Alaskan Pipeline Is Taken Offline

New worry for drivers: BP shuts oilfield
Damaged pipeline in Alaska affects about 8% of U.S. oil production; record gas may be coming.

It seems that almost every day there is a new news item that makes the notion of a smooth power-down an ever more remote possibility.

Jay Hanson has argued that as we go over the peak, civilization as a whole will do everything it can to make matters worse.

He argues that civilization will increasingly devote itself to war and waste it's remaining resources attempting to destroy itself. He argues that it's not a single conscious idea that leads to this outcome, but instead our individual choices that lead to making such a cataclysm possible. He and others have argued that when times are hard (or perceived to be), people will lend support to violent leaders that will propose war, as a solution to take out scapegoats.

And it seems that's what the US is doing. We're spending the last of our irreplaceable resources in order to expend ourselves in a last big war, in which bush and friends will glorify themselves and make lots of money.

Is there any other reason to throw away the future of our children and grandchildren in a war that ultimately can't be won unless we're prepared to nuke 100 million people? Even then, we can't get and keep the oil. It would still be a loss.

Who bets on a dead horse? We do.

In the mean time, we've had to stop maintaining our country to pay for this war. Most of our highway projects have been put on hold. Congress is cutting Amtrak's budget to free up funds to pay for the war. Privatization of our electrical utilities has done damage to our infrastructure, as profits are now more important than reliability.

Our oil infrastructure is aging. In the article above, it was pointed out that maintenance to the oil infrastructure has taken a back seat to profits. they argue when prices are low, then there's no point in maintaining the fields. And I see the point. The free money that our government takes out of our pockets and gives to the oil companies, along with tax breaks and tax exemptions should not be spent on maintenance, as the oil executives say they don't need them anyway. Even when they tells us times are hard for them, they make generous profits.

Your tax dollars are better spent on summer homes in France, lobster dinners and jet-setting around the world.

Besides, now the oil industry has a sob story to take to Congress. they can explain how their pipeline broke and Congress will shake us down and give them more free money. We pay at tax time and we pay at the pump.

Screwing up maintenance to the point engineering failures, is a money making tactic for the oil industry and the electrical utilities. Every failure is an excuse for Congress to give the industries more free money.