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Guest Post: Canada Oil Sands And The Precautionary Principle
Submitted by James Miller from the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada
Canada Oil Sands And The Precautionary Principle
The precautionary principle is typically defined as “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific evidence that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.” In practice, the principle is utilized by government policy makers to ensure technological advances don’t pose too dire of an effect on the surrounding environment. This may appear a noble goal if one accepts the premise that the prime function of government is the protection of life and property. History proves otherwise as easily corruptible politicians have tended to grant exceptions to wealthy business interests which look to dump their waste in public-owned natural resources such as waterways. It is also clear judging by historical cases that socialization often results in environmental degradation. One look at the pollution in once-communist nations such as China or the former Soviet Union reveals that a lack of private property results in a type of moral hazard en masse as there is little incentive to preserve what you don’t officially own.
Rather than enforce property rights, the state systematically violates them in order to buttress its dominating hold over society and reward its supporters. What the precautionary principle has resulted in is further discretion over economic affairs given over to those public officials who take great delight in micro-managing the lives of others. The stifled progression in technology and industrialization that is a consequence of the precautionary practice is the insidious but sincere goal of its enthusiasts.
Presently, there exists no greater threat to the green movement than that of cheap fossil fuels. Drilling for oil is demonized in Western media. The prospect of extracting massive amounts of natural gas in North America has ignited numerous environmental protests. In Canada, the mining of oil sands has become a target of the federal government. During a recent trip to survey the ongoing mining operation taking place in Alberta, Leader of the Official Opposition (the New Democratic Party) Thomas Mulcair admitted that while he was impressed by the “awe-inspiring” scale though which human-made machines and ingenuity were extracting this unconventional petroleum deposit, he was still wary of the potential environmental damage such an industrial breakthrough could present. From the Globe and Mail:
Precisely one thing surprised Thomas Mulcair on his visit to Alberta: the scale of the oil sands.
During his first visit, including a helicopter flight over several oil sands mines, to a region he has criticized, Mr. Mulcair was overwhelmed by the “awe-inspiring” display.
“These are extraordinary undertakings on a human scale. I mean, they’re massive,” Mr. Mulcair said. “It’s extraordinarily impressive, but it also brings with it real challenges. Real challenges that if we don’t assume in this generation, we’re going to bear in future generations.”
Admittedly, environmental damage can be devastating to those private property owners affected. This is why tort law and criminal charges are brought to assaulters and those who trespass or willingly destroy private property. No amount of general prosperity that could develop through industrialization is an excuse to waive the blatant destruction of privately owned property. When Professor Ludwig von Mises spoke to private property being “inextricably linked with civilization,” he referred to the conservation tendency property owners tend to develop. In order for man to be forward-looking, he has to have some expectation of improving his current lot. This generally means control over that land and material goods he possesses. There is little incentive to invest time and capital without full ownership as any other interested party could come along and consume whatever resources are readily available. The “tragedy of the commons” principle is why shared ownership of land or worker communes never last for significant periods of time.
The respect to private property is what ultimately drives capital accumulation and the employing of factors of production for more intricate or grand-in-scale industrial undertakings. Just as people are limited by their ability to economically calculate and profit off of the unknowable future, it can be difficult to account for engineering mistakes. Humans are imperfect; accidents happen. What the precautionary principle does in practice is put government-enforced barriers in front of what could be great advances in industrialization.
And this is precisely what many environmentalists want.
Man develops machinery to raise his standard of living. He takes risk in search of reward. If success were assured, we would all be industrialists. The broad use of the precautionary principle necessarily prevents innovation. If more politicians like Mulcair were around in the 19th century, it is likely that the first rail road tracks would have never been laid. The same goes for the growth in the widespread use of cars and airplanes. Even fire, which can cause great harm if left uncontrolled, would have never been allowed extensive usage if the precautionary principle were adhered to in caveman times. As investor Doug Casey observers in regard to the principle:
If our ancestors had even been stupid enough to adopt such an absolutely paralyzing idea, we’d still be shivering in caves, ravaged by dread diseases and hunted by animals larger and more powerful than we. No, I misspeak; most likely, we’d have gone extinct.
What the green movement hates is not pollution but humanity itself. Its followers would rather see humans beholden to nature than conquer the deprivation the complete natural world holds for mankind. It is communal authoritarianism disguised as moral sustainability. The greens don’t look forward to a life of ease but only backwards to the days when man eked out a day to day existence while always on the verge of death. They want humans to devolve to the state of irrational apes and eventually die out. As Rothbardian philosopher David Gordon puts it:
Some environmentalists are outright enemies of humanity, who favor a drastic reduction in human population, if not the elimination altogether of our species.
According to a recent study conducted by economists Robert P. Murphy and Brian Lee Crowley, the petroleum industry in Canada “showers benefits across the provinces, and provides outlets for manufactured goods.” The extraction of petroleum deposits from the oil sands promises to both create employment and boost economic output across the nation. As long as the companies which engage in extraction are held liable for whatever damage they cause to private lands not under their contractual ownership, Canadians should welcome this technological innovation.
In the end, the raising of living standards is only made possible by industrial advances that require a preference of future betterment over present bliss. Private property is the only means to aid in such endeavors. This is why the green movement never lobbies for abolition of “public” property or stricter enforcement of property protection. Its efforts are aimed at building up the nanny state along with stalling real progress.
Environmentalists who look to the state to enforce their visions of paradise are really just admirers of slavery. Freedom of human will means risk taking and pioneering better methods to improve life on Earth. It means creating a future of ease and contentment.
