Wild Life / energy politics / volume 10 number 11, November 2008

All in the Same Boat
John F. Doyle

Recently a friend shared an article with me about BP and a gas pipeline in Georgia, Russia’s fractious neighbor.(1) She noted that Sarah Palin and John McCain appear to favor US protection of Georgia from Russia, maybe even by war. My friend then asked, “Ya think it’s about their democracy or their oil?” Well, no.

I’ve spent time and effort on this and related topics, so I offer this essay, which ranges broadly because, like waves upon the sea, the topic flows across many disciplines and breaks upon distant shores.

In the first place, it doesn’t matter much whether it’s about the pipelines running through Georgia or about Georgian “democracy.” Georgia has very little oil, so it’s not about that, either.(2) I also doubt the United States would go to war with Russia over Georgian sovereignty, even if Georgia were to become a member of NATO. As the government of the US has proved time and time again, it has never particularly cared about treaties when they impinge on certain perceived interests.(3) In fact, it would be very difficult—not to mention flat-out disastrous—for the United States to go to war with Russia for any reason.

The real issue at hand, I think, has to do with Russia and its apparent hopes to ramp up its oil- and gas-based power in Eurasia to counter: 1) US and NATO threats to southwest Asia (particularly, but not only, to Iran); 2) US and NATO expansion into what, rightly or wrongly, Russians have considered their country’s “sphere of influence” for more than 150 years;(4) and mostly 3) the chafing embarrassment Russia has endured in a post-Soviet “unipolar” world (to use a Russian term) dominated by the United States of America.

In the USA, while their plans and rhetoric may differ, on such issues Bush/Cheney (and our dear Ms. Condoleezza Rice), McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden all are essentially in the same boat.

In fact, we’re all in the same boat, and it’s a planetary vessel.

First, despite intentions and rhetoric to the contrary, Europe will end up siding with Russia in an energy contest. They really have little choice, because without West Siberian gas and oil Europe’s complex economy would quickly implode. Siberian gas runs a large percentage of most countries in the European Union and Central and Eastern Europe. Natural gas supplies more than 20 percent of total EU primary energy consumption, imports from Russia (mostly from west Siberia) are currently about 30 percent of that total, and most EU energy infrastructure investments lately have been in gas. (At about 30 percent, only coal has a larger share than gas.) For their gas supplies, some countries are even more dependent on Russia than the EU as a whole: France 16%, Italy 30%, Germany 42%, Austria and the Czech Republic 75%, Greece 82%, Hungary and Poland 90%, Finland and most other Central and East European states 100% …(5) And despite troubles in Russian infrastructure investment, these percentages will probably tip further toward Russia, as European supply regions such as the North Sea continue to decline, and as Russia’s Gazprom (maybe the biggest company in the world(6)) continues to pressure competing producers and pipeline route holders (like BP, Georgia, the Central Asian states, the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline supporters, and Algeria) and continues to buy up competitors and equipment suppliers around the world.

Here in Alaska we like to think we have a lot of natural gas, and some of us apparently believe that our gas and oil can save the US economy. Actually, these days Alaska supplies only about 2% of US total energy consumption, which comes out to only about 0.4% (less than one-half of one percent) of the world’s energy consumption.(7) Numbers like that—and even our offshore gas, ANWR, and coal wouldn’t change them substantively—will not save anything. (Except, perhaps, the personal bank accounts of recipients of Alaska’s Permanent Fund dividends, the coffers of the State of Alaska, and the businesses and politicians who benefit from both.) Compared to West Siberia’s reserves and production alone, Alaska’s gas is barely on the map. Even setting aside Russia’s largely unexplored arctic continental shelf (by far the largest continental shelf in the world), which has huge proven reserves of gas, the Russians have upwards of 40% of the world’s natural gas.(8)

Significantly, the Russians’ moves in and beneath the Arctic Ocean, about which they are very serious and for which they’re apparently prepared, promise to increase their percentages. And as even some people in the US State Department are beginning to understand, climate disruption (also known as “global wierding”(9)) is rapidly opening what Alexander Herzen 150 years ago called the Arctic “Mediterranean” to international competition for petroleum, shipping routes, subsea minerals and marine/territorial aggrandizement. It’s a competition that could cause a resource war—a war that would certainly be directed partly at Alaska.(10) It’s also a competition the USA could lose, since our country generally ignores the Arctic and is comparatively ill-prepared to project any interests there.(11) Alaska’s absentee governor Sarah Palin’s recent stupid comments regarding US relations with Russia(12) only emphasize this longstanding affront to Americans who care about the Arctic.

In sum, despite their own instabilities and the complex nature of global gas economics and politics, for some time to come Gazprom and Russia will almost certainly carry the day, whatever Ms. Rice, BP, or the State of Alaska say to the contrary. And don’t forget that Russia holds huge reserves of renewable energy sources, coal, and other natural resources.(13) Not only that, but with other global gas producers Russian corporatists have been talking about creating a cartel modeled on the OPEC oil cartel.(14) Oil…Russia was arguably the first major producer in the world. Today, as it was in the late 1980s (and though it probably won’t last long), Russia is again the world’s biggest producer.(15)

Second, for several good reasons Russians and their government are not very happy with the United States. For example, as the Soviet Union entered the wrenching change that caused it to collapse, George H.W. Bush agreed with Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward.(16) Now it’s just a few years later and voilá—under Clinton and George W. Bush NATO has expanded to include Bulgaria, Estonia, East Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia…and now Ukraine and Georgia?! This expansion is definitely “eastward,” and the facts on the ground daily prove the United States’ breach of what the Russians must consider a very serious promise. Russians have endured untold hardships as a result of centuries of (unsuccessful) invasions, and this breach is a threat driven deep into the Russian cultural psyche. Pragmatically considered, it is impossible for Russians to relax their stance vis-à-vis NATO.

