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April 4, 2004 - Art Bell
02:52:26
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Richard Heinberg - Oil Dependence
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♪♪♪ From the high desert of the great American Southwest,
I bid you all good evening, good morning, good afternoon, wherever you may be in the world's politic time zones,
all covered one way or the other by this program, Coast to Coast AM, the weekend version of the way I'm R.T.L.
Yeah.
It is an honor to be here with you, and here we go.
Here we go, I guess.
You know, I've got to do something with this, so I don't know what.
A week ago, after, I don't know, beginning to get reports, I asked the audience to illuminate me with any paranormal sexual encounters they might have had.
And the reason I did this is because I've had quite a few expert guests on the air.
Almost all whom, you know, the out-of-body people and The remote viewers and just about every one of them allude, some of them more strongly than others, to the sexual content of the paranormal.
Not easy to cover, not easy to discuss, but I've also concluded it's not possible not to discuss.
Now we're going to try and do it without becoming salacious at all.
By the way, I just read a relevant book.
And boy, was it a good book.
Yeah, there was quite a bit of salacious sex in it.
Though pretty good, I must add.
It's called Body Rides by Richard Lamont.
You might want to check into it.
It's out on the current, you know, wherever you grab your paperback books.
I'm a continual, as my wife is, consumer of books, just one after another after another.
I'm a reader, always have been.
It's called Body Rides by Richard Lamont.
It's really good.
Or really bad, I suppose, if you are offended easily.
And I understand that some of this content could become offensive to somebody.
I'm going to try and make sure it doesn't.
Here's a typical email.
Ediora, when you first put out the call for reports of astral sexual experiences, I ignored it.
Although, after listening to guests on your programs, I realized That I probably had had several of these experiences that I previously dismissed as vivid dreams.
I thought they were too unremarkable to share.
They occurred with either a former boyfriend of 25 years ago, or with someone who I didn't know during waking life, but who seemed to know me in his state, or in quotes, nice enough to get to know better.
When you stated last night that you were overwhelmed with reports of negative experiences, that's actually not quite true.
I said experiences.
Now, I do admit, over half are negative.
But she goes on, I felt that as an MA Cognitive Psychologist, I have to point out that your sample of reports is skewed toward those who have had negative experiences.
Fine, I think that's right.
Those who have had negative experiences are highly motivated to share them since they're frightening, and probably many folks who have shared these stories with friends, family, and helping professionals have had their experiences minimized.
They need the cathartic experience of telling their story to someone who will listen to them and believe them.
On the other hand, those of us who have had pleasant experiences I don't really have much of a story to tell except it happened.
It was great, refreshing, and nice to wake up to.
Any further rapturous descriptions would be a highlight of a personal nature, and the majority of folks would not feel compelled to share as they don't shout about their waking sexual experiences from the mountaintop, so I wouldn't take the large sample of negative reports as an indication that most sexual experiences are negative.
I certainly agree with her.
I do support further exploration of the topic, though, on your program.
I don't see a problem with airing these topics on late-night radio.
After all, Howard Stern can use profanity to discuss his outrageous topics during morning commute time, and we've all been exposed to the mainstream news media using phrases like oral sex during the Clinton administration.
I think we can address this topic in a dignified manner, and I agree.
I just want to emphasize again to my audience, I've been used to looking at responses for years now on various topics, some of which have had gigantic, like the shadow people, for example.
But I'm telling you right now, the response to this topic To the sexual aspect of the paranormal was just way out of the norm.
I mean, thousands of emails.
So this is a big thing that not many people are willing to talk about.
In fact, I'm going to have a lady on in a moment, a doctor who will be incognito.
And so she's chosen to call herself Dr. Incognita.
The female version, I guess, of...
But being incognito wouldn't be sexually specific anyway.
So she's going to call herself Dr. Incognito, and she's going to have a few words to tell us about all of this.
She's one of the thousands, thousands, who responded to me.
And here's, I guess, a plea I would make.
The paranormal investigators who are out there, Obviously, for obvious reasons, probably kind of shy away from this topic, I hope that a few of you, and I know you're listening this evening, will decide to headlong rush into this topic and see what you can find out.
See how really common it is.
And I'm telling you it's very common.
This is the first time I've ever seen a person die.
I'm not sure if I'm going to die.
Wishing to remain anonymous, then, here is our doctor incognita.
Cute!
Welcome to the program.
Well, hello.
It's a pleasure to be here, and thank you for the opportunity to express my viewpoints on this subject.
I'm happy for you, too.
You were one of the, I'm telling you, landslide of emails that I received.
Thousands and thousands.
Doctor, are you at all surprised that I have such a I definitely am very surprised.
You are?
Why?
Well, because, of course, that's not my specialty to get into this kind of thing in the profession I'm in, and I've had some dealings with it, partly throughout the years, but I was surprised you had so many emails sent to you on this subject.
Well, my thinking when I was finished being shocked by the wave after wave that came in was, You know, sex is a big part of life in our waking moments, in our non-paranormal moments, in our very normal moments, and why wouldn't it be a big part of life everywhere?
Everywhere.
In other words, in the paranormal or in, I don't know, in the whole paranormal world, why wouldn't it be Well, I guess the answer to that might be, well, because you don't have a body, and so you wouldn't think that sex, without the body, without the physical aspect of everything, would play much of a part.
But, wrong, I guess.
Well, the way I look at it, the sexual energy is creative energy.
The first creative energy came in when the physical universe started, which was the big
bang.
That energy is orgasmic energy.
So the spirits that then were formed, because spirit is light, and that is when light started.
When the starting of the spiritual creation came energy first.
And with that explosive energy, there was a sensation there that was more than just
It was a oneness of spirit.
Excuse me?
I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.
So the fact they call it the Big Bang is simply coincidental?
Yes, but you know what?
There are many coincidences.
We say, oh, they carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.
And it's true.
If your shoulders are hurting you, you are overburdened with certain things.
So we often pick words that are very descriptive of what's going on.
And so I find that the energy that's there, we all crave to be one.
So we might crave to be one in a physical union, whether it be heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual.
It is still a craving to be one.
And it replicates then Well, in what way?
I mean, I interview people who talk about out-of-body experiences and other aspects of the paranormal.
Is that one way that these sexual encounters are occurring?
and differences that cause us to fight one another with the physical.
Well, in what way?
I mean, I interview people who talk about out-of-body experiences and other aspects
of the paranormal.
Is that one way that these sexual encounters are occurring?
Is it people having out-of-body experiences or what?
Well, my feeling on it is that the people that experience this have allowed the stress
of life to burden them down so much that it does affect the glands and the organs of the
body, the systems, the cells.
Every part of the body is affected by the inability to handle physical and mental stress.
And when things start getting out of balance, the organs in the glands start to malfunction, the hormones are not then balanced, then the body starts to become weakened and vulnerable and makes itself then available for outside attacks of this nature.
Oh, I see.
So you're saying that people who are stressed, people who are weakened, are more available for invasion?
Exactly.
A person who's able to handle stress well, Basically have a positive nature.
We all get negative facets that hit it.
But if you can learn how to let it go, ground it, then you're going to remain more healthy than someone who just gets absorbed in grief or anger or resentment.
Sure.
All right.
Well, what about this lady who wrote me the email?
I mean, she was saying, look, I'll bet you that a good healthy percentage, if not most of the The responses you got were negative, and they were, but not by much.
Fully half of them were from people who were saying, you know, it wasn't bad.
So they're not all negative, and you were sort of drawing a connotation there where the weak is taken over by somebody who attacks them, but I guess in some cases it's not necessarily unwelcome or whatever.
Well, now, that's a very interesting concept that I hadn't taken a look at until you mentioned that, lady, but I actually know of a woman who also expressed the same feelings.
She didn't talk about being attacked in an unpleasant way.
She just said this very sensual feeling would come over her and I know from the way she
was saying it that it was an orgasmic feeling.
And she did enjoy it but the way she got this, she even would experience it right in front
of people and then she's not going to brag about it or show it off.
She confided in me this.
She was in a certain religious group that was more along the spiritualistic, a point
of view that I could say would be more related to the occult or the darker side, spiritualism
and not to hurt anyone.
It was just that somehow this track of thinking, and she had a health problem.
Not that we don't all have health problems at times, but hers was rather serious and Well, you clearly seem to feel that weakened people are vulnerable and you seem to sort of paint them as victims of an attack.
But maybe that's only half the story.
I hear it too.
Alright, well you clearly seem to feel that weakened people are vulnerable and you seem
to, you know, sort of paint them as victims of an attack.
But maybe that's only half the story.
After all, I do interview a lot of people.
Can I call you just Nita instead of Incognita?
Of course!
All right, Nita.
You know that there are people who endeavor to have these experiences, who have learned how to travel out of body, and if you encourage them to talk about it, they really will start talking about a lot of sexual encounters as though it's a big part of what they do.
Yes.
Well, as I say, they are enjoying recreating creation.
The energy of creation.
That's what it is.
The energy of creation.
So, that's a big one, alright.
Do you think it's one of these vastly under-reported... I mean, our society... You know, American society is really kind of prudish.
We're prudish compared to the rest of the world, frankly.
And you aren't right?
Wouldn't you agree?
I definitely agree.
From what I hear about other countries, we are very... I mean, you know, over in Africa, they think nothing of walking around with no clothes on, you know.
Right.
And in Europe... I don't mean all parts of Africa.
Right.
And in Europe, I mean, the attitude towards sex is very different in the media and everywhere else than it is in America.
We're actually kind of brutish.
So people would tend not to talk about this kind of thing.
And so I guess I'm asking How common do you think it really is?
Well, from what you're gathering, the information you're gathering, it sounds to me like it's very common.
We have a lot of unhealthy people in the world who do make themselves vulnerable for multiple entities within them.
In other words, basically when a child is born, they take in the breath of life and that is actually spirit to become a living soul after you take the breath of life.
What enters is the spirit, so technically there's a difference between spirit and soul.
The spirit is what you breathe in, and if you look that word up in the dictionary, the word is wind.