There is a stark difference between defending private property and environmentalism which advocates for little to no actual developments in industrial production. Proponents of the former are grateful to sleep on a mattress instead of a dirt floor. Proponents of the latter, especially politicians like Thomas Mulcair, want to see mankind emaciated, bowed down before them, and entirely submissive like a back alley mutt that has been kicked hard in gut all too many times.
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Okay, so the article is bullshit and from the start was geared to come to one binary conclusion.
So instead of addressing the (overly convoluted) arguments of the article, how about this:
One thing the article mentions very early, is that a gov does not really have a direct interest in what happens to an environment. It is not directly affected by it - and please now do not bring up the bullshit argument of "representation", in a governance model, where the supposed "represented" are discouraged from rejecting or interfering with the representatives.
So, when it comes to environmental concerns (a term which i consider misleading, more on this later down), how about "regulating" this primarily by the affected population, instead of the representatives, who have no direct stake in it?
Yes, it does not address "debt" on "future generation", something which the article btw most of the time completely ignores.... but wouldn't it be a step up from letting representatives decide about this?
As for my dislike for the term "environmentalism": This term is as misleading as it can get. This isn't primarily caring about "the poor environment" as if it were some kind of altruism towards some "other person". Reasonable considerations of environmental effects, are primarily MUTUALISTIC, because it is US who are living in this environment, and are affected by it. When fuckupshima radiates fish and tea, it isn't just teh poor fish that is affected, it also is me. This isn't just about "saving some poor someone else"... it also is about selfsustainability of humans, especially in the mid- and longterm.
Whenever i - someone who cares a lot about sustainability - see's another stupid press release or advertisement about "saving teh poor planet as an act of altrusim" i want to punch whomever designed and ordered this in the face, until it turns into a bloody mess.
As for my dislike for the term "environmentalism": This term is as misleading as it can get. This isn't primarily caring about "the poor environment" as if it were some kind of altruism towards some "other person". Reasonable considerations of environmental effects, are primarily MUTUALISTIC, because it is US who are living in this environment, and are affected by it. When fuckupshima radiates fish and tea, it isn't just teh poor fish that is affected, it also is me. This isn't just about "saving some poor someone else"... it also is about selfsustainability of humans, especially in the mid- and longterm.
_________________________________________________
Nope. Does not work this way due to US citizen economics.
The question is: can I, a US citizen, benefit from the destruction of the environment, pocketing the benefits of it while shifting the losses on a third party?
The US citizen drawing profits from poising fish has not to be the same person as the one eating the fish.
Secondly, poisoning the environment can generate rent (US citizens love rent) as people might be compelled to rely on US citizens to depoison or sanitize the environment.
US citizens run an extortion of the weak, farming of the poor business. And extortion/farming schemes are not, contrary to US citizen claims, run to the benefits of the extorted/farmed.
The environment is a lot like that super hot chick that dresses like a slut and teases every man that looks her way.
So do we slap her or make nice?
.
Concern for the environment is a worthwhile concern. The "environmental movement" is a fraud that is bought and paid for by corporations. Ecology "advocates" are useful idiots at best.
Renewable energy works, but only when it is decentralized. Decentralization of any kind does not fit into the corporate model.
Conservation is hard to tax and is not profitable.
Renewable Energy would be quite competitve, I am certain, if Coal Power had to pay for its negative externalities, and if Nuclear power had to pay for its own insurance, and the total cost of power, from construction through decommisioning and 10,000 years waste storage, were accounted for, without any government subsidies.
Economically speaking (at least) decentralized renewal energy beats centralized renewable energy by a wide margin.
"The greens don’t look forward to a life of ease but only backwards to the days when man eked out a day to day existence while always on the verge of death."
You mean like the child miners of the 1800's and 1900's? The song "16 tons" is all about miners who made a few bucks a day, most of which was then spent at the company store for luxuries like food. The company owners looked forward to a life of ease. The workers who toiled for them and destroyed the environment in the process eked out a day to day existence while always on the verge of death. Of course you Rand assholes think that's peachy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pfVvqLM_e4
Dude, like where did those child miners come from? As in all the pitious stories of the terrible conditions of the industrial revolution, you bleeding hearts neglect to realize how much worse it was for the folks who willingly flocked to toil.
Dude, the child miners came from the parents who were owned by the company store. Or they came sniffing around for dangerous jobs because the oligarchs forced their farmer parents off their land, or the oligarchs bought up the land. Or JP Morgan caused a bank run in order to convince Woodrow Wilson to sign the Federal Reserve Act, and starving people flocked to the mines. Go fuck yourself and your oligarch friendly view of history.
Yeah, sure, because the farmer oligarchs wanted to get out there and farm the land themselves.
lol
Funny also that prior to the industrial revolution you hate so much, those same children were cursed with back-breaking farm labor such that most of them died before they reached adulthood. You act as if they were stripped at gunpoint from their prep schools. This is clearly not the case.
Also of note is that the only child laborers who were really mistreated during the industrial revolution were orphans who were confined to state orphanages. Parents who sent thier children to work actually, you know, cared about them, and wouldn't send them somewhere dangerous. If they were in such bad straights that they relied on child labor in a monopsony to survive, then they were doomed in any event. Their labor allowed them to survive, and save enough to enter the middle class.
Or did you think that the middle class emerged because the government WILLED IT SO?
Or did you think that the middle class emerged because the government WILLED IT SO?
