Postcard from Pipelineistan

[azul]

Big World, Little Adam. Why we need alternative energy yesterday:

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Liquid War

Postcard from Pipelineistan
By Pepe Escobar

What happens on the immense battlefield for the control of Eurasia will provide the ultimate plot line in the tumultuous rush towards a new, polycentric world order, also known as the New Great Game.

Our good ol' friend the nonsensical "Global War on Terror," which the Pentagon has slyly rebranded "the Long War," sports a far more important, if half-hidden, twin—a global energy war. I like to think of it as the Liquid War, because its bloodstream is the pipelines that crisscross the potential imperial battlefields of the planet. Put another way, if its crucial embattled frontier these days is the Caspian Basin, the whole of Eurasia is its chessboard. Think of it, geographically, as Pipelineistan.

~snip

Last year, oil cost a king's ransom. This year, it's relatively cheap. But don't be fooled. Price isn't the point here. Like it or not, energy is still what everyone who's anyone wants to get their hands on. So consider this dispatch just the first installment in a long, long tale of some of the moves that have been, or will be, made in the maddeningly complex New Great Game, which goes on unceasingly, no matter what else muscles into the headlines this week.

Forget the mainstream media's obsession with al-Qaeda, Osama "dead or alive" bin Laden, the Taliban—neo, light or classic—or that "war on terror," whatever name it goes by. These are diversions compared to the high-stakes, hardcore geopolitical game that follows what flows along the pipelines of the planet.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/welcome-pipelineistan

[Andy823]

1. A good reason

For increased investment into renewable energy sources! We need to break the oil addiction, period. There are solar farms, wind farms, and many other sources that will help us do that. In Europe they are already getting into these kinds of energy sources, and I even heard on 60 minutes last December I think, that Saudi Arabia was also building a huge solar farm in the desert so they could sell the power to other countries. China has been working on "green energy" sources, most likely so they can sell the finished products to others, but they are working on it.

This is a world wide problem, and we all need to jump on board. The U.S. needs to get in the ball now to produce new sources of energy while making new jobs for those who are unemployed. The president is pushing renewable energy sources in order to put people back to work and to break the addiction. It can be done, and when it is done the world will not have to rely on "oil" for energy, and wars will not have to be fought in order to gain control of that energy!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

2. Imagine enough solar power to crack enough water to fuel these

virtually completely pollution free machines... imagine a world where this is already reality. In a way half of it is.

www.fuelcellenergy.com

[Overseas]

3. I've always felt that alternative energy funding should be part of the national defense budget.

We will still need tons of petroleum even after solar and other sustainable energy sources become a larger part of our country's energy mix.

It has always deeply disturbed me that instead of spending billions on funding conservation technologies, electric vehicles, solar panels on every roof and such, the USA has chosen instead to bomb and kill to try to dominate oil supplies. We should have been engaged in a multi-pronged approach to resource security all along, incorporating sustainable energy development into our national defense budget.

Back in college, when my fellow students gauged their hipness by how many MPG above 30 their cars got, when we were talking about sustainable energy resources, we were told solar power was just too expensive to develop. The oil companies got the biggest government subsidies. It has been very disheartening to see decades of "solar is just too expensive" rhetoric while our country has built up huge deficits engaging in brutal warfare.

I am glad President Obama is treating alternative energy development as a major priority, but I still think it should be funded from our huge national security budget.

And I am also sad because President Gore and President Kerry would also have given sustainable energy sources top priority and we lost so much more time during the massively destructive reign of the Bush Gang.

[Octafish]

4. President Carter made renewable and alt energies a priority, starting in '77.

Big Oil and their main turds Pruneface and Poppy did all they could to destroy him and his efforts. Among their first efforts, they took the solar panels off the roof of the White House and repealed the 55-mph speed limit. It's interesting how corporate media forget that when talking about today's problems.

[Overseas]

5. Yes it was sad to see how Big Oil crushed those attempts.

Instead of thinking long-term, realizing that oil would still be very important even as the nation moved into incorporating more sustainable energy into the mix.

But I guess the threat to Big Oil's monopoly on energy resources by the upstart sustainable energy kids was more important than our nation's long term national security.

They crushed Jimmy and gave us Papa Ron telling everyone it was "morning in America" and we should party hardy like there were no limits to growth and no looming climate change crises.

[azul]

6. Herded into wars by a military-indust economy that has convinced itself

and many people that oil is the only way to go, and is really worth fighting for.

Fortunately, burning oil is obviously cooking the planet, and people are waking up to the fact that there are energy alternatives that don't involve ruinous empire building and mass extinctions.