And so when you breathe in the air or the wind, you will receive the spirit, which then enlivens the body, which is not really a full human being until it takes in the breath.
So all babies come into the world with one spirit.
But eventually because of the negativity and actually it's a materialistic outlook.
So what is the negativity that causes us to become ill?
It's materialism and putting spirituality down which would be kindness and goodness and peace and trying to get along and tolerate one another.
The things that would make the world a utopia.
We resist those things and that causes us to be sick and to die.
We wouldn't have to die so soon.
We would not have to be sick like we are if we learned how to get along and be cooperative with one another.
All right.
Well, clearly then, you view this pretty much as a negative experience.
Well, yes.
I think it's better to have one spirit in a body.
It's far less confusing.
But people will take on multiple spirits, and they can have different plaguings with that.
So it's just more confusing to have more spirits in your body than one.
So the best way not to have this happen if you don't want it is to be healthy in your mind in your spirit
Exactly let go of physical stress mental stress. Just do more what you want to do. Don't just make yourself a slave
to Culture and society you begin to have an outgoing outlook
on life that opens up new ways of thinking Open-mindedness, not closed-mindedness.
All right.
Well, listen, Doctor, thank you for being here this evening.
I really appreciate your words on this subject, and I'm sure we're going to do a whole lot more.
Thank you for being here.
Well, thank you.
Take care.
All right.
That's Nita, Dr. Incognito.
And, you know, I don't know if I agree with her.
At least not based on what I've received.
This lands lie that I've received.
It's unbelievable.
It's just unbelievable.
I don't get this kind of response to things.
I just don't.
Endless reading!
And I really agree with the lady who wrote me the first email.
A lot of it, more than you would imagine, was viewed by the emailers as a positive experience, actually.
Many more than I would have expected.
I would have expected the great negative landslide.
You know, after all, it's an invasion, it's a sexual experience not wanted nor solicited, so it's viewed as, you know, rape.
Anyway, I'm far from done with this subject, and I guess perhaps I should speak To some of these out-of-body people, shouldn't I?
Let's look very quickly at what's going on around the world.
We're going to do some open lines coming up here in a minute.
Supporters of an anti-American cleric rioted in four Iraqi cities Sunday, battling coalition troops in the worst unrest since the spasm of looting and arson immediately after the fall of Saddam.
At least 22 Iraqis, eight U.S.
troops, and one Salvadoran soldier dead.
What are we going to do over there?
Despite escalating violence, that's escalating, that killed ten U.S.
service members over the weekend, the Bush administration is sticking with its timetable to turn over power in Iraq.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Sunday raised the prospect of extending the Bush administration's June 30th deadline.
That's the day we're supposed to turn it over.
Questioning in his mind, and I suppose we should question, whether the country would be ready for self-rule.
What do you think?
Are they?
It doesn't seem that way.
The suicide apartment house blast that killed the alleged ringleader of last month's Madrid train bombings, and four other terror suspects, left the core of that terror group either dead or in jail.
Not a bad resolution when you think about it.
Hey, the U.S.
Department of Energy is planning to give so-called Cold Fusion, we've talked about that a lot here, another look, despite years of controversy over the technology.
Isn't that nice to hear?
Finally, they're going to look again.
James Decker, Deputy Director of DOE's Office of Science, said the review actually began last fall, I guess quietly.
When he met with scientists to discuss the state of cold fusion research, quote, they told me about a lot of research on cold fusion that's been going on and done since the last review that was conducted about 15 years ago.
And he said, looking at all the facts now, a full new review of cold fusion is warranted.
So there you go, folks.
What was once dismissed as just sort of unrepeatable craziness had pawns and freshmen, was it, going to Europe to proceed with their research is now going to be looked at more carefully.
The Department of Energy, ours, now feeling that cold fusion might have a few answers in it.
Certainly something better have.
Reminding me of tonight's topic, the party is over.
Don't you love a fair day?
Don't you need her badly?
Don't you love her ways?
Tell me what you say.
Don't you love her face?
Wanna be her daddy?
Don't you love her face?
Don't you love her as she's walking out the door?
Like she did one thousand times before?
Don't you love her ways?
Tell me what you say?
Don't you love her as she's walking out the door?
Are you in love?
We have an art to see, and we can do more.
Alright, it's the weekend.
Phone numbers are different.
Listen very carefully.
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
The first line caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rocky, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
From west of the Rocky, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
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International callers may recharge by calling your in-country Sprint Access number, pressing
option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast, and worldwide on the Internet, this is Coast to Coast AM, with
Art Bell.
That's the key to the door.
Those are the keys to the door, I guess I ought to say.
And in a moment, we will open it.
Coming up in the next half hour, a very, very interesting guest, if I can find his information.
Here it is.
The Party's Over is the name of his book.
War and the fate of industrial societies.
That would be us, of course, Richard Heimberg.
And we all know that, at some point, the resource in the ground that we call oil, which, by the way, we're paying a damned pretty penny for right now, the pumps, is apparently an endangered species.
Let's find out how endangered, what Richard sees.
That's coming up in the next half hour.
Right now, first-time caller line, you are on the air.
Hello, Mr. Bill.
That's me.
Hi, I was wondering if you would consider, sir, a possible answer to the paranormal sexual encounters, this invisible force.
And it actually was recorded some 3,500 years ago in a document that is probably in everyone's home.
They're at Genesis chapter 6, verses 1 and 2.
Not to read them to me, please.
No, no, no.
Just paraphrase them.
What does it roughly say in there?
Well, that the bad angels decided to have sex with the women.
Yeah.
And they liked them.
Yeah.
And even though the flood came, they were still around.
And they still are.
So you also think, then, that it's tantamount to an attack.
Yes, and the point that your other guest, Nita, mentioned about being weak.
It is very important that we do become strong so that we can ward off these paranormal spirits, if you may.
Okay.
Alright.
You know, I'm willing to accept that.
It certainly could be that.
It could be an attack.
What about the large percentage of them, and almost half I would say, even in responses to me, where they said it was okay.
Yes, well, there was genuine attraction.
The scripture points to the fact that they liked the women.
So, you know, these were good guys at one time.
And until they were given the boot, where did they, you know, when they followed the bad leadership.
But they were good guys for a long time.
Gotcha.
Alright, well, listen, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
And take care.
So, cast down angels, maybe.
But what about all the rest of it?
What about the people having out-of-body experiences, either voluntary or involuntary?
What about those?
Those are not fallen angels, right?
So the whole subject could use an awful lot more research, and I sincerely hope that some of my experts in these kinds of areas will allow themselves to do that research.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
How you doing this evening?
I'm doing fine, sir.
Where are you?
This is James.
I'm calling from New Orleans.
Yes, sir.
All right.
I have actually two questions.
One about John Lear, but about what you were just discussing, the paranormal sexual encounters.
Sure.
There is a movie out there.
And it's still available, called The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey.
I believe it was done in the late 70s or early 80s.
I've seen it quite a number of times.
Yeah, that was a very serious, very serious attack.
Yeah, it was very creepy and I was wondering, if you had never seen it, I wanted to throw it at you because it did delve into that subject.
Oh, no, I've seen it.
My question is about John Lear.
Yes.
And the fabulous guest that you have.
I love him every time he's on the show.
He gets my wheels spinning.
Well, I always wanted to call in and ask him a question, and maybe you could jot this down, but possibly the experiment with the containers here on Earth, I've always believed that maybe it's carbon-based forms, life forms, that they are experimenting with.
Souls being in carbon-based forms, the experiment that they are That he is discussing it.
Hopefully next time you have John Lear on, you'll remember to mention that if it's a possibility that we all know souls of existing in any other form except carbon-based life forms, and maybe that's what the experience is.
Maybe so, and I would be glad to mention it to him for you.
Absolutely happy to do so.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Good day to you.
Hello?
Shall we do?
Hello?
Hello?
Going once.
Come on, you gotta talk, or I gotta go!
Going twice!
Don't let this opportunity slip by!
Hello?
Hello?
East of the Rockies, call toll free 1-800-825-5033.
You gave your last name!
You're not supposed to do that!
I'm sorry, that's right!
Now you made me hit the beeper!
Your name is Art!
Arts don't do stuff like that!
You're right.
Alright, Art.
Where are you?
Sedalia, Missouri.
You just sat there and waited while I said hello to you, Art.
Sorry.
That's alright.
So anyway, what's up, Art?
Well, I'm a new ham.
Oh, you are?
And I'm 61 years old.
Congratulations.
So I took my test today after I turned 61.
And my call letters are KC0... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Yes.
And, uh, you need to write a letter to your congressperson or your senator because as a new ham, you wouldn't want to hear this.
Doesn't sound friendly at all, does it?
Uh, I personally walked over to my congressman right over here.
Good for you.
A skeleton.
Good for you.
To talk to the office.
Yes.
In person.
And were they able to absorb what you were telling them?
I'm going to go again and bring some more material.
Just say no to BPL.
Yes.
In fact, I hold a net here in Sedalia, Missouri on two meters.
Nobody was doing it, so I just jumped in there and holding it.
Well, good for you, and congratulations on getting your ham license.
And NET, by the way, is sort of a thing where amateur radio operators all sort of check in, and they're held for various purposes, emergency communications.
We drill, you know, for emergency communications.
We hold drills.
And by the way, emergency communications across America is exactly what's threatened by BPL, that hard little noise you just heard.
So write to your congressperson, your senator, and urge them to take a wait-and-see and study this kind of attitude before authorizing it across America.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hi, Art.
Hello.
Art had to give his last name so we'd know you two apart.
This is Jeff in San Bernardino, and I called to talk to you a little bit about antennas, but I want to touch on what Nita brought up.
Spiritually, music and meditation do a similar realm, and Pink Floyd for me resonates the human soul.
There's a song called The Great Gig in the Sky with absolutely no words.
I believe the lady's name is Corrie that sings that.
Every time I hear it, it feels like... I refer to it as cosmic orgasmic.
Like the Big Bang.
That's it.
And Nita brought that up, and when she said that, I just went, wow.