____________________________
In the US? It is not a matter of thinking, it is a matter of knowing.
The US citizen middle class emerged thanks to the state government in the US.
Nice rationalization for the rest. Made gradually with everytime, it would have happened anyway.
US citizen sense of responsibility.
This is silly.
While everyone else on the planet is drilling in the ocean, just beyond our territoral limit, we are farting around with Marcellus shale & oil sands. BP incompetence notwithstanding (kick them out of the fields, don't fine them, that is a slap on the wrist) and let everyone else know that it's one mistake and you are done, and the CEO is going to jail, and then let them drill the daylights out of it. It's nuts to let China and God knows who else (Liechtenstein?) drill oceans that are within spitting distance* of our shores.
Once the oceans are tapped out, we will have hopefully become a little more efficient, and can extract Marcellus & sand oil till our hearts are content.
*professional spitters
how about we dig in your backyard or favorite park?
Give me the royalties and you can dig for whatever you like in my back yard.
Mulcair can go and fuck himself .
That is all .
BDC that lives in Calgary .
Edit ,
That goes for every politician remotely associated with Quebec , fuck every last one of you lazy , shiftless , pieces of shit .
How about them Edmonton Oilers?
BDC,
Mulcair comes to alberta and draws flak from the media therefore distracting the public from redfords attendance at the bilge fest in ol virginny
So the Austrian/Libertarian view is that the best way for the environment to be protected, is for it to be the Property of a person.
I'll go along with that; I call dibs on owning the Pacific Ocean.
Shotgun on the Gulf of Mexico.
You people really think small.
I call dibs on Earth, no....., the whole universe.
No doubt you won the Earth already, Pure Evil.
I wonder what the whole universe is worth ??? Perhaps we can leverage that !!!
P.S 50,000 light years to the Black Hole at the center of our galaxy, so appraisal is going to take awhile...
Right, because the tragendy of the commons doesn't exist, and all is well so long as property is kept common and unowned.
If you want to homestead a plot of land in the Pacific, feel free. You don't get to just plant a flag and claim ownership, though. You have to mix your labor with the land beneath the water for it to be yours. Whether you do that by fishing yourself, establishing trade routes, or undersea mineral extraction is up to you, so long as it is done.
But the tragedy of the commons exist. The good thing is that US citizen economics do not distinguish between private and public. Making the tragedy of the private existing the same way.
the tragedy of the commons is dwarfed by the tragedy of yur misuse of bandwith.
If yu and yur committe of red army bot boys is so concerned about conditions in the west, could I respectfully suggest that yu gather the courage to douse yurselves in a flammable liquid and make a resonant protest in solidarity with our oppressed? Words are cheap, Chu-mli, action, Jackson!
My point is more along the lines of, how would property rights actually function as far as protecting the Pacific Ocean. Would anyone who had any industry that could affect the Ocena have to sign a contract with everyone else who has property in, on, or bordering the Ocean?
Interesting point. Can we, USA, sue Japan for what their radiation is doing/going to do to the whole pacific or just to our shores and 200 miles out?
Are you sure? The last 15 tuna caught off the coast of Califas were radioactive. and The pile of trash from the tsunami is starting to trash the westcoast beaches. So there's the Gulf of Mexico with it's deformed shrimp, or the Atlantic with it's NYC soild waste and sewerage or Lake Wobegone.
What I took from this "article" was this:
NO environmental price is too big as long as we can suck every last resource out of this planet....
And for what?
You call what we have now....today....."progress"?
I think real progress stopped after the invention of antibiotics and indoor plumbing.....everything else just enables us to live beyond out means (I am of course exaggerting just a touch - so don't get your fucking panties in a twist)
I call this world we live in Madness....sickness....depravity.
Anyone who thinks that there should be no limits on what oil (or any other industry for that matter) should be allowed to do to the environment - as long as they own the land - needs to take a trip up to North Dakota and look at the fucking mess that is being created there for oil (not to mention the millions and millions of gallons of water that are being ruined processing the shit.... (I have seen it firsthand).
We are slowly posinoning the earth...and in turn ourselves.
That may be considered "green" by many of you ideolouges on here....but it's the goddamn truth. Humans are NOT MEANT to live in / around the chemicals and shit that is being pumped into our water, air, soil...everyday....just so we can, for a little longer, continue to live beyond our means.
There STILL IS a thing called truth out there - not everything is opinion....and the truth is, regardless of your political ideology....that we have really fucked up our home in the last 200 years.
But..I guess that's a small price for the paradise we have created for ourselves - just look around....ISN'T IT WONDERFUL OUT THERE....A REAL FUCKING UTOPIA...AND ALL BROUGHT ABOUT BY OUR "MANIFEST DESTINY" TO CONTROL THE PLANET!!!
I await your bullshit responses.....please enlighten me.
I think you are enlightened enough for one day.
"so we can blow up countries and steal your women" seems to be the answer. Hmmm. How's that for advancement!
From what I can tell from the author's prespective, if someone owned the water and they had to pay for it, alot less would be used. If people owned property next to it, they could sue for it being an eye sore.
The problem I have is that it is not practical for everything to be private property. Like my earlier post about owning the Pacific. Since all the water is interconnected, anyone using anything connected to the ocean would have to have a contract with everyone else. Or one person would own the ocean, and charge everyone else who contaminates it or uses it.
A further extension of this idea is Refusal of Service. If someone owned the roads, and it was their private property, would they not have the same property rights as anyone else? Could they note decide who they allow to use their roads? Could you not, as an extension of this, simply block people you don't like or who cannot pay, from using the service?