Why NATO exists at all now that its raison d’être, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, no longer exists, is another relevant question.(17)

Along with NATO’s expansion, the United States played a huge and direct role in the nature of the newly former Soviet Union’s disastrous economic breakdown during the early 1990s—a breakdown much deeper than the Great Depression of the 1930s. United States policies and actions were obviously not the only reasons for the post-Soviet collapse, but the US role was strategic and catalytic. It arose primarily from a set of carefully massaged intentions fixed on making it possible for western capitalists to pick up whatever pieces of the former Soviet empire became available. (The “western” part hasn’t worked out so well…) These intentions, inspired and supported by certain people in the United States, made the depression and political backlash in Russia worse than it otherwise might have been.(18) Until I understood what was actually going on—a short time—I worked in this painful endeavor, which devastated the lives of tens of millions of people and continues to affect us all.

Moreover, in its dislike of the US and NATO and in its muscle flexing, Russia is not alone. With little attention from most Americans, during the past several years a very powerful Asiatic geopolitical bloc has developed, in part to counter a weakening Atlantic bloc. One seemingly benign example of this Asiatic bloc is the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, whose members include Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, with official observers India, Iran, Mongolia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)(19)—an interesting mix.

The novelist Philip K. Dick once said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”(20) Well, the third and by far the most important aspect of my perspective involves a reality check: Although the people of this country may not yet realize it, and although assuredly they don’t want to hear it (much less experience it), the United States is in the process of toppling from its position at the top of the international totem pole—while the totem pole itself is threatening to topple. In geopolitical terms, the United States seized opportunities resulting from war (World Wars I and II) to make ourselves into the world’s single superpower. And we’ll topple ourselves as a result of war: more than 150 armed “conflicts” since World War II (certainly wars to the many millions who experienced them), Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, the “War on Terrorism,” the “War on Drugs,” etc.(21) Simply put, the US empire is imploding, as all empires eventually must. Jesus said, “all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”(22) In 1241, just after Tatar-Mongolian conquests spelled the end of Kievan Rus’, Alexander Nevsky defeated a Teutonic invasion, saying, “He who comes to us with the sword, shall perish by the sword.”(23) (Although Russians subsequently endured two centuries of Mongolian rule, since then not one major invasion of Russia has succeeded.)

It’s becoming more obvious every day that our great country is bankrupt. This is due in part to the economic speculation we’ve allowed to run rampant since the 1980s. But primarily, it’s due to decades of military overspending—at $612 billion in fiscal year 2009, more than 50% of the world’s total—compounded most recently by senseless and illegal post-9/11 war-mongering.(24) Our military is weakened, at least temporarily, and every other country in the world knows this. Like everyone else’s on this planet, our energy supplies are increasingly stressed, our water supplies are increasingly parched and we’ve lost billions of tons of topsoil due to industrial agricultural practices. In fact, the last two generations of Americans have used more energy than all other humans in all of history. We live like kings and queens of yore: daily each one of us uses the average equivalent of approximately 100 human slave laborers working 24/7!(25) Simply to maintain our country’s existing civil infrastructure will cost $4-5 trillion (in current US dollars) in the next decade and more.(26) And to retool for a “sustainable economy” could very well cost even more, take even longer and in the end most assuredly would never be truly resilient.

Most of us know that during the past few decades, our wealthy political/corporate leaders (both Democratic and Republican) have shipped our manufacturing economy overseas and replaced it with the service economy we have today. Our prices for goods have been low as a result, but since 1973 the earning power of average Americans has been stagnant or has declined.(27) We’ve all been paying the price since the single wage-earner family evaporated into a fog of work, automobile dependency, and overconsumption. And as far as the United States’ emerging and long-predicted economic collapse goes, it’s quite simple: there’s no painless way to bail out a fiat currency gone sour.

Most tellingly, for some time now Americans are no longer anywhere near the top of any list of basic indicators of human and social wellbeing, such as life expectancy, infant mortality, education, standards of living, health, and safety. And today, though Americans are the most obese, we’re no longer even the tallest people on the planet.(28)

Of course, to state such facts about the United States doesn’t mean there aren’t good things happening in this country—there are tens of millions of good things happening! Nor does it imply that I hate the country—I don’t—nor that one shouldn’t vote for positive change—everyone who can, should—nor that other parts of the world have no problems. For here is another reality check—the state of the planet today. The planetary realities aren’t going away. Every thing and every person on Earth, including you and me, is enmeshed within these realities. They will cascade upon other realities in this world, to drive changes that are already dizzying. The increasing friction between Russia and the United States and NATO, and the rising prices in your local food markets and gas stations, result from this cascading global change.

The truth is, we’re all in this boat together.

The natural systems change underway today is literally unprecedented. Water, soil and habitat depletion, climate disruption, atmospheric chemical shifts, and oceanic thermal and chemical changes affect the entire surface of this planet. Plainly, major human and other natural systems are passing tipping points, and many are progressing into states of collapse.(29) In purely economic terms, the costs of these changes will be catastrophic, but of course our economics can’t even factor in many of the true costs.(30) And despite decades of regulation, environmentalism, and meetings and negotiations, despite “sustainable development” and “green capitalism” and “techno-fix” after techno-fix, the relationships that make up most of the natural systems upon which our wellbeing and our lives depend, are becoming asymptotic. Asymptotic relationships can be illustrated mathematically by curves that approach infinity, and they usually don’t last long in nature….