It just connected.
And if you ever get a chance to play that for maybe some of your bumper music, I think people might get an opportunity who might not have been exposed to Pink Floyd, although that's been around since 73, Dark Side of the Moon.
They'd be interested in maybe hearing a little bit of that to see how that kind of music I do it for them or whatever type of music. I personally
like saxophone like you've mentioned and a guitar. It seems to touch that
chord in the human soul. Takes me off to a new place.
And and sometimes it's very essential the way the music affects me and I think it does that to a lot of people.
Sure.
I want to know how I can get a copy of your new book.
I don't have a new book.
What do you mean, new book?
Well, wait a minute, let me... The Art of Antennas, you know, where you have the text that have arcs and sparks and there are chilly fields in the air.
And what you're doing with that and how you can bring him back to the youth.
Right.
What I'm going to do is I'm not going to write a book.
Thank you very much.
I've got four of those under my belt.
Well, I may write another one someday.
If I do, I'll give you a hint.
It's going to be about time travel.
I'm pretty hot on that.
But with regard to the antenna, I'm going to put up a website, the oldartbell.com URL I retain, and I'm going to put something fairly comprehensive up there as soon as I find the right person to host it for me.
I don't know anything about HTML.
I'm fairly computer savvy, actually, but I've never bothered to learn about HTML, and I'm not sure I want to.
I'm waiting until I get the right offer and then I'll put up a website.
International Line, you're on the air.
Hi.
Hello.
Hi, I'm Debbie.
I'm calling from North Carolina.
Okay.
I'm not sure that my experience was a paranormal experience.
It may be a magnetic experience.
It's something personal, not that I necessarily want to say on air.
Why do you say magnetic?
Do the wild thing at 775-727-1295.
At your personal pleasure.
Okay, well, I think I've got... You see, there is the problem that we're going to have in trying to discuss this topic.
And I don't know exactly what we're going to do about that.
I mean, there are... What she said was very salacious.
There's probably a place for it, but I don't think in this discussion.
I really want to keep this discussion on the up-and-up, and I don't know how you do that.
I really don't, because the, you know, the proclivity is to get specific, and, you know, people are going to do that, and I don't know what to do about it.
It's a big, important topic, and it's really hard to talk about right now.
There's a really poisonous atmosphere.
I mean, in some ways, I understand that You know, I'm worried about the American airwaves, both on television and radio, and what's being said and the things that are allowed to be said and all the rest of it.
But on the other hand, I'm also worried about keeping our airwaves relatively free.
And it sure is a delicate balance that the regulators try and walk.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Hi.
Hi.
My name's Patrick.
Hey.
I've been wanting to get ahold of you for quite a while, actually.
Okay.
Wow, so many things.
But one thing that's come up since the one big thing is this whole thing with the broadband over the power lines.
Oh, yes.
And I'm not like a conspiracy theorist, but I can see kind of a sinister, possibly, intent with this.
And it goes like this.
Theoretically, I'm out here just a little bit west of Portland, Oregon.
I'm a geological range away.
I could theoretically get on a ham and talk to you where you are.
Or maybe somebody in New York State even, if the conditions are right.
Yes.
Okay, well, that's, you know, it's a kind of new thought that's very prevalent, politically, that might be a threat.
Why?
Well, because it's an unfettered and uncontrollable means of communication from coast to coast.
Oh, I see.
Well... But the big thing I wanted to call you about is, you know, I gotta admit, when I first started listening to your show years ago, I thought some of these people were kind of wacky, but in the back of my mind, I kept my mind open because it was something that was my own personal experience that I've never really talked about.
Since I was a very young man, I had, not really premonitions, but kind of, I don't know, like these salient dreams, and they get cues from things that I hear about, and then I have these dreams.
It's not really, I wouldn't say that it's like foretelling something or anything like that, but it's just like little bits and pieces all falling together.
And I'll hear some information or read something or see something that makes more things come together.
And there was something that I saw is actually on a public broadcasting show that triggered a whole series of those.
And it has to do with this, our planet's magnetic field, which the folks at NOAA and the folks at the USGS have been suspecting for years, and there's data to support this, that our field is collapsing.
And PBS did a special on this guy who's running around right here in Oregon, out in the Steens Mountains, who's taken geological samples.
And he's shown that Earth, they can, you know, look at rocks from specific periods of time and see that, you know, this has happened before.
And when it's happened before, it's pretty much coupled with a run-up of global warming that leads to an ice age.
And what's gone on in these dreams is that we, for the first time as a And how do we create such a gigantic field?
have within our grasp the ability to kind of set up an artificial field and stave off
the effects so it doesn't destroy everything that we've built for the last 15 or 17 years.
And how do we create such a gigantic field?
Well, and this goes back to listening to your show, part of it has to do with a lot of this
long wave technology and high frequency technologies, the hard stuff, things that Tesla were working
on.
Thank you.
You had some fellas around the show.
I think it was George had on the show.
And they were talking about some kind of coil.
They were they were talking from what they were describing about was like a field upon a field within itself.
Probably a Tesla coil.
No, it wasn't a Tesla coil.
They said it was some kind of proprietary thing.
They were selling them for 300 bucks with no guarantee of whether they're going to work or not.
Oh, okay.
That's that's the time travel machine.
I know exactly what you're talking about.
I've got one of them in the other room.
And I've never tried it.
We've come very close, but I never have.
And it does produce very large magnetic field, but I can assure you it wouldn't be anything to replace the Earth's magnetic field if we get in trouble with that.
If you want to know what would happen, or at least in one great piece of science fiction, I thought it was going to be rather shoddy, but it wasn't.
It was called The Core, a movie called The Core.
And, you know, it's got a little bit of the Inevitable stuff they put in science fiction, but basically it was pretty cool.
And if you get a chance to see it, it was out not long ago, called The Core, about what would happen if we lost the Earth's magnetic field.
It was a very graphic demonstration in there.
And anyway, you will enjoy the movie.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
Hello.
Yeah, good morning, Art.
Good morning.
This is Steve from Ontario, Canada.
Yes.
I'm going to show you another direction that you're subject, with the sex thing there, is going to be taking you in.
My daughter, twice now, has, this is back like 10, 12 years ago, maybe even a little further, where she's had babies disappear from her womb.
Once the doctor thought she had a miscarriage, another time the doctor said that everything was there, the baby was there and everything, and the next time she went back, everything was there except the baby.
You know, I've heard of this.
I've had other people tell this tale, and you're right, that'll open another floodgate.
There's all kinds of things associated with this topic that are really strange.
Oh, it certainly will.
And it's something that people tend not to talk about or want to talk about for obvious reasons.
Again, we're a fairly prudish society in America.
You really are.
And so this isn't talked about, but I'm telling you, this is big stuff.
Well, we've had some strange things go on for many, many years in our family.
I mean, I could be a subject of your show, believe me.
Things that have really been strange since, like, way back in the 70s.
Well, the world is just full of this.
The paranormal is all around us.
It's like the man who called a little while ago.
And he said, you know, when I first began to listen to the show, I thought there were some certifiable, nutty people on there.
And you know, you do have some.
But there's an awful lot of things that sound on the surface crazy when people tell them.
The trouble is, like that man, I too have had several experiences that it's not a guessing game with me.
I know the paranormal is real.
I know that we have many abilities in our living brains that we don't know how to control, we don't know how to initiate, and we certainly don't know how to repeat, or it wouldn't be called the paranormal.
If it was repeatable, we would call it science, and maybe we're approaching that day, too.
Anyway, when we get back, And the party's over.
The oil party is over.
From the high desert, I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
Want to time travel?
Go back to past shows on Streamlink.
Sign up online at coasttocoastam.com.
When a love you never seen, no more, can you but dream?
Would you say if you promised you ever, would you ever wait?
She is not scared of the dark, she is the darkness.
She is not scared of the dark, she is the darkness.
The inside of the sand, the snow, the touch, the something, the inside that remains, the touch of the sand, the
strength of an arm that lives deep in the ground.
How wonderful it is to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac and sun again.
Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing?
To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing?
How are all these things you don't remember at all?
My memories follow from the years of the Calico to the Tarot.
I finally saw the big, big, big, heartless, rich, young, lonely,
And you can't help but think about her.
Wanna take a ride?
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east to the Rockies, call toll free 800-825-5033.
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International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country spring access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
It certainly is.
Richard Heinberg is the author of The Party's Over Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies, and the forthcoming Power Down, Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World.
is a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer, and a core faculty member of New College of
California where he teaches courses on energy and society and culture, ecology, and sustainable
community.
His lovely news letter, that's with an M, news as in musing, was nominated in 1994 by,
I guess it's UTNE Reader for an Alternative Press Award has been included in UTNE's annual
I hope I'm saying that right.
Of best alternative newsletters, his essays and articles have appeared in many journals, including The Futurist, Earth Island Journal, Wild Matters, Alternative Press Review, and The Sun.
So in a moment, we'll discuss the party.
the party being over richard welcome to the program
Good to be speaking with you, Art.
Very nice to have you.
Where are you located?
I'm in Santa Rosa, California, which is about an hour north of San Francisco.
That's up in Quetzalcoatl country.
That's right.
All right, your book is The Party's Over, and I guess you ought to define what you mean by party.
Well, the party I'm talking about is basically the last 100, 150 years of cheap energy.
That has fueled the industrial revolution that we're still living in.
We have created the most opulent and fast-paced society in the history of the world by far.
And it's all because of cheap energy resources, primarily oil.
We started using coal before that, first in Britain and then elsewhere.
But it's really when we started using oil as a primary energy source that the Industrial Revolution really got jump-started.
And of course we found ways of using this cheap energy, cars, planes, and cell phones, and computers, on and on.
Transformed everything about our way of life, how we live, where we live, what we eat.
This is really true of everyone who's alive now.
Occasionally I meet someone who's old enough to remember the first car in their town.
But for the rest of us, this is what we think of as normal existence.
And yet, from any kind of historical, cross-cultural perspective, it's far from being normal.
It's an extraordinary moment in time.