Could you block people from leaving their own property by buying all the land around it? Could someone own a river, lake or ocean and block others from using it? What about the waters around an island nation? Could one person effectively blockade them by refusing them service?
FYI on oil companies owning the land or "oil leases". Oil companies don't own the land they drill on, pipeline on or drive on. The land is leased for the minerals and tanks and pipelines, public or private by the acre. The owners sign leases with the oil companies or not. The public lands are the same way. The terms are negotiable. During boom times lease dollars paid to owners are very expensive and during bust times the leases are allowed to expire when the minerals haven't been drilled and the oil companies loose the lease and the money already paid. NG Leases are expiring now in the Ft Worth tx due to the glut of NG. I prefer civilization to living in caves. I prefer environmental watch dogs to the depending on the goodwill of the likes of JPMorgan and John D. Rockefeller.
Friend, the problem is, the article cleverly twists a bit of truth and a bunch of lies. Don't conflate them. Are you really going to bemoan technology, while you post a screed on the Internet?
Do you have electricity? A car? Running water, toilet, stove, cell phone, access to medical care, airplanes, library, city parks, national parks, freeze fried blueberries, 12AX7s, music on your Ipod, American Spirit roll yer owns, and fresh tomatos in season? WTF is your problem?
Some folks need to be issued a pointy stick and a loincloth, drop 'em off in a large, craptacular wooded area for about six months, and then see what we got, then. Humans are not separate from nature, yeah I love nature as much as the next guy. Self-loathing folks - you wanna die, go for it. Don't drag everyone else down. By the logic of this "principle" human beings would never have invented fucking FIRE, because some stupid ass nugget would have lodged a complaint before anyone even got a bed of coals going. Hm.
We could have 7 billion people born and die over a few million years, then die-out slowly, or else real fast, whatever, but still living in caves, dieing of old age at 27 years, and eating whatever nasty shit happens to be around, and smite verily any geeks building ploughs and shit.
or,
We can have this 7 billion people flare into existence, all at once, and live actually increasingly 'nice' and agreeable lives, get smart as hell, wise-up a fair bit, do really clever shit, build shit, experiment with shit, and do all sorts of unforeseeable shit and extend out life out to 85+ years old ...
Well, I know which path I'd choose. Sweet little Earth has bought us along for the ride of a lifetime, so she'll just have to mend her dishevelled cosmc lingerie, once we're good and done fucking the juices dry from her awesome lovely curvature.
I hope it was good for her too.
Space Base:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=GeNpFOkc-4I
On a long enough time line the survival rate for everyone is _____. It's an evolving thing and time is ticking away. There just vanished another time frame to post this. Enjoy the moment.
Tried to post this on the original article's website, but it seems to not want to let me? Hopefully I'm not out to lunch on this one, or turning into some tree-hugging hippy...
Generally a fan of the articles posted here on the Ludwig Von Mises Institute of Canada, but this one completely misses the mark for me.
I find nothing in this article that justifies inflamatory comments like:
"Proponents of the latter, especially politicians like Thomas Mulcair, want to see mankind emaciated, bowed down before them, and entirely submissive like a back alley mutt that has been kicked hard in gut all too many times"
This article also debases the entire argument of how much value do Canadians place on preserving our natural resources, deflects responsibility from both private organizations and the government from being transparent about risk assessment/management, and doesn't consider the possibility that Canada is a resource-exporting country that is rushing to sell off its natural assets to make quick profits at the expense of long-term prosperity.
As a Canadian myself (one of no political affiliation, as I feel none of the Canadian federal parties adequately represent my values), and a person who's never felt it is wrong to ask "does this make sense?", I find it remarkably narrow minded to summarize environmentalists in this fashion.
Furthermore, it disparages the precautionary principle when in fact it would seem the failure stems from the moral weakness of our elected officials and our weakness as individuals to hold our elected officials accountable.
Sort of feels like the author is throwing out the baby with the bath water.
-FN
The Canada oil sands are fucked period. Decimate your country you stupid fucks. How is that going to work now with oil at $83.00 bucks and falling. Don't worry i'm sure it will go back up so you can continue fucking up ypur land.
they have the Bernank to thank- oil at $40 a barrel and the canucks will be begging for americans to come up to fish and vacation there again
The Canada oil sands are fucked period. Decimate your country you stupid fucks.
*************
Typical clueless uninformed-jump on the green bandwagon asshole-
The Canada oil sands are fucked period. Decimate your country you stupid fucks. How is that going to work now with oil at $83.00 bucks and falling. Don't worry i'm sure it will go back up so you can continue fucking up ypur land.
this article is absolute horeshit- the environmental damage from tar sands is the ultimate in man's vulgarity so that a bunch of fat fatties can cram Target parking lots full of their Tahoes and Dodge Rams. mother nature needs a break and when she decides that humans have become too much of a burden we will go the way of the dinosaur. fuck us all and let God be our judge.
Burden of proof is on the lawyers.
This is the epitome of the keyensian economic plan of dig a hole and fill it back up. The government "hey we can build all the equipment and employ the dump fucks to shovel shit, who gives a fuck if it makes ecomomic sense".
This is the epitome of the keyensian economic plan of dig a hole and fill it back up. The government "hey we can build all the equipment and employ the dump fucks to shovel shit, who gives a fuck if it makes ecomomic sense".