Here are a few examples from among hundreds, if not thousands, of planetary realities. Carbon dioxide emissions from mankind are growing four times faster since 2000 than during the 1990s.(31) Oceanic acidification and dead zones are increasing, while concentrations of phytoplankton—the basis of the marine food chain and the source of half the planet’s oxygen—have declined as much as 30% in northern oceans since the 1980s.(32) Amazonian rainforests are still falling—and still burning, as for years more than 10,000 fires have ravaged trees in an area as big as Alaska and Yukon combined.(33) Fresh water supplies are being drained away.(34) Since World War II, hundreds of man-made chemicals and radionuclides, many of which are extremely toxic, have been introduced into the biosphere (and into our own flesh and bones) without any testing.(35) Our population dynamics continue to reflect those of a rodent species, rather than those of a large and intelligent primate.

Furthermore, let’s not forget that all petroleum-based economies—that is, all large economies on the planet—are facing Peak Oil. This is the term for the point at which the rate of petroleum extraction is reached globally, and from which the inexorable downward slide in petroleum supply begins, accompanied by uneven but inexorable price increases. (Rather than a steep peak, what we’re experiencing looks more like a plateau.)(36) Even our military agrees that Peak Oil is a reality.(37) Yet for many reasons, we have few if any really meaningful replacements for oil and gas at hand, and we have little time to develop them (much less to build and deploy them) before they are sorely needed, although we knew they were needed at least a generation ago.

Like Russia, virtually every industrialized country on the planet faces astronomical infrastructure costs, simply to keep things running as they do today. And due to industrial civilization’s dependency on huge energy inputs (inputs which are going to diminish in the near term), and due to ecological limits many decision-makers refuse to contemplate, already many societies are unable to keep things running smoothly. The world’s industrialized food supply and distribution systems have been following a path blazed by the collapse of global industrial fisheries during the past few decades. The same goes for aviation and tourism, and even large-scale mining.(38)

Most important, we’re in the middle of the sixth great mass extinction in the planet’s four-billion-year history. Every single day, human actions—your actions and mine—are causing between 40 and 200 species to go extinct.(39) In cascades of change, our actions are forever changing the future of life on this planet—and us.

It takes time, fortitude and an open mind to grasp the scope of planetary change underway today. But at least three things are clear. First, we have come to the end of the “Age of Exuberance,” the five centuries that followed the expansion of Europeans’ habitat by voyages of discovery, which sociologist William Catton describes in his seminal book Overshoot: The Ecological Basis of Revolutionary Change. Second, despite the fact that corporate planning time frames remain not much longer than the fiscal quarter, our collective actions during the past 200 years or so have rushed us into geological time frames. In other words, it will take millions of years for Earth to adjust to industrialization (approximately 300 million years as far as oil goes).(40) Finally, industrialization has essentially been a gigantic uncontrolled scientific experiment on the entire planet. In some respects, it’s becoming evident that it’s a failed experiment.

So recently joined by the Russians, Georgians, Chinese, and others, our globalizing society and economy support ways of living that are a human train wreck unfolding in slow motion. About half of the 6,698,096,000 people on our grossly overpopulated planet(41) today live in conditions our common hunter-gatherer ancestors would have considered completely unacceptable. For the first time ever, in the last couple of generations virtually every square inch of land on this planet (and much of its oceans—including the Arctic Ocean) became subject to claims of ownership, which claims only rarely seem to coincide with our appropriate relationships of unity and stewardship. One doesn’t need to be a rocket scientist to understand that we live amidst the greatest disparities in wealth and wellbeing the world has ever known.(42) Yet only a few economists and professional managers seem to understand such issues in realistic human terms at all.

Along with globalization, the world’s central banking system and electronic financial globalization, or “financialization,” make up a worldwide speculative con job if ever there was one. The currency crises and patch-up jobs that have ricocheted across the planet during the past thirty years alone prove that despite repeated attempts to mitigate structural problems, this dubious alliance has been falling down for a long time. Of course, few of the wealthy con artists have been brought to task. The current debacle in the United States is merely accelerating the collapse of this global house of cards, the next stage of which will involve another joker in the deck: $600 trillion worth of derivatives.(43) Economically, we’ve seen only the tip of the iceberg.

Coming back to Russians and Georgians and Americans, it seems to me that as far as others in the world are concerned, more and more it may not really matter what we in the United States think or say. More and more, and in one of history’s supreme but ever-recurring ironies, in the Coming Times we Americans will find ourselves less and less able to do what we’ve become accustomed to doing during the past century or so. More and more, the people in all industrialized societies will find themselves in essentially the same situation. For any of us to act as we have been acting will incur increasing costs of all kinds, costs which are already overwhelming. In a world whose natural and human systems are unhinging, powerful countries—particularly the United States—are on their way to becoming very complex, and in the process no doubt very wounded, paper tigers. Well, not quite paper tigers—after all, like the United States and Russia,(44) many countries now have a lot of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction….

Then again, maybe—hopefully—We the People of the United States are on our way to the more localized focus and provincial outlooks that ran in this land before we were pulled into international and imperial arenas some 120 years ago by our leaders then.(45) I understand why my hope may not be shared by many indigenous peoples and particularly Native Americans, whose experiences during the past 500 years on this same land are of a different character altogether. Everyone on the Earth needs to recognize their experiences, but perhaps more important, we need to learn from the results that continue to flow from the events themselves. After all, we will all probably find ourselves in the same boat.