And what I'm saying in my book is that this party is likely to come to an end in the century that's now begun.
And we'll see the beginning of the end probably within just the next few years.
Well, I go to a gas station now and I think I'm seeing the beginning of the end.
You know, the gas prices are certainly on the way up, Richard.
I'd say we're going to hit $3 a gallon in California this summer.
That's sort of a bet with myself.
Yeah, I think you're probably right.
There are a lot of reasons for this short-term increase in gas prices.
One is just that The U.S.
only has so many oil refineries, and they're all working at just about full capacity.
Without new ones being built, for example, in California in a long time, right?
That's right.
Well, we haven't really built any in the country in a couple of decades.
And then there's the matter of OPEC cutting production.
And then there's the problem just of tight supplies generally, globally.
We seem to be bumping up against some pretty I also heard recently, Richard, that we're filling our oil reserve, meaning we're taking some of the oil that would normally come in and be available off the market, right?
Richard, how much oil do we have in reserve?
strategic national reserve and of course that's a political decision and may or may not be
a good one but it's in the interest of the people.
Richard, how much oil do we have in reserve?
When everything's full and we have our reserve full, how much is that?
I don't have that figure.
Well, I didn't mean in gallons so much, but I mean is it a month's worth?
Yeah, it's between one and two months' worth.
One and two months' worth.
Interesting.
There's a great deal of controversy, Richard, about when we're going to run out of oil, or effectively run out of oil, when it's going to become so expensive that we're essentially out at that point.
Why so much controversy about it, and what do you think the answer is?
Well, the controversy is for a number of reasons, and actually, since we have a fair amount of time this evening, I think we can look at this from a number of different angles.
But basically, it's a controversy between people who look at the total resource base And then assume that we can produce that oil or extract it, really, is what we're talking about, at any arbitrary rate.
Say we have a trillion barrels of oil in the ground, which probably isn't that far off, and we're using it at the rate of about 75 million barrels a day.
Well, at that rate, we should have plenty of oil for at least 50 years.
But the problem is, and this is where the other side of the debate comes in, It really isn't likely to be possible to extract that oil at any arbitrary rate.
There are geological factors that will limit the rate of production in the future.
We tend to think about oil using the metaphor that's most familiar to us, which is the gas tank in our car.
When you fill up the gas tank, the car runs fine.
When you're down to a quarter of a tank, the car still runs fine.
It's only when you actually run out that you notice a problem.
Well, we're not going to run out of oil in the sense of using the last drop for decades and decades, maybe centuries, maybe never.
But the problem is that we're likely to come to a point where it becomes impossible to continue increasing production.
And in fact, oil production will peak and start to go downhill regardless of the amount
of effort we put into the project or how much investment we make in...
Can you project when that will occur?
Well, there are, of course, as you can imagine, many, many scientists who are working on this
Dozens, literally dozens, of petroleum geologists and petroleum economists and physicists and so on.
And the emerging consensus seems to be that a global peak in oil production is likely sometime between About 2006 or 2007 at the earliest and something like 2016 or 2020 at the latest.
Pretty soon?
Yeah, oh definitely within the short-term planning parameters of all of us who are alive right now.
As much as we groan about the price of gasoline in America right now, certainly Europe, Canada, other parts of the world Have it, most of them, much worse than we do.
Absolutely.
It's much more expensive.
And so I'm not certain why ours is so inexpensive, relatively.
I guess we don't tax it as heavily as other countries do, or would that be the main reason?
Well, yeah, taxes are a big part of it, but there's also the matter of the pricing of oil exports.
Most oil that is sold on the international market is sold for U.S.
dollars, and this really goes back to the mid-1970s after the first oil shock when the U.S.
made a deal with its good friend Saudi Arabia to price all of its oil exports in U.S.
dollars, and that rule was soon spread to the rest of OPEC.
And what that means is that effectively the U.S.
pays less for its oil.
Actually, in effect, it pays less for almost all of its imports because other countries have to get U.S.
dollars to pay for their oil.
And how do they get U.S.
dollars?
Well, the U.S.
has a monopoly on those things.
Countries have to either take out loans denominated in U.S.
dollars or sell their products to the U.S.
and of course they'll be motivated to do so because they need to pay their energy bills so they'll likely sell low or they'll drive their currencies down in value deliberately in order to be able to afford, in order to be able to earn export capital to afford the oil imports.
So, this has been a strategy of Japan, for example, which has kept its yen very low in value for a long time, which keeps those Toyotas and Hondas affordable for Americans and allows the Japanese to pay their energy bills.
The Japanese don't have any indigenous oil or natural gas reserves.
The fact that other currencies are artificially kept low then keeps the dollar more valuable, which means that it's cheaper for us to buy oil.
Now, what's happening right now, one of the reasons gasoline is so expensive, is that the U.S.
dollar is falling in value primarily because the U.S.
has such a tremendous debt.
That other countries are less willing to invest in U.S.
dollar denominated oil investments.
And so as the dollar falls in value, gas gets more expensive because we have to import almost 60% of the oil that we use.
Yes, it's actually been a pretty serious matter recently.
You know, I typically buy electronic ham radio pieces of gear that come from Japan and what was You know, it's like a $100 or $200 difference lately in the price, and all that's due to the currency changes, so you're absolutely right about that.
That's a big deal.
Yeah, and I think it's likely to continue.
I don't think the dollar's hit bottom yet.
So, the peak comes soon.
Then what?
Well, after that point, there will be less oil available, and that means because population is continuing to grow and demand for oil is continuing to grow, therefore there's going to be more and more competition for what's left, and I think the... Wait, wait, let's back up, because I just realized there's something I don't understand.
When we talk about the peak, What are we talking about?
Do you mean the amount of oil that we can pump out of the ground?
Do you mean the amount of oil that we can refine into gasoline?
Or what part of this is peaking?
Well, the important peak is the peak in what we can get out of the ground.
We can always build more refineries.
You can't build them overnight.
Obviously it takes months and months and a lot of investment, but that's doable.
When the peak in global oil production arrives, nothing we can do, no amount of investment will change that.
We'll be on the downhill side.
And we know this is going to happen because it's already happened in country after country.
The United States is the best example of that.
The U.S.
is where the oil industry started back in 1859 with the first commercial oil well in Pennsylvania.
And for decades, the U.S.
was the world's foremost oil-producing nation.
In fact, we were the world's foremost oil-exporting nation.
We were the Saudi Arabia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The U.S.
became the most mature oil-producing province in the world, which means there were more oil wells drilled in the U.S.
than in the rest of the world put together.
Alright, well here's something that you can clarify for me.
Right you are on all of that, but then We started capping a lot of wells, and here, too, is a great deal of controversy.
I've heard it said that we have capped a lot of wells, and perhaps wisely so, in that we are now using up the rest of the world's oil, the Middle East oil, the oil coming from wherever, and that if necessary, it's like a sort of a strategic reserve that's still in the ground.
Is there anything to that Oh, there may be some truth to that, but basically the U.S.
is past its production peak and will never produce oil again at anywhere near the rate that it was doing in the 1960s.
So then what are you saying?
That we virtually sucked all the viable oil out of our ground?
Yeah, basically that's true.
Oh.
And this happened in, the U.S.
oil peak happened in 1970-71.
and US production now is about the same level as it was in the 1940s
and since then country after country has followed suit so out of about 44 principal oil producing countries in the
world about 24 of them have experienced similar
oil production peaks and their oil production is headed downward and
there's virtually nothing that can bring it back up to former levels. That's something to
consider isn't it?
That's sort of sad.
We could go back and we could get some oil, but it would, I take it, be nowhere near our needs.
Oh, absolutely not.
The U.S.
is, from now on, the only way the U.S.
can cease to be dependent on oil imports is simply to cease using so much oil.
Huh.
Fat chance.
Well, ultimately, I think that's what will happen.
Well, ultimately, that certainly is what will happen, but whether it's by choice or by necessity, that's the real question.
When the oil runs out, essentially, what happens to the United States?
I mean, when you look ahead as a futurist and you see us beginning to run out of oil, do we make some magical change?
Is there anything in the wind?
Or are we just going to run out of oil?
Well, there's no energy source on the horizon that will permit a simple and easy transition to running our cars, our 150 million cars, on something else other than petroleum.
So we're in for a major change in our way of life.
I don't think there's any way around that.
People talk about hydrogen cars, for example, but there are no hydrogen reserves anywhere.
You have to make hydrogen from something else.
Right now, virtually all commercially produced hydrogen is made from fossil fuels, from natural gas or oil.
Something the hydrogen people don't talk a lot about.
I do hear talk of using Alternative methods like the sun and wind power and so forth.
Absolutely.
That's a very expensive way of making hydrogen.
While I'm all in favor of solar and wind, I think actually we'd be better off spending our R&D money directly on solar and wind rather than spending it on On hydrogen development, because, you know, we just don't have that much energy from solar and wind right now.
Well, I believe our president just recently made a speech in which he committed the United States to the hydrogen path.
Did he not?
Yes, and our governor here in California has made similar noises.
But, you know, I think they do these things without ever talking to a single engineer.
Because the reality of hydrogen is that it will be useful in niche applications.
I'm not saying that hydrogen will have no uses whatsoever in our future energy mix, but the idea that we can simply and easily transition to a hydrogen economy, I'm afraid, is so much higher.
Higher?
So you see the future in solar and wind and other methods, or what?
Yes, but it's going to be a very different future.
You know, we're using only about twice as much renewable energy in the U.S.
economy today as we were using in 1850.
There are a lot of reasons for that.
Meanwhile, non-renewable energy has soared.
It's skyrocketed.
We're using hundreds of times as much now as we were in 1850.
And the reason for that is that non-renewable energy resources like oil and natural gas and coal are kind of like winning the lottery or having a A rich uncle that dies and leaves you a fortune.
You can spend that at any arbitrary rate you want.
You can buy a penthouse and a fleet of Rolls Royces, but sooner or later that's going to run out unless you have some other way of replenishing the bank account.
Whereas renewable fuels are kind of like working for a living.