'is it the collective collaboration of an enigmatic symbiotic and neo-multilateralism, that espouses human nature to conjoin in its feral enthusiastic to self immolation -- ultimately forcing mother natures hand -- or, is it the Greek God's sole discretion to let nature run its own course in the universal marathon of Gods' creation?'
jmo?
at ease and contentment. dream on,
that is not even close to any reality
an intelligent person would dare imagine.
let us consider life on mars in ease and contentment?
i ask, who will cut the grass?
ease and contentment. more fucking funny.
So... Exactly who owns the tar sands? I'm talking about the land itself. Who owns and grants the rights to mine them?
Wouldn't It be slightly to very hypocritical of the author if the word "government" appears in either list?
Or, is that exactly the author's point? It's not very clear whether the author is writing ironically or is an idiot. In fact I happen to know that the government is the "owner", the land is "public" and the government (provincial or national it doesn't really matter when making the point) grants mining rights. The Canadian tar sands projects are great examples of large corporations cooperating with and influencing provincial and national government and very poor examples of private property rights.
Css1971-You are correct. The author is conflicted at best. Development and progress does not exclude common sense. Actually, I like the concept of the "Cautionary Principle", too bad Government and Private industry would hate it.
There are thousands of people that have lived in a home for years and had no problems when along comes big oil, a sewer pump station, big gas or a caustic dump that is dubbed safe with only a small "odor problem". Then the sickness starts and gets worse with time. All association is denied and when it can no longer be denied, the retort is prove it. Prove that the plume of toxic gas passed over your property 3 months ago, that you inhaled it and it made you sick at 6:15 AM. Fat chance-so everything must be OK, correct.
So, "odor" becomes a code word for poison. "Sour" is a code word. Government knows this, private industry knows this. The residents find out, but when they do it is too late. Their health is gone, property value destroyed and job lost. This is hardly a case for private property rights.
som folk is fer it
and some is agin' it
me...i haven't made up my mind
The article is a little too weak to be appreciated.
But when the collapse happens and the revolution unfolds and after the mass hysteria takes its toll and the survivors, if any, crawl back to the surface of the frozen desolate dark planet where bigfoots, or is that bigfeet, abound, it won't matter anyhow.
"The precautionary principle is typically defined as “if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific evidence that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.”
Uh, no.
The burden of proof is upon the one making the claim. Notice how weasely this guy gets, twisting around sound resoning going back several thousand years, gotta be a beauracrat at best.
What follows after the "precautionary principle" in this article may well be bullshit, and it likely is, because the premise is complete twaddle.
The tar sands would not be developed at all if not for extensive subsidies from the Canadian GOVERNMENT! So much for free enterprise and private property. And, neither would nuclear power. So, I am all in favor of both free enterprise and priviate property. Let's remove the subsidies and let the chips fall where they will. I am confident that idiotic ideas like tar sands oil and nuclear power will be immediatelhy abandoned.
By the way, the Keystone XL pipeline has nothing to do with supplying the U.S. with fuel (in case you cared about that). It has everything to do with the fact that the price of oil in Europe (the "Brent Crude" price) is much higher than the U.S. price (called "West Texas Intermediate") and that this price difference seems set to continue well into the future. So, if the KXL pipeline is completed, that tar sands crude can be piped directly to the Gulf coast, bypassing the U.S. market entirely, and be sold at the European price. What's more, the oil SURPLUS that is currently stored in Cushing, OK, can be shipped to the Gulf coast and similarly sold at the European price. So, this pipeline will actually decrease the supply of oil available to U.S. consumers, causing the U.S. price to rise to meet the higher European price.
Previous post::
“”Yeah, we need more oil to feed guzzling air craft carriers on humanitarian missions.””
And it got 14 + hits. It goes to show that the beloved ZH reader may be dumber than thought.
These things don’t run on fossil fuel anymore. Full speed is no longer “making smoke”, it is bouncing around atoms. Maybe more unsafe overall, but unwise to sink one of these things in or near your own waters or shore line.
I’m sure he / she was speaking figuratively, everyone knows that the carriers are nuclear. There are some dumb ones on Zero Hedge but no one is that dumb – well except for the one who thinks that we’re that dumb ………. Sorry, am I going to fast for ya
The US military is the world’s biggest user of petroleum.
The United States spends more than $20 billion per year on air conditioning for troops in Afghanistan and Iraq ….. WTF
An aircraft carrier with no oil is just a runway at sea. Useless.
Unless them planes is nookular now.
WTF is because all the generators, that furnish all the power for US personnel facilities, run on diesel fuel which is purchased from SA at premium prices, transported by contractors, at premium prices througn Pakistan at theft and premium prices and finally to the bases and some of the fob's. When i was over there there was a rumor that all the bottled water (which is all American soldiers and contractors use) had to come through Saudi Aribia and there was a fee imposed on each bottle. We had pallets of waterbottles outside our huts.
Peak Oil
Peak Over-population.
What could go wrong?