John F. Doyle is a multidisciplinary communicator, thinker, and change agent. Raised in an Alaska gold-rush town and Iñupiaq fish camp, he has nomadic tendencies and limitless curiosity. Following years of extensive overseas travel and work, and studies in international law and relations, history, engineering, natural resource policy, and music, John is using his global perspectives and love of nature to shape his life’s work. He is currently writing a book and leading a group focused on adapting to cascading global change, and co-founding a research and educational organization called The Resilience School.

NOTES:

1. Associated Press, “BP reopens Georgia gas pipeline,” New York Daily News, 14 August 2008, www.nydailynews.com/index.html (retrieved 12 September 2008). My thanks to Kay Rollison for this.
    
2. Georgia has proven reserves of approximately 35 million barrels and in 2005 produced less than 2,000 barrels per day. CIA Factbook, sv. “Georgia,” www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/gg.html#Econ (retrieved 19 September 2008). [Editor's note: this site was updated as of Nov. 20.]
    
3. A recent most glaring example is the current conflict in Iraq, which violated the Charter of the United Nations (Chapters VI and VII, particularly Articles 39, 41, 42, and 51). Between in 1778 and 1871 the United States ignored most of the approximately 370 treaties it signed with various Native American nations, tribes and bands. William L. Hensley, “What Rights to Land Have the Alaska Natives?: The Primary Question,” May 1966, www.alaskool.org/projects/Ancsa/WLH/WLH66_1.htm (retrieved 2 November 2003); Wikipedia, sv. “List of United States treaties,” “U.S. Native American Treaties,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_treaties (retrieved 22 June 2008).
    
4. See, for example, Andrew E. Kramer, “Russia Claims Its Sphere of Influence in the World,” The New York Times, 31 August 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/09/01/world/europe/01russia.html?hp (retrieved 31 August 2008); and Michel Chossudovsky, “‘Cold War Shivers’: War Preparations in the Middle East and Central Asia,” 6 October 2006, www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=PRA20060930&articleId=3360 (retrieved 8 October 2006).
    
5. Percentages are 2006 figures. Many Central and East European states are not members of the EU, but they are almost fully dependent on Russian gas supplies. Gazprom’s big gas pipelines run through Ukraine, and most Central Asian gas flows through the same lines. The “Russian” imports of Poland, Hungary and Ukraine include Central Asian gas. Agata Łoskot-Strachota, “Gazprom’s expansion in EU: Co-operation or Domination?,” Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich im. Marka Karpia / Centre for Eastern Studies, www.batory.org.pl/doc/GP_EXP_US_1.pdf (retrieved 18 September 2008); International Energy Agency, Key World Energy Statistics, 2008, various. www.iea.org/textbase/nppdf/free/2008/key_stats_2008.pdf (retrieved 18 September 2008); and Environmental News Service, “EU, Caspian, Black Sea States Plan Common Energy Market,” 30 November 2006, www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2006/2006-11-30-02.asp (retrieved 30 November 2006.)
    
6. Gazprom is the largest natural gas company in the world. It accounts for more than 90% of Russia’s gas extraction, and supplies Europe via the world’s longest pipeline network. By market capitalization, Gazprom is the world’s third largest corporation, but some of its assets may be undervalued. Gazprom is also in the oil business: via subsidiaries it holds reserves of 120 billion bbl, which ranks Gazprom behind only Saudi Arabia (263 billion bbl) and Iran (133 billion bbl) in oil and oil equivalent reserves. Banking, insurance, media, construction and agriculture round out Gazprom’s interests. Just more than 50% owned by the Russian state, Gazprom provides about 25% of all Russian tax revenues and accounts for just less than 10% of Russia’s GDP. Wikipedia, sv. “Gazprom,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazprom (retrieved 18 September 2008); and Valery Vladimirovich Remizov, Deputy Chairman, Gazprom Management Committee, Gazprom Moscow, personal communication, 27 January 1999.
    
7. David Hulen, “How Much of the U.S. Energy Supply Does Alaska Produce?,” Anchorage Daily News, 18 September 2008, http://community.adn.com/adn/blog/24417 (retrieved 19 September 2008); BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008, table “Primary Energy: Consumption,” (PDF) June 2008, (retrieved 19 September 2008).
    
8. Russian gas statistics are complicated by the fact that world oil and gas reserves statistics are among the most “slippery” and manipulated statistics of all. Historically the numbers have been subject to change with wielders’ economic and political intentions. In 1994, Russia’s “proven” gas reserves (excluding gas hydrates) were slated at approximately 1,711 trillion cubic feet (tcf), then approximately 34% of global proven reserves. But total “possible,” “hypothetical,” and “speculative” reserves in Russia were approximately 5,068 tcf, or some 40% of the world’s total reserves. John F. Doyle, “A Contextual Analysis of Russia’s Crude Oil Industry,” (MALD thesis, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, May 1995), 31, 33 ff. Presently Russia is generally understood to hold approximately 1,680 tcf (quite similar to the 1994 figure), but its world percentage has shifted downwards as other producers have changed their reserves estimates. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that Russia has just more than 27%. DOE, “International Energy Outlook 2008,” table 6 “World Natural Gas Reserves by Country, as of January 1, 2008,” DOE/EIA-0484 (2008), www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/pdf/table6.pdf (retrieved 19 September 2008). BP estimates Russia’s reserves at about 25%. BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008, table “Natural Gas: Proved Reserves,” June 2008, for URL see note 7 above.
    