You have a job and you have a budget and you have to live within that budget or you run into trouble.
Nature can only supply us with so much Energy on an ongoing basis.
Now, it's true we could increase the energy we're harvesting through photovoltaics or wind power considerably over what we're doing now, but it's never going to be the kind of windfall that we've enjoyed over the Industrial Revolution with fossil fuels.
All right, hold it right there, and we'll take a break.
Richard Heinberg is my guest.
His book, you really want to take a look at this, called Parties Over, Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.
That would be us.
We came from somewhere back in her heart ago.
The sandal by the pool floor she'd tried hard to reclaim but forget to be created.
Once in her life she musters a smile for his nostalgic cares.
Never told him dear what he wanted to say or did she realize
it never really was she had a place in his heart?
We're all the same, we do it because we love it.
They seem too hard to find.
I tried to wait for you, but you have grown too much.
Whatever happened to our love?
I wish I understood.
It's just a phase in life, it's just a phase in my life So when you need me darling
Can you hear me in the lake?
It's the way I love you baby, not your mistress baby
It's the way When you're gone
I feel like you've been gone for so long When you're gone
Oh, I feel like I've been gone for so long To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code
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This song kind of works, doesn't it? When you're gone, I don't know what I'll do SOS.
Well, that would be oil.
Indeed.
How can I go on at all?
And maybe that's what we're going to be talking about before the night's over.
because the party's over.
Once again Richard Heinberg...
Welcome back, Richard.
Yeah.
It's a pretty sobering thing for an awful lot of Americans because, of course, America completely depends on its oil.
Everything runs on oil.
We go to work on oil, the factories, oh gosh, everything runs on oil.
So this is not a minor matter.
This is our future as a nation.
That we're talking about, and I presume you understood that gravity when you wrote this book, right?
That's right.
We get about 40% of our total energy from oil, but when you break that down, that's responsible for about 97% of our transportation energy.
What's even more troubling is that agriculture is heavily reliant on oil and other fossil fuels.
You know, it's possible to imagine maybe driving a few fewer miles, but when it comes to food, we're talking about something really serious.
Indeed so.
So, your book, how's it been received?
Who reads it?
What kind of feedback do you get?
I've generally gotten excellent feedback on it, and I'm very gratified to say that I get phone calls and emails quite regularly from engineers and petroleum geologists who are saying, well, you know, this is stuff that we've known for some time, and we talk about it amongst ourselves, but we've never really been allowed to come out in public and say these things, and good for you for doing that.
All right.
Well, let's see if I can get you in some trouble here, and I assure you I can.
What do you... I mean, we're involved now in this horrid thing in Iraq, which, I don't know, when we went into Iraq we said it was because we thought they had weapons of mass destruction.
Now it turns out that intelligence was flawed, according to our Secretary of State.
That isn't why we went.
My suspicion is that you imagine we went because of oil, Richard.
Is that right?
Yeah, you know, there's almost nothing that happens in the Middle East that doesn't have something to do with oil.
We've spent, what is it, over $150 billion so far with this war and invasion of Iraq, and I can't imagine the U.S.
spending that kind of financial capital and also human capital Well, I notice that we say, we're doing this for the people of Iraq, so they might have freedom, and then we're protecting their oil assets, and we're doing that for them as well.
Now, other people make the argument that we are dying in Iraq, and we are, our men and Well, I'm with you.
I think it's all about oil, but we keep saying it's their oil.
Do we really mean that, Richard?
Well, in a sense, but you see, Iraq has immense foreign debts to repay, something in the order of $150 to $300 billion.
And so much of that oil revenue, and really Iraqi oil production is still pretty low.
It's just barely gotten up to pre-war levels, if that.
So most of that revenue is going to repay Iraqi debts, which are becoming ever steeper because, of course, we're helping them out by rebuilding the country.
Yes, I've even heard we've talked of forgiving the dead and having international meetings for others to forgive the dead so they might get back on their feet.
Right.
Well, I think that would be a good step.
But meanwhile, most of the rebuilding that's going on is being done by American corporations like Halliburton and Bechtel.
That's right.
Well, in fact, I think the Iraqis themselves would be quite capable of rebuilding their country.
After all, they've done so before, after the Iraq-Iran War in the 1980s.
They had to do a great deal of rebuilding, and then in 1991 on.
So, in fact, I think a lot of this money is money from Iraqi oil sales and also money from the U.S.
defense budget.
Basically being filtered back into the US economy via a number of corporations.
Are we going to take their oil?
Well, it's not that simple.
I think that would be an extraordinary situation.
What we're doing is building super bases in Iraq that are permanent bases, even after control of the country is We're going to be there.
We're still in Okinawa.
We're in Japan.
The other places that we've had big fights with, we're going to maintain bases there for a very long time.
We have 17 new bases in Central Asia as well, surrounding the Caspian Sea, which is another major oil-producing region.
Well, almost every U.S.
president, in my memory, and it's a pretty good long one now, has reiterated the fact that the United States would be willing to go to war to keep the Straits of Hormuz open and the oil flowing.
And when they say go to war, they mean nuclear war, if necessary.
This is the Carter Doctrine.
So this is a bipartisan kind of policy.
It's not just the current administration's policy.
This goes back at least to the in the 1970s when it became apparent that US oil production
had peaked, the US would be ever more dependent on foreign oil,
and that oil could be used as a weapon. After 1973 and the Arab oil embargo it
became clear that the US was vulnerable to the oil weapon. And so this has been really the centerpiece
of American geostrategic policy ever since. Oil company
executives, energy consultants aren't stupid.
Right.
If what you say is true, then why aren't they making other plans?
If they see the party ending, then surely they want to be in on the beginning of whatever is going to come after to keep that old project rolling in.
Right.
Well, the oil companies are beginning to invest in renewable energies, solar primarily and also How heavily, Richard?
Well, not very heavily, I have to say.
I mean, Shell, for example, is a major solar PV producer now.
Also, the industry is starting to sort of leak out the message that the oil peak is approaching.
For example, John Thompson, who's Vice President of ExxonMobil Exploration Company, has basically said that by 2015, We'll need to find, develop, and produce a volume of new oil and gas that's equal to 8 out of every 10 barrels being produced today, and that's going to cost a lot more than the oil that's being produced now.
For people in the industry, you know, it's a coded message basically saying, we're in trouble.
So the message is leaking out, but fundamentally, I think they realize that what oil is left is going to be That much more expensive.
I think the oil producing countries see that too.
And that's one of the reasons that OPEC is willing to sit on its oil of reduced production and wait till prices go higher.
They weren't doing that back in the 90s.
They were producing full bore.
But now I think they see that the peak of production is within sight.
And that oil is worth more in the ground than it is if they just pump it cheaply.
Worth more?
So in other words, As the belt begins to tighten, they're going to realize that just leave it in the ground for a few more years, and instead of selling it for X number of dollars per barrel now, we'll be selling it for three or four times that much.
Exactly.
Okay, so predict for me, in another 10, 20 years, foreseeable for most of us, What kind of gas prices, pump prices, do you think we could expect?
Well, you know, I refuse to make those kinds of predictions for a number of reasons.
First of all, we're talking about dollars that could have any arbitrary value at some future time as a result of inflation or deflation.
Taking in mind, I'll make it even harder for you, then taking in mind the normal economic cycles That history has presented us with, and then predicting 10 or 20 years, surely you can come up with some kind of guesstimate.
Yeah, well, certainly within 20 years we'll be seeing oil prices astronomically higher than they are today.
The equivalent of $100 a barrel of oil is certainly likely before 2020, perhaps.
Which would, okay, let's say a barrel of oil cost $100.
What would that make the pump price?
Well, for gasoline, I think in this country we're likely to see, as you said earlier, $3 by the end of the summer.
But then, for the next three or four years, we may see some leveling off of prices.
And it's only after we've actually passed the peak that we're likely to see gas prices then double and triple.
Well, when you say past the peak, we've been a long time in coming to the peak.
So, how much of a long downhill slide Is there, and when does past the peak begin to have real meaning?
Right, well, it's hard to say, because it's possible that there would be an actual panic following the peak, with the general realization, you know, that the era of cheap energy is over, and what's left is limited supply, and therefore whoever gets there first effectively owns the pile.
So, there could be considerable competition for supplies at that point, including international competition between consuming nations, U.S.
and I think China is the most likely candidate.
Oh, yes.
The amount of industry going on in China right now is frightening.
Richard, I've seen it with my own eyes.
It is frightening.
They're going to begin consuming enormous amounts of oil.
Doesn't it all come down, I mean Iraq's one thing, that's a war, but isn't it likely before all is said and done the world will be at war over this?
Unfortunately, that's the path that we're on right now.
I think the only way to avoid that outcome would be to have some very effective international agreements for cooperation And allocation of the remaining resources, and that's going to be a very difficult thing to do, and I think it can only happen if the U.S.
and China are both on board.
Well, we can't even get on board with the Kyoto Treaty.
That's right.
So, on board isn't happening a lot.
Yes, as I said, that's not the direction we're going right now.
The way we're going right now is what I call last one standing strategy.
I don't know.
Whoever has the most weapons and is willing to compete the most fiercely will theoretically
win the day.
Now, it's hard to say what the outcome of that will be, but I don't think it's likely
to be very pretty.
I know.
Do you think there's any chance that between now and then we will come up with some alternative
source of energy that either is not so dangerous that it kills us.
I looked at some photos of Chernobyl the other day that stood the hair up on the back of my neck.
Right.
Or that we'll come up with something that won't kill us and that we can cheaply, or reasonably at least, produce and keep the world going.
Well, there are a number of possible candidates.
My research so far has not Supported the likelihood of any of them being able to take over from oil in a way that would permit our economy to continue at its current pace and continue to expand.
Have you truly researched this?
And by that I mean, they're now having big get-togethers where people with claims, and even machines that they claim are over unity and they make all kinds of claims, but nothing that I've seen truly Yeah, and I sense you're in about the same place.
Yeah, you know, I've been interested in the free energy or over-unity or zero-point energy debate for, oh, probably 20 years or so.
