And that's the way it is

I wondered if Barack Obama became a one-term president with his astonishingly vapid Oval Office speech on the Gulf oil disaster. But maybe Mr. Obama has the pulse of the nation better than any of us who wanted real change and the fierce urgency of now. It was grotesquely ironic that a few days after offering the usual presidential platitudes about the need to wean ourselves off oil, he was in Columbus, Ohio, touting his stimulus by dedicating work on a road expansion. It was, he said, the 10,000th road project that the stim has funded.

Around the nation the transit systems that had been dramatically expanding ridership as gasoline prices rose are now starving from state and local fiscal crises. Amtrak, despite the vice-president's supposed love of it, remains a shadow of the passenger rail system it succeeded and a political pawn awaiting further cutbacks and the demand that it "pay for itself." This even though no major transportation network pays for itself, certainly not roads. And this despite evidence that road projects don't even have much of a positive effect on unemployment. High-speed rail? It's being studied, even though other advanced and ambitious nations already have systems and are expanding them. Cincinnati, a lovely central city that has been devastated by freeways and sprawl, can't even muster the civic sanity to fund a streetcar line. America will continue its dependency on roads and cars — something far beyond our competitors in Europe or China. Why? Because that's the way it it.

We care about the poor birds and fish being killed by the oil spill. But not enough to give up our cars. We live magical thinking: That technology will simply replace the inexpensive light sweet crude that powered the automotive age. Rather like the technology that was supposed to allow BP to drill miles down into the earth to extract the remaining crude in the Gulf of Mexico. Electric cars will be expensive and require minerals from places other than America — many of them unstable — as well as demanding electricity from power plants that will be run on...what? Fossil fuels most likely. Beyond that, the dreams become loopy. Space aliens are not going to drop by and give us magical hydrogen cars. Tar sands are not going to yield inexpensive gasoline. Few seem to understand that the fossil fuel "imputs" into most alternative fuels are greater than the new energy produced; many also have nasty environmental or other unintended consequences. Nowhere is this more true than with any alternative to the big oil hog: automobiles.

So we care about the poor wildlife, but not really. Not when it interferes with our vaunted "lifestyle," which is "non-negotiable," a point made explicitly by former Vice-President Cheney and implicitly by the current chief executive. Prepare for more oil disasters. Soon our television-addled public will tire of this and a fresh pretty blonde teen will disappear under lurid circumstances.

The economy remains a basket case. Our elected leaders had a chance to do some real game changing. Universal health care, for example. And a massive infrastructure project to retrofit suburbia for a high-cost energy future, build more transit and a fine passenger train system, reconstituting our older cities including with great schools — all creating good jobs that couldn't be outsourced and rebuilding industries here that we've lost. Instead, nothing. Oh, a windfall for the health insurance companies. A taxpayer bailout of the automakers so they could go back to doing what they've been doing. A few bucks tossed as solar and such. The American people seem fine with this. If anything, a loud and influential minority are angry with government and want severe austerity measures. They want a return to the very policies that caused our woes. Fewer Americans are reading, an activity that requires intellectual interaction, and instead are just watching television or listening to talk radio, which is passive. That's the way it is.

We await the return of suburban building, more thousands of new "homes," more paving over of farmland and wilderness, more and longer single-occupancy car trips. No wonder. The American economy has been so hollowed out that "homebuilding" was the last of our major manufacturing sectors. Phoenix was America's biggest factory town. The wisdom of this enterprise in an era of peak oil, climate change and the need for scalable localism is rarely questioned. A majority of Americans living today grew up in suburbs. Most have never experienced walkable neighborhoods, real towns or quality cities. They can't imagine another way of living. Millions can't imagine different work from construction, real estate, mortgage boiler rooms, "home" improvement big boxes. And a federal government under pressure from the deficit hawks will never make the fundamental new investments and changes in public policy to rebuild a real productive economy. So we will sit becalmed, some doing very well, many doing OK, many more falling back or suffering...looking for someone to blame. The bubble isn't coming back. But we'll wait and get angrier.

None of our opinion leaders wants to begin the cutbacks by withdrawing from our soft empire or trillion-dollar wars, our huge defense expenditures or our adventures in Muslim lands where our mere presence makes more enemies. The defense sector is now the employer of last resort, not primarily in defense industries or in D.C., which is bouncing back nicely as a metro economy, but in the armed forces. They are now the destination for so many of our young people without means (or in some cases encouragement) to go to college, and with the trades decimated by the housing collapse. Support the troops. That's the way it is.