Because you can never prove a negative, the precautionary principle is Luddite bullshit deliberately intended to retard invention.
no, this principle has nothing to do with luddites
it has no deliberate intention to avoid anything excpt fuk_u disasters b/c "nukuler is safe"
or MBTE in the drinking water in miniscule pperBillion and causing cancer b/c it is a ketone and some shithead proved it led to cleaner AIR!
if you don't understand the problems with "intervening" WHERE INTERVERNTION IS NEITHER NEEDED, NOR ADVISABLE: you are projecting here, imo
what are you projecting? your own retardedness
check it out, you viscious little anti-simplicity bullshit artist who paints with his own feces
lo^0k up at wtf you wrote, you ignorant little toy-boy!
the MTBE story was disinformation. the purpose of the additive, was to homogenize different sized molecules, allowing lower octane solvents to be blended, to get more gallons of gasoline per barrel. then they charge you a little bit more, because they made it CLEANER. the improved emissions, were achieved, because the lower octane solvents, had less dissolved solids in them.
this is the same idea used in healing in the most ancient guilds and in the "pre-historic" storytelling traditions, is it not?now, with the ecosystem, this is hard to apply b/c dead trees don't talk; or hire lawyers; [much like my approach to the amyWinehouse denoument]
so maybe the dictum should be: first do no irreparable harm? nah. then we end up with EIRs piled to the county permits office ceiling, building everywhere, no more deer on the freeways, and only rare command performances here on ZH by tyler's pet deer, aka nancyPelosi... and, irreparable harm, too!this leads to slewie's tree-hugger dictum: first, don't, BiCheZ! (you've fuked things up enuf, already!) {also good advice re: partying w/16-17 year-olds} [however, of the two,...]
i could care less about this writers' rhetoric, agenda, or argument
i just wanted to talk about this principle: we are careful to respect it with each other, not only in medicine, but also in law, where people are concerned; and yes, this applies to the practitoner, not the patient, NOT the one being "acted upon"; it is the caveat of compassion in that respect
but property?
well it wasn't so long ago tolstoy (1828-1910) was thinking about freeing his serfs; the nobility who owned the (fuedal?) estates owned the people who lived on the land, too. they were slaves...
so (as in america and elsewhere), the russian serfs were freed by law in 1861
and so on...
but to have a caveat of compassion forNature and for theEcosystem (oiko-) and for theGlobe, itself, not the "-al-ism", but the true "home" of everyone (the oiko-)~~well, maybe tomorrow, eh?
don't let the oiko-nomics keep ya from getting yer fuking heads outa yer asses for too much longer, ok?
Comments here make me sad. As usual. So much socialism. So much irony.
Folks, we have one shot. Where we are and what we are is a fluke - celestial comedy. I say make the most of it. Not by living in caves and picking berries off shrubs, but by seeing what we can do before we realise how totally irrelevant it all really is.
take it easy noobie! 8 weeks/ 20 posts
you're no dummy but you are an elitist prick, imo
back off the site criticism, or i'll clean the fuking floor with you, toy-boy
if you want to discuss ideas, fine; please D0 so; you seem to be an accountung specialist; conservative; pro-capital (risktakers uber alles) and extremely intolerant of anyone who can run circles around you, backwards, which is about 100 bloggers, here
the banksters can act thru any polity, thru debt: any party, any legislature, any laws governing influence, and certainly via the MSM anywhere
stop pretending conservative values dictating the debt pile is something good, ok?
and i'm also tired of background nihilism furthering politcal agendae (it really doesn't matter{a'la dead freddy mercury}, so follow me and be really fukling styooopid), so i think that you are a shitheaded moronic asswipe
perhaps it is time for you to learn that postulating how totally irrelevant it all really is is done only by people who are not equipped to perceive the relevance or are insane
i differentiate only b/c you are learning...
The global petroleum industry is the poster child for the sanctity of private property rights????
HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHH oh please, try again. Lame post.
Now, we could delve into the rise of the conglomerate in the US, as in Standard Oil, and discuss the LIMITS of property rights given the scale and power of the corporate model in the past 150 years and apply that to constitutional theory...but that might take some actual thought.
But really, holier-than-thou over the Alberta projects on property rights grounds....truly laughable. They are essentially state projects as the Canadian constitution ensures provincial ownership of land and resources. The development companies are just agents of the state.
Standard Oil decreased the price of kerosene by 90% from the time it was founded to the time it was carved up for Thanksgiving Dinner by government wolves. A true story of the success of capitalism and the distructive power of governments that feed on jealousy and class warefare.
and the demand for kerosene stayed constant b/c people didn't switch to lighting w/ electricity?
or cooking w/ gas?
how'd kerosene prices do compared to, say, whale oil over the same period of time, whatever tf it is
standard oil's original paradigm was downside monopoly, in transprt and refining, not in production. So yes, economies of scale helped bring down prices to consumer. But then came backward integration and true Oligarchy and monopoly situation, when you control from reservoir to pump; then you can do what you like. And Teddy Roosevelt saw that and acted on it, like a true president who fights monopoly positions. He created a HUGE worldwide precedent by regulating dominant position of Oligarchs to hamper their control of the market. You chose the wrong example. If you believe in efficient markets.
Standard Oil - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
.
"once-communist nations such as China" FAIL
In order to save the Earth, we will have to destroy it.
Mulcair = dultzz
Ps....
Fuck you Harper.
The Alberta govt and Canada in general are a bunch of fucking idiots, the hypocracy is sickening. Not about the article, oil is dirty businesss period- fact is we would be in the stone age without it.
But the problem(s) in Canada stem from a single mindedness, much like the saudis, Canada is too focused on resources. with 70%+ of the sands foreign owned, that means processing overseas, less tax, you know the rest.
And the issue is that people in alberta, even the PE & finance guys are too stupid to know this. And if you are too stupid to know this and all you know is resources and china is outbidding you, then you don't make great returns. Companies cannot compete with countries. Especially when you consider that on a absolute return basis, most o&g companies never make money, much like mining companies, the play is on the inside, sometimes the stock gets out at a premium- but on a revenue and net profit basis they don't make as much as everyone thinks.