I have a big file in my filing cabinet on the subject, and I'm sympathetic to the claims, but, you know, I've been waiting a long time to see something practical, and so far I've You can't go into a store and buy even a wristwatch that's powered by one of these exotic energy sources.
I usually say, just bring me a toy, anything that demonstrates it, and it never gets here.
And then there's the problem of bringing a potential energy source up to the point of actually supplying a hundred quadrillion And perhaps you've looked at this aspect as well.
uses on a yearly basis, which is just an immense amount of energy, and that requires building
a huge amount of infrastructure.
You just can't do that in a couple of years.
It will take literally decades to replace our present energy infrastructure.
Perhaps you've looked at this aspect as well.
As long as I've been alive, there have been claims of carburetors and claims of lots of
other things, but the end of all those stories is always the government rushes in, the inventor
disappears, and or the patent is bought out by a large oil company and put up on the shelf,
and they've got lots of this kind of stuff waiting for the day when the oil really runs
out, but it's all been secretly suppressed.
Do you buy into that?
Well, you know, there may be some truth to some of these stories, but my sense of it is that most of them are in the category of urban legend.
One of the reasons I say that is the story of the patents being bought up by the oil companies just smells really fishy to me because I've been to the U.S.
Patent Office to research patents, and really patents are not a way of keeping something secret.
They're a way of publicizing inventions.
So if anything has been patented at any time in history, you can find that patent and read about it.
So it's literally impossible for a patented device to be completely suppressed.
Although secrets have been held.
So it could be there's a secret by some energy company out there that it might be in their interest, since you pointed out yourself, that even if we had such a source to actually get it out there and market it, you know, if you need a million new equivalent to gas stations or whatever, We're not ready for that.
Wouldn't the propensity on the part of the large energy companies be to hold it and wait until it was financially the right atmosphere?
Perhaps so.
Again, we're talking in the realm of theory and rumor here.
Meanwhile, our lives hinge on something that's very real and tangible, which is oil in the ground, and that seems to be going away.
Alright, where is most of the oil?
Is it the Middle East?
Well, the Middle East, on paper, has over 60% of it.
Now, I say on paper, because what is officially reported by the OPEC countries, particularly the Middle East, is a matter of some controversy.
Back in the 1980s, they changed their policies of reporting so that countries could base their exports on what they said they had in the ground on their reported reserves.
So it was in their interests to report larger reserves so that they could export more and earn more income.
So within a couple of years of this change in the rules, all of these Arab oil Exporting countries reported reserve increases on the order of fifty to a hundred percent.
Oh, that's cooking the book.
That's cooking the book pretty hard.
There's no evidence that they were actually finding much new oil during that period.
Oh my god, so... We say that Saudi Arabia has 256 billion barrels of proven oil.
Well, that's what they're reporting.
Now, what they actually have in the ground may be another story.
Oh, brother!
And so we base policy on those numbers?
Right, because those are the only numbers they have.
Actual reserves are closely held secrets.
Ah, yeah.
All right, hold tight, Richard.
We'll be right back.
There's going to be some fighting over this, all right.
and maybe sooner rather than later.
It's a sad day to have a few nights off.
I'm down at Waco Polythea.
It's seven o'clock and I want to run.
I want to get up and pull all the pins.
I'll have a sucker barrel, a barrel full of monkeys and my only aided, she don't care.
Because it's a little cheap and I can't get enough.
The White Bird sings of the eastern trees.
Where the shining trees turn to gold.
The White Bird jumps into the cage, rolling over.
The White Bird must fly or she will die.
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The clouds are black, the earth is cold.
The eastern skies do always roll.
She must fly.
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It is indeed. And I wonder if I were to tell Richard that I'm really just drooling over that latest SUV out there.
Those very popular, very large, very consumptive United States SUVs.
Those great big tanks and vehicles that all of you love so much.
And I was thinking of buying one.
I wonder what Richard would advise.
Actually, we'll find out in a moment.
Well, here's our expert on oil, Richard Heimberg.
He's written a book about it called The Party's Over, Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.
In this particular industrial society, Richard, although I don't drool over SUVs, I mostly, 90% of the time, drive around a little Geo Metro, to be honest with you, but a lot of Americans right now are real hung up on these tanks, these great big vehicles, SUVs, Would you say that, from your point of view, it would be a wise investment to buy one of those now, or not such a good idea?
Well, I think if you could wait a few years, you'll probably be able to buy a used one really cheap, actually.
Yeah, that's what I was wondering.
I can recall the 70s oil crisis, and an awful lot of really big American cars went on the market for a very small amount of money, and we all fell in love with small Japanese cars, and that happened until the oil came back.
That's right.
So, you're telling me certain things will happen again.
Only this time, there's not going to be any oil coming back.
Right, yeah.
This time it's for keeps.
And yeah, I do think something similar will happen.
And it's really sad that we've come to this point, because this has all been a matter of policy.
The U.S.
could have a much better fleet fuel efficiency.
And, uh, the SUVs are popular partly because of a huge tax break that is given to, uh, small business owners.
Well, and to be honest, there's safety.
I mean, you know, they've got a lot of metal there.
They're safer.
They are.
I guess.
Well, actually, the statistics don't always bear that out.
It's particularly unsafe if you happen to be in a car that's up against one of them.
Well, exactly.
In my little deal, if I hit an SUV, I'm toast.
I understand that.
And also, some of them do tend to roll over more easily than regular cars.
But isn't that where most of the energy is going?
It's going into our cars?
In fact, there's a question.
What percentage of our energy, or oil, goes into continuing to keep the wheels rolling?
Yeah, a very high percentage of our petroleum usage goes to personal cars.
And this is something that, again, sadly, we could be doing much better with.
The hybrids, of course, Japanese hybrids get much better gas mileage, and the U.S.
car companies have the opportunity to develop hybrid technology at the same time as the Japanese companies and refuse to do so.
Also, there are alternative fuel vehicles.
I personally drive a 25-year-old Mercedes diesel that I run with modified vegetable oil, a fellow called Biodiesel.
So you go down the road smelling like french fries?
Yeah, something like that.
I've heard of these things.
It does work then?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
And I didn't have to modify the car at all.
It's a little more expensive than petroleum diesel, but it's great stuff to work with.
If you get it on your hands or clothes, it washes right out.
It doesn't smell nasty like petroleum diesel.
Of course, it's not a solution for our national addiction to petroleum because we just can't manufacture that much biodiesel.
Is there a solution?
I mean, I hear talk of, what, you can grow fuel in the ground, right?
Well, ethanol, yes.
But the problem is that if we were to try to run all of our cars on ethanol or biodiesel, We would need more farmland than we have, and most of that farmland is already being taken up growing food.
And so, well, here's another problem.
Globally, per capita grain production has peaked within the last five years.
In other words, the last five years, year on year, we're producing less food per capita than the year previously.
So we need all of that arable land just to support our current population.
So we're reaching peak productivity out of the ground, peak productivity out of oil at a time when we're adding people on the planet at a scary rate.
That's right.
We passed six billion in 1998 and just since 1998 we've added about 400 million Just shy of 400 million, and that's not far from the population of North America.
So we've added basically another North America just since 1998.
But of course, I'm sure we haven't added the support infrastructure of North America or the resources equivalent to North America.
All right.
You know, I've done a few things.
I mean, I do drive the metros.
I became energy self-sufficient, Richard.
By putting up a lot of solar panels and wind generators and that kind of thing.
Good for you.
Good for me, but here's the problem.
It's not economically feasible.
I did it, but you know what?
I just blew the money because I wanted to do it and I wanted to see if I could become independent, but it cost me a hell of a lot of money, Richard, and I'm not going to recover that for a long, long time.
So it's not... When are we going to make it feasible for people To do this, or even economically advantageous for them to do it?
Well, unfortunately, I don't think market mechanisms are going to kick in soon enough to enable that to happen.
I have solar panels in my house, too.
Then you know.
And I know, yeah.
It cost us $10,000.
Fortunately, the state of California paid for half of that.
But we use about one-fifth the amount of electricity of the average California household.
I do have a lot of TVs and I do have a lot of electronics.
The first thing we have to do if we're going to make this energy transition is reduce our energy usage.
A lot of that can be done through efficiency, relatively painlessly.
We did this in the 1970s.
You know, highway speed limits went down from 75 miles an hour to 55 miles an hour.
We bought smaller cars.
We insulated our homes better.
And there's a lot more that we can do.
We could transition from incandescent lights to compact fluorescents and LED lights.
A lot of people are already doing that.
Oh, I am doing that.
Yeah.
Well, if you have photovoltaic electricity, you're motivated to reduce your usage.
It's expensive.
PV electricity is expensive.
Yes, and I was... In fact, I swapped out the bulbs in this room, and it is just amazing, Richard.
The old 60 watt bulbs that I had on the ceiling fixture here in my room would become so hot that you could not touch them.
Right.
The new ones that I put in will last, I don't know, six times longer.
They burn just as bright, and you can hold your hand on them.
They're so cool, and they're using approximately one-fifth That's one-fifth the energy!
That's right.
It's absolutely astounding!
And what I've always wondered is, maybe you're in a position to tell me, if America converted and took out all the old damn light bulbs, put in all new ones, got a car that didn't use quite so much gasoline per mile, all the rest of it, if we clamped down, how much difference would it make?
Well, the actual figure is controversial.
Probably we could reduce our total energy usage by half, at least, and relatively painlessly.
I think that's what we will be doing over the next 20 years or so, for very good economic reasons.
Ultimately, depletion is going to catch up with us, however, one way or the other, and even efforts at efficiency are not going to keep the wolf away from the door forever.
Well, I hate to keep dragging you into politics, but it's inevitable.
Jimmy Carter, like Merhatem, had a lot of at least pretty good ideas about the future of America and what we would have to do to be part of that future.
But, you know, presidents we've had.
We've got ourselves an oil president right now.
That's right.
Love him or hate him, he's an oil president.
And we need some political change or none of this is going to happen.
Not really, is it?
Right.
