rather, to elicit behavior. Thus, the US fights a war against a tactic ("terrorism") and the Colorado legislature debates denying library cards to illegal aliens rather than regulating the employers who capitalize on their cheap labor. In a sick way, then, it's refreshing when someone like Alan Greenspan hints at what is really on his mind.
Hydrocarbons--coal, natural gas, petroleum--are woven into every segment of the US economy. There is a finite supply of petroleum which is being consumed at an exponential rate. According to Al Bartlett at the University of Colorado (see: http://webjay.org/...) petroleum consumption grows at about 7% per year. What 7% annual growth means is that demand doubles every ten years and that every 10 years the petroleum industry will have produce more oil than in all its previous history, e.g., 1 billion, 2 billion, 4 billion, 8 billion, 16 billion....
Exponential growth against a finite source cannot be ignored by oilmen, politicians, or even the retired head of the Federal reserve. But any real solution is unlikely within an economic model predicated on infinite expansion of the GDP. Instead, there can only be half-measures: trading the Hummer in for a Prius; wind power; switch grass; warfare.
So what happened in Aspen? A layer came off the dreamworld onion. Perhaps feeling invigorated by the clear mountain air and relative affluence of the community Greenspan felt free to entertain some doubt and to confess some hidden motives. Yes, global warming is real. Yes, we're coming to the end of the oil. Yes, there needs to be alternative energy and conservation. Yes, Saddam was a dangerous because he threatened world economic stability, and war was the appropriate remedy.
But Greenspan couldn't bring himself to question the longterm viability of an economic model predicated on exponential resource consumption. At the Aspen Institute yesterday there were no maudlin expressions of patriotism like the "These Colors Don't Run" bumper stickers in the Wal-Mart parking lot down the valley in Glenwood Springs. No, this was tasteful, top-of-the-line self-deception. Yet the situation is the same at both ends of the Roaring Fork Valley. In the Wal-Mart parking lot the good citizens who keep Aspen running have fallen for empty words of moralistic aggression. Up in Aspen, those who can afford it are taken in by an economic theory at odds with the natural world.
When a passenger plane is augering into the Kansas prairie the people in first class and the people in the cheap seats will arrive on the ground at about the same time. When a society is disfunctional and is headed to hell in a handbasket, the destination is the same regardless of the aesthetics involved getting there.