The way it is involves expending trillions of dollars to rescue the big financial playerz that brought on the crash. They're doing fine now, as are the richest Americans. Power is ever more consolidated. Mergers are a sign of a reviving economy. Oursourcing and offshoring are here to stay — get over it, we're told by corporate titans with similar competence as BP's Tony Hayward. The majority of the rest of us don't even recall a time when the banks were heavily regulated, industry consolidation was prevented by antitrust laws and the rich were taxed at rates of 70 percent or higher. Our libraries and parks are closing, teachers, police officers and firefighters are losing their jobs. Government is the problem, not the solution. What the hell do you mean by a "we society"?

And that's the way it is. None of this had to be. We had choices. We still do. It's true that the power of the huge corporations, from banks to oil giants, is greater than any time in history. The political control of the road-builders, car-makers, oil companies, sprawl barons, defense giants, financial playerz, insurers and Big Pharma is stupendous. But an equal impediment is custom. We just can't imagine anything different from the recent past, except for more of the same plus more electronic distractions. Custom is hard to change, especially in a society of greatly diminishing literacy, a society where citizens have become "consumers." A society watching the wealth it took a century to create be sold off for a pittance, and where the children of those who still have the means live into their thirties before growing up. That's the way it is.

When Walter Cronkite signed off his newscast "and that's the way it is," he was telling the truth. But that was another America: With a real economy, good union jobs, a government that hadn't been captured by transnational corporations, people who read newspapers and books, sober bankers and brokers, a real liberal wing of our political debate, the national will to land men on the moon — when television news was still journalism. Now the words merely convey the fatalistic jive of a nation that can't comprehend that the future will be nothing like the recent past. When the roof finally falls in, one wonders if we will remain a nation at all.

Comments

[M. Carlson]

If Obama told the truth about the predicament we're in, he'd definitely be a one-term president.

[Petro]

M. Carlson:

Exactly.

Rogue:

"We care about the poor birds and fish being killed by the oil spill. But not enough to give up our cars."

Exactly, as well. I am impressed that you are able to write about that spill - even if only peripherally. I've been paralyzed, and that quote about the cars is my specific sticking point. I feel like my lede should be: "If you still drive a car, then can the complaints about the spill." Which is not a smart lede for a C-list blogger who is trying to *not* alienate the majority of potential readers. Who mostly all drive cars.

But that's, um, the way it is.

[soleri]

Assume for a moment that Obama was the president of our dreams. He both told the truth and he laid out plans to take us from national entropy to a newly competitive and energy-smart future. Not only would he be a one-term president, he would be laughed off the national stage.

The scandal of our nation is that we are stupid with cleverness. We are equal parts David Brooks and Nancy Grace. We can't imagine a future that doesn't look pretty much like today, nor would we want to. Houses must get bigger and cars will get faster. That's the American Dream in all its infantile glory. Verrado, anyone?

I assume, unlike Kunstler and Orlov, that we'll muddle through. Things will gradually grow worse but not apocalyptically so. Still, to survey what passes for the national discourse is to understand just how grim our national project has become. Come November, with Republicans resurgent, we'll gladly bow to the wisdom of Suburban Man: tax cuts for the rich! The underclass, segregated in decaying central cities and inner-ring suburbs, shall eat day-old cake.

Where is the great man, the new Reagan, who shall restore Mayberry, but this time with granite-countertops and master-suites the size of a pre-war pied-a-terre? Jesus knows that we deserve to be rich but doubters don't believe. They want to preserve wilderness and put a tax on carbon. Where are the real Americans who will stop them?

[Rate Crimes]

"When the roof finally falls in,..."
That's a pretty bold penult.

A few walls still stand between us and our neighbors, but mid-century minds hold us paralyzed and exposed to the the dark clouds gathering above. As we stare up at the storm and dream of new shelter, the sinkhole opens . . .

[Rate Crimes]

Less than a year after calling Pompey and the Roman Senate, "wimps", Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and ended the remnants of the Roman Republic.

That's the way it was.

[AZREBEL]

Soleri writes "Where are the real Americans....."

I don't know, Soleri, I can't find them. I think they all may be on Facebook, or too busy texting to notice the bigger picture. After all, if your entire focus is on the fact that your BFF(Best Friend Forever) is just finishing her bowl of cereal and is walking the bowl to the sink, you don't have a wide enough view of the world to notice that the fiber and infrastructure of your country is collapsing around you. I try and I try to find living beings in my community to have intelligent conversations concerning issues that concern us, and I can't find them. It's kind of lonely. Makes you want to maybe try Facebook and look for a BFFWAB, (Best Friend Forever With a Brain)

[terry dudas]

Omygod AZREBEL, don't do that!! Go to a Tea Party; the people there understand that the world around them is falling apart. Surely, surely you will find like minds to talk with. OK, now I've asked for it: Emil will crucify me for this post, and Jon will have to molify him.

So be it.

p.s. there will be a Tea Party in Douglas, AZ, 7/17, at the 10h Ave. Park - noon to 3pm. I've just spent six hours talking with ranchers & residents in the area. They know that Obama is lying about Kyl's amnesty report to Arizonians, or as most of you believe, Neanderthals.