Frankly, I don't see this kind of political change happening until we We won't do anything in America until we have a crisis.
Americans have been told that their way of life is non-negotiable.
I think most of us like to hear that.
We like to think that the way we're living now is normal and that we deserve it because we're Americans.
I don't think we're likely to change our collective minds until we have to.
How soon is the have-to part likely to occur?
Yeah, well, with oil, as I was saying, probably within the next two to ten years.
With natural gas, possibly much sooner than that.
Really?
Yeah, natural gas is our second most important energy source.
We get about 40% of our total energy from oil and about 25% from natural gas.
And natural gas, has it already peaked?
In North America, it has.
Now, in the rest of the world, there's still a lot of natural gas.
But in North America, production is going downhill.
That's true of Canada, US, and Mexico.
And natural gas is different from oil in that, while it is possible to transport it around the world in ships, it's very expensive to do so.
And there aren't that many liquid natural gas tankers.
And most of the available international supply is already spoken for by countries like Japan and South Korea.
So as our natural gas production goes Go south, as it were.
It's unlikely that we'll be able to make up for that just by importing natural gas by LNG tanker.
Well, since the political powers be are not going to push us in this direction for a while yet, you know, you've got the ear of an awful lot of people right now, Richard.
Let's talk about practical, real world.
Okay, folks, here's some individual recommendations for you that will not only save the nation, Oil, but maybe more importantly, your own power bill will go way down, or you won't pay as much for gasoline.
What are the recommendations to an individual?
What I would say is do an energy audit of your life.
How much energy are you using in transportation, or electricity, and what's that electricity going for?
And then, what do you actually need?
People are able to reduce their energy usage by half fairly painlessly.
You have done that, haven't you?
Yeah, I've done it, and so I know for a fact that others can do it.
How austere a life are you leading?
I wouldn't say I'm living an austere life at all.
I still drive, although I live within walking distance of where I work, and I walk whenever I can.
We have two computers in the house and a TV set that we occasionally use for watching old movies.
We enjoy our life.
Now, one thing we do is we grow a fair amount of our own food.
My wife and I live in a suburban neighborhood.
But we've converted the backyard that we have to food production.
We have fruit and nut trees, a vegetable garden, and I think this is a good recommendation for anybody who can possibly do this.
Start growing as much of your food as you can, because right now the average food item on an American's plate That's a good point.
Food is going to become a lot more expensive over the next few years.
That's not only because of oil but also natural gas because natural gas is the main feedstock for inorganic fertilizers.
Fertilizer is getting more expensive.
Instead of producing all of it here in the U.S., we're starting to import more of it because natural gas is becoming so much more expensive.
So food is going to be absorbing all of those extra costs for transportation and for fertilizer and pesticide and herbicide feedstocks.
So the short solution to that is eat more locally and grow as much as you can yourself.
Life will be, as energy begins to become very expensive, that's going to change life.
It's going to change our economy.
I mean, do you foresee, for example, you're not an economist, but do you see us going into another depression or something as serious as that over... It seems to me if anything could cause a depression, it would be this.
Unfortunately, I think that's very likely.
You do?
Historically, high energy prices have correlated very strongly with economic recessions.
And we're looking at the mother of all oil shocks coming our way.
And further, our whole modern economic system is based on the idea of endless growth.
Economic theory and the whole market economy have all grown up within the last 500 years of continuous of population and growth in availability of energy resources.
When those trends change, when global population levels off and starts to decline for whatever reason, it certainly will within this century, and when available energy per capita and total available energy begin to decline, then the basis will no longer be present for conventional economic growth.
And we'll really need a different kind of economics at that point.
What do you think will actually... I mean, you alluded to the fact that a population will level off and then begin to decline, and rather shortly, from your point of view, what's going to do all that?
Well, either we will undertake measures to flatten population increase and then gradually
over time reduce population levels, and I don't mean killing people off, I mean reducing
reproduction.
Either we will do it voluntarily or nature will do it for us by the usual means of famine,
war and pestilence.
Again, we've been living in an extraordinary period of time, historically speaking, in
the last century or so, particularly those of us in North America.
We've never seen a real famine in North America, but you go back even three or four centuries in Europe, even the wealthiest and most privileged countries had famines quite regularly.
This is a normal part of human experience, particularly in agricultural societies.
We've been spared that by the regime of cheap energy.
And by the way, I guess I should ask you about the other big controversial aspect of this whole thing.
Of course, as we burn fossil fuels, we affect our atmosphere.
herbicides and fertilizers.
But all of that is about to change as we run out of topsoil, as we run out of fresh water,
and as we run out of cheap energy.
And by the way, I guess I should ask you about the other big controversial aspect of this
whole thing.
Of course, as we burn fossil fuels, we affect our atmosphere.
Lots of controversy there, too.
But is that one of the things that you suspect Mother Nature might do if we don't change
our ways to balance the scales.
Right.
Well, global climate change is certainly a fact.
Yes.
And it appears that the ocean currents that keep countries like Britain and the rest of
northern Europe relatively warm, much warmer than they would be if you look on the map,
they're actually very far north, about the same latitude as, you know, British Columbia
and Alaska and so on.
If those ocean currents were to change, we could be facing, ironically enough, a new ice
We talk about global warming, but in fact, one of the effects of global warming is that the ocean currents are noticeably altering, and if that trend continues, we could see really catastrophic climate change.
Yes, I've heard that.
Okay, Richard, hold tight.
We're at the bottom of the hour.
My guest is Richard Heinberg.
His book is The Party's Over.
And this is straight talk about our nation's future, our economic future, and our energy future.
And that, wrapped up together, is our future.
Can you tell I like this piece of bumper music?
I love it.
It comes from, well, it was used in Dead Like Me, which is also a very good series on Showtime.
Check it out.
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Good credentials, an expert on the world's oil.
.
My guest is Richard Heimberg.
He's written a book called Parties Over Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Society.
That's us, I keep saying.
And it is.
We're right in the middle of this party right now.
And if you have questions for Richard, relevant questions, for somebody like Richard, with his expertise, then we'd welcome them.
And those are the relevant telephone numbers where you can ask them.
In a moment, we'll get it underway.
I would urge you, look around you right now in the room you're in.
You may have a television, oh look at that plastic, all around that, that's oil, that comes from oil, you know, the computer monitor I've got here, oh my telephone, look at that, petroleum based, Everything around us, virtually everything around us, is petroleum-based.
So if we don't have oil, we're going to run out of a lot more than just gas in the tank, aren't we, Richard?
Yeah, that's right.
I mean, even if it's not made out of oil, chances are it was delivered to your home one way or another by a cheap oil It's unimaginable being without oil.
Unimaginable.
I would like to take some questions from my audience and sort of intersperse it with our discussion of Fabio, right?
Sure.
Let's try it.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Richard Einberg.
Hi.
Yeah, first of all, my name's Phoenix, and may I say it's an honor to speak with y'all.
And to you, sir.
Yeah, what I was wanting to ask you was, according to Tesla's writings and everything, was electricity, are you able to broadcast it like a radio wave?
Alright, you know, my guess is not going to be qualified to answer these sorts of questions.
You may have researched it, Richard, in which case you're certainly welcome to give it a try, but there were rumors That Tesla had invented a way to transmit electricity through the air, you know, all that sort of stuff.
I'm sure you've heard it.
Right.
Yeah, actually, when I talked earlier about being at the U.S.
Patent Office researching patents, it was Tesla's patents that I was researching.
Uh-huh.
And, yeah, he did definitely find a way to broadcast power.
Now, whether it was going through the atmosphere or going through the ground was never Clearly established, he had to discontinue his experiments because he ran out of funding.
Well, we all know that when he died, the government rushed in, grabbed all the documents and writings of Tesla, and has kept them basically secret.
And people, of course, imagine that he had the answer to the world's energy problems, and the government's hiding it away.
I personally don't subscribe to it, but one never knows.
Right.
Well, there may be some interesting secrets being hidden away related to Tesla's discoveries,
but if he did discover an infinite, cheap source of power, it doesn't appear anywhere
in his patents, I can say that.
Alright, you've done that much of a search then.
In all the things, that's very interesting actually, in all the things that Tesla did
patent, nowhere did you see a free source of energy.
Nowhere did you see a patent that describes a tower that rises into the air and plucks from the atmosphere power that would drive our cities and our vehicles.
Right.
His broadcast energy system relied on conventional energy sources to produce the power.
In other words, hydroelectricity and so on.
All right.
Very good.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Richard Heinemann.
Hi.
Or, Heinberg, I'm sorry.
Hi, Art.
Hello, Richard.
Thank you so much for this topic tonight.
I'm Neil, calling from Pacific Northwest.
OK, Neil, you're going to have to shout at us.
You're not too loud.
OK.
A little bit better?
Much better.
Thank you, sir.
I'm reading out of the newsletter this month's publication from Richard Heinberg.
Oh!
A subscriber to your newsletter.
From the March edition called Goethe-Dammerung, he brings up some very interesting points.
One is that our economy is being undermined from a lot of borrowed money, and the energy crisis is symptomatic of the whole borrowed energy, borrowed money syndrome, and I'm wondering if Mr. Heinberg has A different model, a different social model.
I was lucky enough to go overseas and live as a military dependent when I was a juvenile, and then again as a soldier.
And I saw the European system, which was oil and gas was four or five dollars a gallon, and people used mass transit more, they still do.
We haven't adapted that model.
We probably can't adapt that model just because of our social things.
You did mention the earlier points, Richard, which were farm your own food at home, something I strongly believe in.
Walk whenever possible.
Use less fossil fuel.
Use less energy consumptive.
But the question is, what social model could you pick out of anywhere in the world to say, they're doing it right, or they're doing it so well?
And the other question is, why has our government, our current government, made such a colossal failure of not only wasting our money, Well, that's a lot.
A different social model, that's a tough one to address.
One thing I would say is a different monetary model could help a lot.
Right now we have money that is essentially created by banks in the process of making loans.
And that kind of money, fiat paper, well it's not always even paper, it's usually electronic money, carries interest because the only way it can be created is through the making of loans.