9. L. Hunter Lovins created this accurate formulation.
    
10. For background on the rising tensions in the Arctic, see Alex Shoumatoff, “The Arctic Oil Rush,” Vanity Fair (May 2008) www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/arctic_oil200805?printable=true&currentPage=all (retrieved 15 April 2008). (My thanks to Misha Jones, a wise Russia hand who died near Vladivostok very recently, for this article.) More specifically, see Barry Wigmore, “Polar War Could Break Out in 12 Years Over Scramble for Oil and Gas, British Think-Tank Warns,” Daily Mail, 25 September 2008, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1061216/Polar-war-break-12-years-scramble-oil-gas-British-think-tank-warns.html (retrieved 25 September 2008); and Scott G. Borgerson, “Arctic Meltdown: The Economic and Security Implications of Global Warming,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2008), www.foreignaffairs.org/20080301faessay87206/scott-g-borgerson/arctic-meltdown.html (retrieved 25 April 2008). On “resource wars” generally, see Micheal T. Klare, Resouce Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2001).
     
11. One of the first things the United States needs to do regarding the Arctic is ratify and sign the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. Both Canada and Russia are seriously boosting their military presence in the Arctic. For example, see Randy Boswell, “Russia to Increase Its Arctic Military Presence,” Canwest News Service, 11 June 2008, www.canada.com/topics/news/world/story.html?id=e701e1d7-812a-4f81-af00-619bcbced92e (retrieved 26 June 2008); and Lee Parsons, “Canada to greatly expand its military presence in the Arctic,” World Socialist Website, 23 February 2006, www.wsws.org/articles/2006/feb2006/cana-f23.shtml (retrieved 22 September 2008).
     
12. Sarah Palin has made dangerous comments about Russia and Mr. Putin since becoming the Republican party’s US vice presidential candidate in August 2008. As indicated above, her first national interview with ABC News’s Charlie Gibson revealed her ignorant antipathy towards Russia. ABC News / Charles Gibson, “Excerpts: Charlie Gibson Interviews Sarah Palin,” 11 September 2008, http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Vote2008/story?id=5782924&page=1 (retrieved 12 September 2008). Similarly, during a vacuous interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, Palin defended her foreign policy expertise based on Alaska’s proximity to Russia by baiting our northern neighbor. CBS News / Katie Couric, “Exclusive: Palin On Foreign Policy,” 25 September 2008, www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/25/eveningnews/main4479062.shtml (retrieved 26 September 2008).
     
13. Though dated, a comprehensive source on Russian natural resources is Robert G. Jensen, Theodore Shabad, and Arthur W. Wright, eds. Soviet Natural Resources in the World Economy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983).
     
14. Apparently the idea has been put on hold. Kostis Geropoulos, “Gazprom says Nyet to Gas-OPEC,” New Europe (Issue 802) 6 October 2008, www.neurope.eu/articles/90102.php (retrieved 6 October 2008). But see Hassan M. Fattah, “Putin Visits Qatar for Talks on Natural Gas and Trade,” New York Times, 13 February 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/02/13/world/middleeast/13putin.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/N/Natural%20Gas (retrieved 19 September 2008).
     
15. According to the International Energy Agency, Russia produced 12.4% and Saudi Arabia produced 12.3% of global oil and gas condensate output in 2007. The BP Statistical Review shows that Russia and Saudi Arabia both produced 12.6% of global oil output last year. International Energy Agency, “Producers, Exporters and Importers of Crude Oil,” Key World Energy Statistics, 2008, 11, for URL see note 5 above; BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2008, table “Production,” June 2008, 8, for URL see note 7 above.
     
16. US and NATO officials have always claimed that George H.W. Bush did not promise not to expand NATO eastward, but this is flatly refuted by Mikhail Gorbachev. I trust Gorbachev’s statements. See Adrian Blomfield and Mike Smith, “Gorbachev: US could start new Cold War,” The Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2008, www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/1933223/Gorbachev-US-could-start-new-Cold-War.html (retrieved 5 June 2008).
     
17. NATO’s limited theater of operations (Europe and North America) was based on the allies’ perceptions of grave threat from the USSR. As outlined in the North Atlantic Treaty, NATO’s goals include “to reaffirm [the members’] faith in the … the Charter of the United Nations and their desire to live in peace”; “to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples”; “to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area”; and “to unite their efforts for collective defence and for the preservation of peace and security.” The North Atlantic Treaty, Washington DC, 4 April 1949. Here is a more commonly understood version of NATO’s purpose (and post-Soviet status):
    
    “If Mr. Gorbachev means business [about demilitarization] … then the fundamental premise of the Western alliance is in jeopardy. NATO exists to counter the threat of overwhelming attack from the East, using its own inferior armored forces and the threat of nuclear retaliation to keep the peace. If there is no Soviet threat, NATO needs another reason for being.”
    
    Craig R. Whitney, “The World: Adjusting to Moscow’s Disarmament Plans; For NATO, Gorbachev’s Overture Has Drawbacks,” New York Times, 18 December 1988, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DEED6143EF93BA25751C1A96E948260 (retrieved 22 September 2008).
     
18. Anne Williamson, “The Rape of Russia,” testimony before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services of the U.S. House of Representatives, 21 September 1999. www.russians.org/index.htm#Russia (retrieved 20 January 2007); David McClintick, “How Harvard Lost Russia,” Institutional Investor, 13 January 2006, www.dailyii.com/print.asp?ArticleID=1039086 (retrieved 27 February 2007); and Gerardo C Bracho and Julio G. López, “The Economic Collapse of Russia,” Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Quarterly Review (March 2005), http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa5480/is_200503/ai_n21376580 (retrieved 13 June 2008).
     