The only thing, that makes me smile a bit is if the SHTF is canada's super backwards property rights laws so the state can take back the land if they want.
billy
canada has their focus on resources because after that it's pretty thin, hockey players, soft lumber and rye whiskey. it tales off pretty quick. as to the political situation it's like everywhere else, corporately captured under ralph klein
and nowhere to go but down the drain
There's fringe, and there's lunatic, and then there's this guy...Mr Miller. A whole new exploratory level of shameless pandering, presented in a style that would make any acquatic bird of northern lake fame shriek in echoing loonatic laughter....
at the insanity of the human species.
"the tragedy of the commons"?!?!? The tragedy of common sense gone missing is more like it....the role of the state is to defend property rights? Well, yu've given the whole gain away there, guv'nor! For millenia, people have got along just fine sharing property, sharing resources, sharing values that don't begin and end with...."whattabout my share"...
Hey, jerkoff, there's more to life n livin than huddling around property lines watching for violations of yur sacred right to belong to the parasitical rentier classes....
usufructure.
Look it up. Although mysteriously underweighted in the web world, the term has fruitful implications for those who value production, producing, the value of custodial useage, social cohesion, taking what yu can use and leaving the rest to posterity, sanity as sharing, abundant mind, ours not mine, a complete antithesis to the phony breakdown between self n other that sets up the doctrines of private vs public good, and derives it's only pleasure from arid debating over useless semantics.
Stateless livin...stainless take, stainless givin - it's for the birds, it is...works just fine for everybody else too! No state, no states of mine, just of mind, mind seamlessly integrating what is perceived and who is perceiving it....pastures o plenty instead of yur grey desert of dessicated debate. http://youtu.be/Hm4O55ErlNA [Richard Earnshaw\In Time... hug a loon today, an leave the lunatics to soil their own nest!
Go easy on the Loons!
Are we that doomed?
We are a blight on the planet.
Too many of us!
What we don't do to ourselves, nature will do for us.
Like the dolphins said; "Thanks for all the fish."
Then the Zorgons did their thing......
Are we that doomed?
We are a blight on the planet.
Too many of us!
What we don't do to ourselves, nature will do for us.
Like the dolphins said; "Thanks for all the fish."
Then the Zorgons did their thing......
I work in the oil biz. In Alberta.
The oil sands is quite a desperate undertaking. As usual we are leaving the development of alternatives till the last minute, or later. Too little of the profits from fossil fuels is being dedicated to replacement of it as energy source in the near future.
Economically it is an ever more dangerous game as it becomes a bigger slice of Canada's economy. Alberta has seen many boom and bust cycles with it's fossil fuel based economy. Those busts happened with conventional fuels that were easier to extract with higher profit margins. The margin on oil sand fuels is thinner. The complexity of technology and economy required to make it profitable leave it even more vulnerable to a variety of problems.
Expansion requires big capital. Profit requires high demand. It is a production and product that is only really suitable in a booming economy. Also many places are starting to see that alternatives to fossil fuel must be made to work. That capital will flow away from things like the oil sands.
I see the oil sands going back to being a welfare bum. A very expensive and messy make work project.
Too bad. I make a decent living off it. But things are always changing.
I worked for the oil industry twenty years ago and for twenty years. Its a closed shop uber-alles Oligarchy and its in cahoots with those other gangsters in power, the oil kingdoms of Arabia. To them all alternative solutions have to be introduced by THEM, according to their agenda, or not at all. FOr obvious reasons as these are huge technostructure Oligarchies they like to FIRST use their inhouse skills and thus promote fossils up to the hilt, before going off base into alternates. That is what being an Oligarch means : we control the surplus revenues of our precious black gold and/or alt. energy silver type substitute and its venues.
We need to get away from fossil fuels and go alternative outside the Oligarchy loop. Look at Germany and solar, its made the plunge. Lets see how that plays out, if fossil energy goes soft in mega depression, they may be in big trouble...Awesome tipping times.
Too bad your and kedi's post come so far down.
...
these post will be read by people who care abpout the actual dialogues here, ori
or, if some miss this b/c these guys didn't open this for 6 or more hours, the bloggers, both of whom i value, have at least done the work of writing something here which they could copy/ edit/expand/cut/tailor for another entry sometime next week
no, they're not all about attention, and they just responded to the piece in a normal way, as themselves
they talked about the oil business and the tar sand business, as have others here
they are not trying to lead a parade, ori
they are just trying to communicate normally and they are pretty good at it, as are many here who are hoping you accept my deathMatchTM challenge, i'm sure!
With so many neurological diseases on the rise, and proof that pregnant mothers living near freeways doubles the risk of autism. I think the path of finding more and more oil to use is not a wise one. We are poisoning ourselves.
I am not a green sheeple though. I more just live the way I think is best, and the prepper lifestyle is very green.
I was irritated with the way the article painted a picture of us being on the verge of death without oil. There were vaccines and surgeries before oil. Oil is not necessary for all of the human inventions.
Feh. The earth has been putting itself through cycles of self-mutilation since its formation that dwarfs anything people could do to it. Mining oil sands is equivalent to pricking the earth's skin for an allergy test. We're just ants scurrying around on its surface and despite all the credit we give ourselves as superior species, we still scamper around in a panic when the earth throws a natural occurrence at us that we can't handle. Even better, we place ourselves in the middle of areas where we're prone to exposure to events like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc and then act horrified when we're displaced or lives are lost because of these events.
Masters of the planet my ass. The planet doesn't know we're here and the planet won't know when we're gone. Nor does it care.