[AZREBEL]

terry,
Very grateful for your concern. I'm a coffee drinker. Tea drinkers are sissies.

Regards,

AZREBEL

[Jacob]

So did we get the government that we deserved, or did the government pave the way for this shit storm, or both?

[Emil Pulsifer]

Mr. Talton wrote:

"Tar sands are not going to yield inexpensive gasoline."

Well, it depends on what you call inexpensive. Is gas inexpensive now? Not relative to a dollar a gallon, but I don't see anyone seriously predicting the end of civilization as we know it because the average cost today is $2.75 a gallon in the United States.

As of 2006 half of Canada's petroleum production was from tar sands. Canada supplies 21 percent of American oil imports and this margin (relative to its nearest competitors among U.S. oil suppliers) has increased and is expected to continue doing so, precisely because tar sands are a huge resource and because production has more than offset decline in Canada's conventional oil production and continues to grow. At present, Canada exports 99 percent of its oil to the United States. It's a stable, friendly country. Given all this, do you expect tar sands oil to become MORE expensive?

At present, the production cost per barrel of Canadian tar sands oil hovers between $25 and $30 per barrel. With oil currently trading at $77 per barrel, that's more than enough of a margin to be profitable. Both investment in and production from tar sands are ramping up. A single company alone, Canadian Natural Resources, expects to produce produce 40 million barrels of light, sweet, synthetic crude per year by 2017. It has three heavy oil projects in Canada that will come online between 2011 and 2023 which are expected to produce another 210,000 barrels per DAY. That's another 76 million barrels of oil per year. That's from a single company.

http://www.checkthemarkets.com/index.php?Itemid=40&id=657&option=com_content&task=view

Also, check out pages 14-21 of this EIA slide presentation (from a 2005 speech):

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/speeches/Caruso061305.pdf

[Emil Pulsifer]

" At present, Canada exports 99 percent of its oil to the United States."

Sorry, this is confusingly phrased. I meant, of course, that 99 percent of Canada's oil exports go to the United States.

[azrebel]

Emil,

You are way, way smarter than I will ever be, but may I respectfully ask: are you implying that by allowing the oil to soak into our beach sand, we are actually storing oil for future use?

Also, and I ask this with great respect for your knowledge and constant enlightenment , may I get an answer in 50 words or less. Just playing with you my friend. However, if you do answer in 50 words or less, I will arrange with Rogue to deliver to your house a brand new, unopened bottle of Jack Daniels for your continued health and prosperity.

AZREB

[PHXsunsFan]

AZREB, not Emil but I might be able to help you with tar sand information. And by the way, great posts you have I always get a laugh and enjoy reading your comments.

From the Bureau of Land Management concerning tar sands and oil shale:

"The United States holds the world’s largest known concentration of oil shale. Nearly five times the proven oil reserves of Saudi Arabia underlies a surface area of 16,000 square miles. The enormous potential of this domestic resource is a key to the Nation’s energy security and economic strength, and to the quality of life Americans enjoy today and hope to ensure for future generations.

More than 70 percent of American oil shale — including the thickest and richest deposits — lies on federal land, primarily in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming. These federal lands contain an estimated 1.23 trillion barrels of oil — more than 50 times the nation's proven conventional oil reserves.

More than 50 tar sands deposits are found in eastern Utah, containing an estimated 12 to 19 billion barrels of oil. As oil prices rise, there is new interest in developing both of these domestic resources.

The BLM is working to ensure that development of federal oil shale and tar sands resources will be economically sustainable and environmentally responsible."

http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/prog/energy/oilshale_2.html

[PHXsunsFan]

OH, and AZREBEL, I highly doubt Emil was advocating letting any oil soak into the beach sand.

Just curious but did you mean the oil soaking into the beach sand due to the BP horror in the Gulf of Mexico?

[Emil Pulsifer]

Note that there's a big difference between oil sands (aka tar sands) and oil shales:

"OIL SHALES: A huge in-place kerogen resource...but the technology to economically produce large quantities of synthetic oil from them does not exist and is not likely to in the next few decades."

http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/speeches/Caruso061305.pdf

This is in contrast to Canadian bitumen (tar sands):

"There's no finding risk (or cost).
Commercial production is happening (and accelerating). The achievable recovery factors and the production costs are mostly technology-driven."

[Emil Pulsifer]

AZREB,

No. Send Jack.

[azrebel]

Hey, you can't put in an 80+ word comment, then add the short response. However, I will go to Rogue for a ruling and will gladly get the bottle on the way. I don't think I mentioned size of bottle or whether the bottle had been opened previously, but I will strive to get it to you as factory fresh as possible.

Regards,

AZREB

OK Rogue, your ruling , please.