19. See the organization’s website (www.sectsco.org/home.asp) and Dr. Michael A. Weinstein, “Intelligence Brief: Shanghai Cooperation Organization,” Power and Interest News Report, 12 July 2005, www.pinr.com/report.php?ac=view_report&report_id=325&language_id=1 (retrieved 20 February 2006).
     
20. Philip K. Dick, “How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later,” speech given in 1978, http://deoxy.org/pkd_how2build.htm (retrieved 19 September 2005).
     
21. Gore Vidal provides a list of 201 US wars and acts of aggression between 1948 and 1999 in Gore Vidal, Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press / Nation Books, 2002). See also Noam Chomsky, Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky, edited by Peter R. Mitchell and John Schoeffel, (New York: The New Press, 2002); and Harold Pinter, “Art, Truth and Politics,” acceptance lecture for The Nobel Prize in Literature, 10 December 2005 (pre-recorded and shown on video, Börssalen, Swedish Academy, Stockholm), http://nobelprize.org/literature/laureates/2005/pinter-lecture-e.html (retrieved 12 December 2005).
     
22. Matthew 26:52, KJV.
     
23. Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak, The Battle of Russia: The Nazi March Frozen, US propaganda film, 83 minutes, 1943.
     
24. Chalmers Johnson, “We Have the Money: If Only We Didn’t Waste It on the Defense Budget,” Tom Dispatch, 25 September 2008, www.tomdispatch.com/post/174982 (retrieved 25 September 2008); and especially Anup Shah, “High Military Expenditure in Some Places,” Global Issues, 27 March 27, www.globalissues.org/Geopolitics/ArmsTrade/Spending.asp?p=1 (retrieved 5 June 2006).
     
25. The number of “slaves” we use differs with assumptions. Jennifer Barker, “How Many Energy Slaves Do We Employ?,” www.solwest.org, www.earthtoys.com/emagazine.php?issue_number=06.08.01&article=slaves (retrieved 5 December 2007); John Michael Greer, “Agriculture: The Price of Transition,” The Archdruid Report blog, 12 December 2007, http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/ (retrieved 14 December 2007).
     
26. In a major report, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gave US infrastructure efforts an overall grade of “D.” These figures cover investment to bring existing systems to “good condition,” but do not account for new infrastructure, growth in population, “security investments,” or present costs associated with breakdown: five-year Total Investment Need (ASCE’s reported figure) = $1.6 trillion; twenty-year Total Investment Need (my extrapolation based on ASCE figures) = $4-5 trillion. ASCE, “Report Card for America’s Infastructure,” 2005, www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/page.cfm?id=103 (retrieved 22 April 2008).
     
27. Julia B. Isaacs, Isabel V. Sawhill and Ron Haskins, “Getting Ahead Or Losing Ground: Economic Mobility In America,” The Brookings Institution, report in series of the “Economic Mobility Project,” 20 February 2008, Table 1, “Trends in Real Median Family Income,” 28, also 3, 62, www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/Economic_Mobility_in_America_Full.pdf (retrieved 5 June 2008).
     
28. “US Slips Down Development Index” BBC News, 22 July 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7511426.stm (retrieved 22 July 2008); Leonard Doyle, “American Inequality Highlighted by 30-Year Gap in Life Expectancy,” The Independent, 17 July 2008, www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-inequality-highlighted-by-30year-gap-in-life-expectancy-869736.html (retrieved 20 July 2008). See also James K. Harter and Virginia F. Gurley, “Measuring Well-Being in the United States,” Association for Psychological Science Observer, vol. 21, no. 8 (September 2008), www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/getArticle.cfm?id=2394 (retrieved 2 October 2008).
    
    Experts note that “height is indicative of how well the human organism thrives in its socioeconomic environment.” Today the US population is “at the bottom end of the height distribution in advanced industrial countries.” Paul Krugman, “America Comes Up Short,” New York Times, 15 June 2007, http://select.nytimes.com/2007/06/15/opinion/15krugman.html (retrieved 15 June 2007).
     
29. The evidence for accelerating complex systems change is overwhelming. For a compilation that illustrates recent changes, see John F. Doyle, “Collapse Reality 101” in Coming Times: Selected Readings and Miscellanea (no. 11), Anchorage, Alaska, 8 May 2008, pp. 4 ff. See also John Michael Greer, “How Civilizations Fall: A Theory of Catabolic Collapse,” The Archdruid Report blog, 2005, www.xs4all.nl/~wtv/powerdown/greer.htm (retrieved 30 October 2007). For a general scientific perspective, see for John P. Holdren, “Science and Technology for Sustainable Well-Being,” Presidential Address, American Association for the Advancement of Science Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 15 February 2007, Science, vol. 319. no. 5862 (25 January 2008), pp. 424-34; www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5862/424 (retrieved 9 February 2008).
     
30. For a brief overview, see Wikipedia, sv. “Full cost accounting,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_cost_accounting.
     
31. David Fogarty, “Global carbon emissions rising rapidly – study,” Reuters, 25 September 2008, http://in.reuters.com/article/topNews/idINIndia-35652620080925?rpc=401& (retrieved 28 September 2008). Methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. “Methane discharges from subsea permafrost increases dramatically,” The Post Peak Oil Historian, 22 August 2008, http://cid-yama.livejournal.com/tag/methane+arctic+globalwarming+runawayglob (retrieved 27 August 2008).
     
