The Scourge of Peak Oil

The scourge of 'peak oil' - Features - Al Jazeera English

An interesting article from Al-Jazeera on peak oil.  The fact that we, humanity, are coming to the peak in oil production worldwide is not surprising to me.  What makes this article interesting, though, are the sections that describe how lifestyles, especially in Western countries are going to change.  Some excerpts:

Whipple is blunt about what life will look like in a post-peak oil world.

"You're going to see major changes in industrial civilisation," he said, adding that he expects oil to once again approach $150 per barrel in the next 18 months. "In the US, where we aren't used to paying $10 for a gallon of gas like they do in Germany, that [$150 per barrel of oil] will really slow things down."

He believes discretionary driving will basically stop, and added: "Anything with a parking lot out front is going to be in trouble."

...

"It [peak oil] is a crisis in the sense that someone is going to have to change their expectations about mobility, and the idea that anyone can go anywhere is unlikely to continue. Sooner or later, people are going to start wondering how they will get from place to place without their cars."

Due to rising fuel costs, Perl sees flying becoming less of an option for the global population.

"I tell people to go to their favourite travel website like Expedia, and pick your destination and dates, and hit the fare selector for first class, because that's the price it will be in the future for travelling. And ask yourself if you will make the trip. Flying cheap will no longer exist as an option."

...

Professor Michael Bomford, a research scientist at Kentucky State University, said that, in the US, far more energy is used when food leaves the farm than the amount of energy required to grow it.

"The long supply chain with food makes consumers particularly vulnerable to spikes in energy prices," Bomford told Al Jazeera.

Evidence of this is clear.

On June 23 French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged world leaders to take action against the "plague" of food price surges. World food prices have risen 37 per cent in a year, driving 44 million more people into poverty.

Wheat nearly doubled in cost during the past twelve months, as Russia and Ukraine cut exports after droughts decimated crops. The UN estimates nations will spend $1.29 trillion on food imports this year alone, making it the most money spent on imports in one year, and a 21 per cent increase over 2010.

Heinberg believes oil prices are now acting as a cap on global economic activity.

"Every time the economy starts to recover it pushes [the price of] oil up, and then the economy falters," he said, "We're damned if we do and damned if we don't. If oil price declines, it is because the economy is in the toilet. Global oil scarcity has triggered the limits to growth scenario and we've seen the last of economic growth as we know it, at least in the US."

The fact of the matter is that unconstrained capitalism as the primary worldwide business model based on continuing growth will ultimately need to be replaced by a lower-growth model that recognizes and works within the constraints provided by natural resources. This is not just an energy issue, but is also going to include issues such as food and clean water. "Business as usual" just isn't going to cut it anymore.

Honor vs. Honour

There's an interesting little comment at Don't Bomb Us, a blog run by three Al Jazeera staffers. It seems that an anonymous poster can't find any articles at the Al Jazeera website for the topic "honor killings."

"Don't you think that the murder of women throughout the Islamic world by their uncles and fathers and husbands because these women have the audacity to date who they want or express what they think is newsworthy?"


And Mohammed, one of the staffers, came back with this reply:

"You make mention that our website does not mention "Honor Killings" - that is true since we don't use American English - we use English English.

"Try your search using "honour" instead - or just click here for Google results.

"You see, sometimes little cultural misunderstands can cause such a big fuss."

How true. This is just one of those little incidents that seems to be so representative of how ignorant people "think." They don't understand the subtleties of the world, expect everyone else to be like them down to the smallest details, and then get upset before considering the idea that perhaps the fault lies with them.

And, just for the record, honor (or "honour") killings are not limited to Muslims. In the UK, honor killings are done not only by Muslims, but by Sikhs, Hindus and even Christians. See more at the BBC's "Lamp and Owl." Moreover, as the "Lamp and Owl" article points out, there is nothing in Islam, Hinduism or the Sikh religions that condones honor killings.

Tom Friedman and "Deaf" Americans

This post is a culmination of several articles I've read over the past few days. The impetus for this post was the article, "Muslim leaders condemning terror to deaf?" In the article, Mark Woods asked the question, "Why don't we hear Muslim leaders condemning terrorism?" His answer was, they do condemn terrorism. "Maybe we're not listening." Ameen!

