GLOBALIZE THIS!

Friday, March 04, 2005

SOCIAL SECURITY IN COMPARATIVE CONTEXT

Fuck Social Security "reform." By the time 2080 rolls around, and this wildly sucessful and popular social program faces a 0.4-0.7 percent of GDP actuarial shortfall, the world's oil spigot will be running dry.

According to many geophysicists, we have already passed the peak of world oil production. The world will continue to discover and produce oil, but at a diminishing rate. The oil will run out sometime between 2040 and 2070. Not a drop left.

Given that oil is the building block for almost everything in our daily lives, from Tivo and H2s to chili half smokes, and at the moment indispensible to the world economy, one might be excused for thinking this is a pretty big deal, worthy of urgent attention of our political leaders (isn't Bush always clamoring about leadership?). Talk about a threat to our way of life.

The Department of Energy had this warning about peak oil last month:

* Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before initiating crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit for two decades or longer.

* Initiating a crash program 10 years before world oil peaking would help considerably but would still result in a worldwide liquid fuels shortfall, starting roughly a decade after the time that oil would have otherwise peaked.

* Initiating crash program mitigation 20 years before peaking offers the possibility of avoiding a world liquid fuels shortfall for the forecast period.

The DoE didn't mention what might happen if we wait until after peak oil to address the problem, but it's easy enough to extrapolate from the scenarios they do present. It's going to make the modest tinkering needed to secure Social Security pretty insubstantial.

¶ 3/04/2005 08:23:00 AM

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Wednesday, March 02, 2005

LOVE THOSE IMPORTS

The US trade deficit is growing like gangbusters--so fast our ports can barely keep up!

It seems these days that the only thing keeping the trade deficit in check might be the capacity constraint of shipping logistics. We just can't get the imports in here fast enough!

From today's FT:

Container ships bound for California last year had to wait offshore for several days before a berth became free, delaying deliveries to retailers and pushing up costs for carriers and shippers.

If congestion persists, routing Asian-made goods through the Suez Canal and across the Atlantic might become a viable alternative, said John Isbell, director of logistics for Nike, the sports clothing brand.

Shippers have sought to bypass west coast congestion by redirecting cargo through the Panama Canal to east coast ports, such as Savannah and New York. But this is pushing the canal towards full capacity and forcing sharp increases in rates.

Mexican ports and more northerly west coast terminals, such as Seattle and Vancouver, have also absorbed some overspill but analysts said they were not big enough to resolve the crisis."

¶ 3/02/2005 05:08:36 PM

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