32. On ocean acidification, see Les Blumenthal, “Oceans' Growing Acidity Alarms Scientists,” McClatchy Newspapers, 16 December 2007, www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/23138.html (retrieved 16 December 2006); and Associated Press, “Seas Off West Coast Very Acidic, Study Warns,” MSNBC, 23 May 2008, www.precaution.org/lib/08/ht080529.htm#Seas_Off_West_Coast_Are_More_Acidic_Than_Scientists_Had_Predicted (retrieved 30 May 2008).
    
    On oceanic dead zones, see Anne Minard, “‘Dead Zones’ Multiplying Fast, Coastal Water Study Says,” National Geographic News 14 August 2008, www.precaution.org/lib/08/ht080814.htm#Dead_Zones_Multiplying_Fast_Coastal_Water_Study_Says (retrieved 15 August 2008); and “UN Warns Ocean Dead Zones on the Rise,” Environmental News Service, 19 October 2006, www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-19-03.asp (retrieved 19 October 2006); and Kenneth R. Weiss, “Dead Zones Off Oregon and Washington Likely Tied to Global Warming, Study Says,” The Los Angeles Times, 15 February 2008, www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/15/7082/ (retrieved 15 February 2008).
    
    Regarding the planet’s oxygen supply, we do not fully understand phytoplankton population dynamics, but large declines obviously would affect atmospheric chemistry in detrimental ways. See Goddard Space Flight Center, “Phytoplankton in Northern Oceans Have Declined From 1980s Levels,” 8 August 2002, www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20020801 plankton.html (retrieved 25 August 2008); John Roach, “Source of Half Earth’s Oxygen Gets Little Credit,” National Geographic News, 7 June 2004, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton.html (retrieved 24 September 2008); Sönke Johnsen, “Shedding Light on Light in the Ocean: New research is illuminating an optically complex environment,” Oceanus Magazine (vol. 43, no.2 ), 2004, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, www.whoi.edu/cms/files/dfino/2005/4/v43n2-johnsensosik_2383.pdf (retrieved 22 August 2006).
    
    Only about four percent of the world's oceans remain undamaged by human activity. Helen Briggs, “Map Shows Toll On World's Oceans,” BBC News, 14 February 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7241428.stm (retrieved 15 March 2008); Julia Whitty, “The Fate of the Ocean,” Mother Jones (March/April 2006), www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/03/the_fate_of_the_ocean.html (retrieved 26 Februrary 2006).
     
33. Daniel Howden and Jules Steven, “South America chokes as Amazon burns,” The Independent, 5 October 2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3028701.ece (retrieved 6 October 2007).
     
34. Elizabeth Mygatt, “World’s Water Resources Face Mounting Pressure,” Earth Policy Institute, 26 July 2006, www.earth-policy.org/Indicators/Water/2006.htm (retrieved 30 July 2006); and John Vidal, “Cost of Water Shortage: Civil Unrest, Mass Migration and Economic Collapse,” The Guardian, 17 August 2006, www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0817-02.htm (retrieved 20 August 2006).
     
35. “Toxic Chemicals By the Hundred Found in Blood of Newborns,” Environmental News Service, 14 July 2005, www.ens-newswire.com/ens/jul2005/2005-07-14-01.asp (retrieved 15 July 2005); Jeff Donn, “Pharmaceuticals Found in US Drinking Water,” Associated Press, 10 March 2008, www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/10/7577/ (retrieved 10 March 2008); Matthew Brown, “Toxins Reach Remote Lands: Dangerous Levels: Study Finds 20 Parks That Are Contaminated,” Associated Press, 27 February 2008, www.adn.com/front/story/327606.html (retrieved 28 February 2008); and “Contaminated U.S. Site Faces ‘Catastrophic’ Nuclear Leak,” New Scientist, 14 July 2008, www.precaution.org/lib/08/ht080918.htm#Contaminated_U.S._Site_Faces_Catastrophic_Nuclear_Leak (retrieved 19 September 2008).
     
36. For in-depth coverage of Peak Oil, see The Oil Drum website (www.theoildrum.com). For one version of its implications, see Nicolas van der Leek, “The New Oil Order: The End Of The World As We've Known It Is Rapidly Underway,” Oh My News International, 30 June 2008, http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?menu=c10400&no=382977&rel_no=1&isPrint=print (retrieved 3 July 2008); Scott Waterman, Anchorage, personal communications, 2006 and 2007. My thanks to Brian Yanity for the comment about “Plateau Oil,” personal communication, Anchorage, September 2008.
     
37. Donald F. Fournier and Eileen T. Westervelt, Energy Trends and Their Implications for U.S. Army Installations, US Army Corps of Engineers, ERDC/CERL TR-05-21, September 2005, http://stinet.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=A440265&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf (retrieved 18 November 2007); and Adam Fenderson and Bart Anderson, “US Army: Peak Oil and the Army's future,” Energy Bulletin, 12 March 2006, www.energybulletin.net/node/13737 (retrieved 23 April 2006).
     
38. On the unsustainability of industrial food systems, see “Crop Prospects and Food Situation - No. 2, April 2008,” FAO Corporate Document Repository, www.fao.org/docrep/010/ai465e/ai465e02.htm (retrieved 21 April 2008); Peter Salonius, “Intensive crop culture for high population is unsustainable,” CultureChange, 10 February 2008, www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=154&Itemid=1 (retrieved 1 June 2008); James Randerson, “Food Crisis Will Take Hold Before Climate Change, Warns Chief Scientist,” The Guardian, 7 March 2008, www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/07/7538/ (retrieved 7 March 2008); and “Warming Climate Undermines World Food Supply,” Environmental News Service, 3 December 2007, www.ens-newswire.com/ens/dec2007/2007-12-03-05.asp (retrieved 4 December 2007).
    