Woods also referred to a recent article by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Friedman wrote, "To this day, no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden." Now, I like Tom Friedman as a writer. I've read tons of his columns and all of his books with the exception of his most recent effort (I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback, insha'allah). Anyone who's familiar with Friedman knows that he's knowledgeable about Islam. But this was a really stupid statement on Tom's part, and I'm rather surprised that he wrote it. He's not the kind of right-wing idiot (like "fill in your favorite neo-con redneck blowhard here") who normally writes or speaks first and considers the facts later (if at all). So it was with great pleasure to see that Woods had rebutted Friedman's statement with the work of University of Michigan History Professor, Dr. Juan Cole. Cole's blog, Informed Comment, has a somewhat lengthy post in which he cites numerous "major Muslim clerics and religious bodies" that have all issued fatawa against OBL. And (hoping that Dr. Cole doesn't mind), I'm republishing that post below because, in part, I know that my Muslim brothers and sisters can use this information against those "deaf" Americans (like Friedman) who are (and remain) ill-informed about our resistance against the likes of OBL.


Friedman Wrong About Muslims Again
And the Amman Statement on Ecumenism

Tom Friedman is a Middle East expert who knows a lot about Islam. Why, then, does he keep saying misleading things? He wrote in his latest column, "To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden."

A "fatwa" is simply a considered opinion of a Muslim jurisconsult. Such opinions are numerous. First of all, almost all the major Shiite Grand Ayatollahs have condemned Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. You could say that is easy, since Shiites don't generally like Wahhabis. But they are the leaders of 120 million Muslims (some ten percent of the 1.2 billion). So that is one. Tracking these things down is time-consuming, but this should do:
Ayatollah Muhammad Husain Fadlallah of Lebanon condemns Osama Bin Laden.

So then what about the Sunni world? The leading moral authority for Sunnis is the rector or Grand Imam of the al-Azhar Seminary/ University in Cairo, Egypt. Al-Azhar is perhaps the world's oldest continuous university and has been since the time of Saladin a major center of Sunni religious authority. The current incumbent is Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi. So what about Tantawi and Bin Laden?

Grand Imam of Al-Azhar seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden. And:

The Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary, Shaikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, condemns Osamah Bin Laden.

What about Pakistan? Admittedly, it has some clerics who are fans of Bin Laden, or at least who would avoid condemning him. But the allegation Friedman is making is that no major cleric has condemned him. Try this: Prominent Pakistani Cleric Tahir ul Qadri condemns Bin Laden.

I don't personally care for Yusuf al-Qaradawi. He is an old-time Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood preacher who fled to Qatar and now has a perch at al-Jazeera. But he does have some virtues. He is enormously popular among Muslim fundamentalists. And, he absolutely despises Bin Laden and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaradawi has repeatedly condemned the latter. He even gave a fatwa that it was a duty of Muslims to fight alongside the US in Afghanistan against al-Qaeda! See also:
Yusuf al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda.

There are also substantial Muslim communities in Europe with leaderships that have explicitly condemned Bin Laden. E.g.:

Spanish Muslim Clerical authorities Issue Fatwa against Osamah Bin Laden. There are on the order of 250,000 Muslims in Spain.

High Mufti of Russian Muslims calls for Extradition of Bin Laden. The Russian Muslim community is about 20 million strong, or 15 percent of Russia's 143 million population, and is growing rapidly, so that in a century Russia may be 50 percent Muslim. So this is not a pro forma thing here.

A good round-up on this sort of issue has been put up by al-Muhajabah.

See also Charles Kurzman's page.

Friedman also does refer to a major conference of Muslim clerics, thinkers and notables wound up just Wednesday that made a powerful statement about religious tolerance and condemned everything Osama Bin Laden stands for. But he seems oddly unaware of the significance of having Grand Ayatollah Sistani, Grand Imam of al-Azhar Seminary Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, and many other great Muslim authorities sign off on this epochal statement of Muslim ecumenism.

The statement forbids one Muslim to declare another "not a Muslim" if the believer adheres to any of the mainstream legal rites of Sunnism and Shiism. The whole basis of al-Qaeda is to call the Muslim leaders of countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as well as Shiites, "not Muslims." The statement also demands that engineers should please stop pretending to issue fatwas, which should be left to trained clerical jurisconsults. This para. is also a slam at Bin Laden.

PS As for Friedman's main point, that Muslims haven't done a good job of fighting jihadi ideology and terrorism, it is bizarre. The Algerian government fought a virtual civil war to put down political Islam, in which over 100,000 persons died. The Egyptians jailed 20,000 or 30,000 radicals for thought crimes and killed 1500 in running street battles in the 1990s and early zeroes. Al-Qaeda can't easily strike in the Middle East precisely because Syria, Egypt, Algeria, etc. have their number and have undertaken massive actions against them. What does Friedman want? And, besides, he is wrong that this is only a Muslim problem. In the global age all problems are everybody's. That's part of flat world, too, Tom.