But what if you are trying to live at or near where they are pinching?
Oil should continue to slide - and as such, government revenues should plummet. The many things that oil tax revenues pay for will no longer be affordable.
http://bullandbearmash.com/index/oil/weekly/
More drivel form the Mises guy. Tyler, please lose this moron.
You can add Simon Black, Casey Research, John Aziz, Of Two Minds and the rest of the despicable right-wing bloggers that pollute minds.
What the green movement hates is not pollution but humanity itself. Its followers would rather see humans beholden to nature than conquer the deprivation the complete natural world holds for mankind.
__________________________
It is rather funny. US citizens work in pair so they can monopolize speech through false dichotomy.
Okay, from this US citizen's own mouth, the US citizen green movement hates humanity itself and want to see human beholden to nature rather than conquer the deprivation etc
Now lets take a look at the other side of the argument: we've got US citizens who aim at the depletion of resources, imposing technology after technology that cant pay themselves off.
What is the best solution if you want to push humanity in a state of deprivation?
Establish barriers to the environment or consume all resources?
You've got food and you want to starve people.
What is the best: lock away the food or consume it all? What is the most satisfactory way?
And that is how US citizens work in pair, good cop, bad cop, both want to achieve the same.
And to fulfill their hatred on humanity (dixit this US citizen), US citizens have to adopt the surest path: the one going to depletion.
Even the thighest barriers can be porous. Depletion is not.
And that is good. US citizen agenda for humanity.
No matter at what US citizens you look at, they aim for the same.
STFU
I purpose a government supported test project called 'oxcart '. Gather up a bunch of enviro nuts and give them an oxcart full of their favorite drug and see if they can produce a viable economy and sustainable living standard.
Oh wait, wasn't that called 'occupy wall street' ????????
This article shows the moral bankruptcy of free market religion. Private enterprise has been dragged kicking and screaming into every environment measure since the original clean air and water acts were passed. It is absolutely shameful to try to excuse the record of private enterprise in environmental progress.
I continue to come to ZeroHedge for the articles and will continue enjoying the comments of certain posters but trying to read through the comments in general is becoming much like squeezing through a smelly OWS campsite to buy a cup of hot coffee.
Let the screeds begin but I won't be reeding them.
Meh!
Article = more opinion than information.
The author is conflicted at best. Development and progress does not exclude common sense or safety. Actually, I like the concept of the "Cautionary Principle", too bad Government and Private industry would hate it.
There are thousands of people that have lived in a home for years and had no health problems when along comes big oil, a sewer pump station, big gas or a caustic dump that is dubbed safe with only a small "odor problem". Then the sickness starts and gets worse with time. All cause and effect association is denied and when it can no longer be denied, the retort is "prove it." Prove that the plume of toxic gas passed over your property 3 months ago, that you inhaled it and it made you sick at 6:15 AM. Fat chance---so everything must be OK, correct?
So, "odor" becomes a code word for poison. "Sour" is a code word for poison. Government knows this. Private industry knows this. The residents find out, but when they do it is too late. Their health is gone, property value destroyed and job lost. By the way a major part of the heath problem is their mental health that precludes them from organizing an adequate response. This is hardly a case for private property rights.
There are lots of smart technology companies who have figured out how to harvest these resources more efficiently and without the environmental destruction -
watch the last 4-5 minutes if you insist EROI is not possible without eco-catastrophy -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2QC2MuI-KI&feature=youtu.be
If we in Canada were not harvesting the oil sands for profit all the environazis would be demanding billions to remove the oil from the pristine sand.
Have ANY of you even researched the bitimen extraction process? Little to NO water is used anymore and what little is used is clean before being released.
The people against the athabasca oil sands are the same environmental wackos who would relish the thoughts of everyone going back to the stone age.
Canada will not allow our economy to be run by the likes of Al Gore. When you yanks have cleaned up yor own backyard we may talk. Until then, we'll look after our own environment and economy ..thank-you very much.
Anyone who claims Canada is in any way spoiling it's environment has never been here. Armchair experts, all of you.
Educate yourselves before commenting on something you know nothing about.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5701
Educate yourselves before commenting on something you know nothing about.
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5701
What utter drivel! Private wealth is generated by privatizing profits while externalizing costs. The oil sands are an extreme example and rightfully draw criticism.
And regarding the precautionary principle, in a world of limited liability corporations, the risks they are allowed to take should quite legitimately be limited to those for which they could be held to account if their risky bets were to go sour. The oil sands cover a landmass roughly the size of France, so unless the oil sands extractors in the aggregate hold capital sufficient to clean up a mess of that magnitude, the government is quite right to apply the precautionary principle to circumscribe their activities.
If we follow your logic, the TBTF banks have every right to take risky bets that far exceed their ability to cover, leaving someone else (a.k.a. the taxpayer) to hold the bag when they go belly up. How does that sit with your Austrian economic principles?
What utter bilge.
400 years of thievery and false promises from industrialists and the world has reached the point of utter ruin.
1 trillion barrel of oil, 2 trillion tons of coal since Watt and what is there to show for it? Nothing that can pay the oil and coal bills, that's what.
Blame the environmentalist all you like but the only cause of the industrialists' failure is industry itself. What undermines industry is its own excess.
This author is an idiot. His arguments are pathetic, Rush Limbaugh quality delusions. ..Way below ZH standards.
This author is an idiot. His arguments are pathetic, Rush Limbaugh quality delusions. ..Way below ZH standards.