    On the state of global fisheries, see Richard Black, “'Only 50 years left' for sea fish,” BBC News, 2 November 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm (retrieved 2 November 2006); and Jeremy Hance, “Global warming will diminish fish catch in the Bering sea,” mongabay.com, 16 January 2008 http://news.mongabay.com/2008/0115-hance_bering.html (retrieved 16 January 2008).
    
    On the ongoing collapse of the aviation industry, see Giovanni Bisignani, “State of the Air Transport Industry,” speech by the Director General & CEO of the International Air Transport Association at its 64th Annual General Meeting, Istanbul, 2 June 2008, www.iata.org/pressroom/speeches/2008-06-02-01.htm (retrieved 2 July 2008). Thanks to Walter Parker for confirmation of this development, personal communications, Anchorage, August 2007 and September 2008.
    
    On emerging problems in the mining industry, see for example Saijel Kishan and Gavin Evans, “Metals Surge as Rationing Cuts Power at Biggest Mines,” Bloomberg News Service, 5 May 2008, www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aCUU6NbjPfmM&refer=home (retrieved 5 May 2008).
     
39. Emily Dugan, “An Epidemic of Extinctions: Decimation of Life On Earth,” The Independent, 16 May 2008, www.precaution.org/lib/08/prn_epidemic_of_extinctions.080516.htm (retrieved 3 Aug 08); John Michael Greer, “Civilization and Succession,” The Archdruid Report blog, 26 September 2007, http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2007/09/civilization-and-succession.html (retrieved 29 September 2007); “North American Freshwater Fishes Fading into Extinction,” Environmental News Service, 9 September 2008, www.ens-newswire.com/ens/sep2008/2008-09-09-02.asp (retrieved 9 September 2008); “Migratory Shorebirds Vanishing Along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway,” Environmental News Service, 21 April 2008, www.ens-newswire.com/ens/apr2008/2008-04-21-01.asp (retrieved 21 April 2008); and Peter D. Ward, Under a Green Sky: Global Warming, the Mass Extinctions of the Past, and What They Can Tell Us About Our Future (New York: Smithsonian Books / Collins, 2007).
     
40. The emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force was recently recognized by the Geological Society of London, which declared the end of the Holocene era and the beginning of the Anthropocene. The society’s stratigraphers further declared that the Earth has entered “a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years”—perhaps 56 million years, about when the last mass extinction occurred. Mike Davis, “Living On the Ice Shelf,” Truthout, 27 June 2008, www.precaution.org/lib/08/ht080703.htm#Living_on_the_Ice_Shelf (retrieved 6 July 2008). See also Alan Weisman, The World Without Us (New York: Thomas Dunne Books / St. Martin’s Press, 2007); and Ward, Under a Green Sky.
     
41. “World Clock,” www.poodwaddle.com/clocks2.htm (retrieved 28 September 2008); Rosamund McDougall and John Guillebaud, “Too Many People: Earth’s Population Problem,” Optimum Population Trust, n.d., www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.earth.html (retrieved 10 September 2007).
     
42. Hervé Kempf, How the Rich are Destroying the Planet (Comment les riches détruisent la planète. Éditions du Seuil, 2007), translated by Leslie Thatcher, foreword by Greg Palast (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green, September 2008); Anup Shah, “Poverty Facts and Stats,” Global Issues, 24 November 2006, www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Facts.asp (retrieved 27 April 2007); and .James Wolfenson, The Other Crisis, speech by the President of the World Bank Group at the bank’s annual meetings, 6 October 1998. World Bank, Washington DC, 1998.
     
43. Derivatives are essentially unregulated and highly-leveraged bets on future price changes of an underlying asset or investment. The global value of derivatives on financial institutions’ books declined somewhat this quarter, but at a notional $600 trillion, is more than eight times larger than the $70 trillion gross world product (and more than forty times as big as US GDP). The volume of the derviatives is much, much larger than their underlying assets. In other words, the derivatives market is a mind-bogglingly huge financial bubble. Bank of International Settlements, “Derivatives Markets,” BIS Quarterly Review, September 2008, pp. 20 ff., www.bis.org/publ/qtrpdf/r_qt0809.pdf (retrieved 22 September 2008); Erik Assadourian, “Global Economic Growth Continues at Expense of Ecological Systems,” WorldWatch Institute, 14 February 2008, www.worldwatch.org/node/5456 (retrieved 22 September 2008); CIA Factbook, sv. “United States,” www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html#Econ (retrieved 22 September 2008).
     
44. Robert S. McNamara, “Apocalypse Soon: The Risk of Inadvertent Nuclear Launch Is Unacceptably High,” Foreign Policy (May/June 2005), retrieved from Common Dreams website, www.commondreams.org/views05/0510-28.htm (retrieved 5 June 2005).
     
45. The US takeover of Hawai’i might be said to have begun in 1887. Eleven years later, the United States became involved in “a splendid little war” with Spain, the upshot of which were the US colonies of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines. John F. Doyle, “A Chronology: Asiatic Russia and the North Pacific Region,” (unpublished) 1984-95; Wikipedia, sv. “Spanish-American War,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish%E2%80%93American_War (retrieved 22 September 2008).

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