And as a result of that, the economy has to continually grow or the whole system will collapse because if the economy doesn't grow, if more people aren't taking out loans, then there won't be the extra capital to pay back the existing loans with
interest.
And we've seen historically when that happens, the economy doesn't just go on in a steady
state, it collapses as happened during the 1930s.
I'm afraid we're entering into a historical period where conventional economic growth
as I said earlier is not going to be possible because there won't be the cheap energy to
fuel it.
So what we really need is a different kind of non-debt based, non-interest based money
to enable our economy to continue.
One of the tragedies of the Great Depression was that people still wanted to work, the factories were still there, they still needed all the same stuff that they needed before, but there just wasn't the money available to enable the system to run.
I think the same thing is possible In the very near future we may enter into a deflationary kind of spiral where there just won't be the money, the capital available to enable the system to run.
So one thing I think we need is a different kind of monetary system.
Well, I don't know how you do that without paying back the present debt.
And when you look at those numbers, and the rate at which we're actually increasing that right now... It's horrendous.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's not an easy thing to solve.
And again, I don't think it's likely to be solved before we actually arrive at a crisis situation.
But when we do, I think it'll be important for there to be models available.
Are you enough of an economist, or would-be economist, Richard, to forecast when that Well, I'd shy away from making any specific predictions as to dates, but it may not be that far away, because the levels of debt in the U.S.
right now are just unsustainable.
They're incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
However, I suppose from a historical perspective, Richard, in some ways, You have to give credit to those who have managed our economy so far.
They have put us in a sustained period, with little ups and downs, of the most prosperous, continuously prosperous period of time that almost anybody's ever experienced.
That's right.
So, in a way, they've done pretty well.
Yeah, except that for the past couple of decades we've basically maintained that degree of prosperity by borrowing from our children and grandchildren.
I agree.
I know, I know, but still and all!
We have benefited.
Those of us who are sort of in the baby boom generation especially, you know, we have lived during the most prosperous Wealthy period of time in all of human history.
The champagne years.
We've enjoyed it and we've used it up.
It's been a great party.
But you can clearly see the first guest beginning to go home, huh?
Yeah.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Heimberg.
Good morning.
Hello.
Going once.
Going twice.
Gone.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Heimberg.
Hi.
Hello.
Yes, this is Terry.
Hi, Terry.
I wonder, I work at San Diego State University, and we have developed a hybrid electric vehicle that we developed it three years ago, and it runs on biodiesel also.
It gets 80 miles per gallon, and it was made with off-the-shelf components.
Okay.
Which means that the car companies could have done this and built this car three years ago.
Right.
I was wondering if I could give the website so people could look at it.
Not on the air.
No, you can't.
We have a rule against that.
But if you want to send me an email, we can get it.
If it's interesting, we'll get a link up, okay?
Well, the thing that's different about it is it's 260 horsepower.
It's 60 horsepower diesel and 200 horsepower electric.
And... Hello?
No, we're listening.
Okay.
Okay, so it's 200 horsepower electric.
It's a two-seat sports car that weighs 2,800 pounds.
And we have announced on the radio here in San Diego, on TV, that we're going to drive it from San Diego to Daytona Beach, Florida on one tank of gas on the 4th of July.
Well, I wish you certainly all the luck in the world.
Yes, certainly.
Why do you think that the Ford Motor Company or, I don't know, somebody of substance hasn't knocked on your door and said, B!
You know, that's the strange thing.
We showed it off in Sacramento at the EVAA.
It was EVAA back then, three years ago.
And we had it at the Michelin Challenge.
We competed in the Michelin Challenge.
Well, that's quite a bit of exposure.
Yes, and we've actually, you know, it's funny, the Japanese, when we drove it to the EVAA meeting in Sacramento, the Japanese just kind of all in unison turned their head and looked the other way.
And to what do you attribute that?
I have no idea.
Bob Lutz actually talked with us about it.
He was there.
All right, well, that'll lead to, I guess, a bigger discussion.
Richard, let's assume for a second what he's saying is all true, and they have this vehicle that can do exactly as he said.
Why would you imagine that anybody would turn their head, the Japanese or the Americans or anybody else for that matter, why wouldn't somebody immediately grab on to that, ah, the future, profit, money, let's rock!
Right.
Well, I can understand the American car companies doing it just on the basis that that's sort of their standard operating procedure.
They've let slip all sorts of opportunities to increase energy efficiency of their fleets.
But the Japanese, that's harder to understand because Japan, we have to remember, is a country with no indigenous energy resources.
And so they're much more interested in energy efficiency than the Americans are.
By the way, there's already a European car that gets 90 miles to the gallon, and that is the Volkswagen Lupo, which is a diesel car.
It's a small car.
Unfortunately, it is not exported to the U.S.
because Volkswagen says that there's no demand for it here.
No demand.
Well, uh, earlier we were talking about American car companies churning out these SUVs.
I don't fault them.
I don't fault the American car companies at all.
The American car companies have, you know, if they want to stay in business, they have to produce what people want.
They want to make a profit, that's certainly true.
Everything's profit-driven, and the American people want big cars.
And so it's not their fault.
They have to.
Well, I think two things could be done.
or they won't be in business.
Why do... how do we change the minds and the hearts of Americans to not want the SUV,
instead to want the thing that gets
ninety miles per gallon? If we could change their minds and hearts, we'd have it!
Well, I think two things could be done. First of all, if we could take away the
subsidy that's being given to SUV buyers by the federal government
and change that to a subsidy that is directly related to vehicle efficiency.
That would certainly help.
Then if the American public world for that matter, could be alerted to the fact that in fact, energy resources are limited, and that we are necessarily going to have to restrict our appetites for for abundant energy and become more efficient.
You know, right now we have the most effective propaganda machine in the world here in the United States.
It's called the advertising industry.
People base their behavior on what they're told.
I think we pride ourselves, particularly the intelligent people, that we don't pay attention to the advertising.
But it's effective, otherwise billions of dollars wouldn't be spent on it.
So that propaganda stream needs to be altered.
It needs to be telling us, in some ways, almost exactly the opposite of the message that it is giving us now.
The message we're getting now is buy, consume, waste, like there's no tomorrow.
Uh, and the real message is if we continue to buy and consume and waste the way we are now, there will be no tomorrow.
All right.
Well, I'm going to be honest with you, and I was being honest with you when I told you 90% of the time I'm driving a Geo Metro, but out in one of my other garages, Richard, I have a Firebird Trans Am.
That baby kicks butt.
And I remember the Super Bowl a few years ago, 1998 actually, and in it they debuted this Firebird Trans Am, and my mouth hit the floor.
I fell in love with that thing and the power and You know, I've done it out there.
I don't use it very often, but every now and then, Richard, I want to get out there and I want to feel that mama take off.
I want to be pressed back in the seat.
I want to feel the velocity.
You know, fun car.
That's what it is.
And frankly, I don't know how you get people to give that up, Richard.
I have no idea.
And it's going to have to happen, isn't it?
Well, ultimately it'll just be too expensive for anybody very wealthy to be able to afford that kind of experience on a regular basis.
So, well, you know, like I said, it's been a great party and in some ways I think it's worth enjoying as it winds down.
The automobile is art form, sure, I can appreciate that.
Yes, there is that.
Even though the first couple of guests may have wandered to the door and be on the way out, the party's ending, for how much longer can we have a general expectation of the party rolling on?
Well, in terms of normal life as we're used to it, probably not that much longer, because the natural gas crisis is beating down the door right now.
We've only averted a really serious, in-your-face Natural gas crisis.
Ten years?
Fifteen years?
Twenty years?
Oh no, no, no.
We're talking about within the next two or three years with natural gas.
What?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
What'll begin to happen in two or three years?
I mean, will... What, it'll be so expensive you can't afford it, or what?
Electricity, for example, will become more expensive.
We're generating a lot of our electricity through natural gas.
Mostly through coal, but...
We've ordered about a hundred billion dollars worth of natural gas-fired power plants over the last few years.
And because, of course, natural gas burns clean, and we were told that there were limitless supplies of it.
But now that natural gas production is declining rapidly in North America, there's a real question as to where all that gas is going to come from to generate the electricity.
That's right.
All right.
Gotcha.
All right.
Hold on.
We're at a break point here at the top of the hour.
Trouble on the way and you know I thought he was going to say 10 or 20 or 30 years
But really the next two or three years Well, I don't know then what kind of attitude do you have
get out there and have a blast?
I I
I I
Oh I
See I
I I
Green Where have you been, June?
I see him blue, for me and you.
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world I see times of gloom, and times of fright
Just right for pleasant days, just off to say goodnight And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
you To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
line is area code 775-727-1222. To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free
at 800-825-5033. From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
International callers may That's such a pretty song, isn't it?
Good morning, everybody!
for income free sprint access number, pressing option five and dialing toll free 800-893-0903.
That's such a pretty song, isn't it? Good morning, everybody. My guest is a realist.
He's Richard Humbert, who's written a book called Parties Over the Oil War and the Fate of Industrialist Society.
It's something we're going to have to face up to.
There's no question about it.
It's coming.
It's here.
And soon, it'll be gone.
Wonder when we start planning.
Richard Heimberg once again, the party's over, his book.
Richard, your book, the party's over.
In your book, did you, in what way did you lay it out?
Was your main intent exactly that, to have your readers understand the party is really over?
Is it documenting that, or does it Uh, it doesn't go forward into, you know, in other areas like where, or all areas, how people can conserve themselves.
And by the way, I have questions wanting you to go further than you did with the, you know, the personal advice.
Right.
Yeah, I try to do all of that.
It's not a pleasant message.
It's cold water in the face.
It certainly is.
And so I emphasize that with the title, The Party's Over.
I want people to know that this is serious news.
And we like good news, but sometimes the bad news is more important to hear.
But you are aware of the fate of messengers.
Yes, unfortunately.
So far I've managed to avoid that fate.
Have you?
Well, yes, but I'm sure in a literary sense, I bet you've had people come and attack you for this.
Oh yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I've gotten some pretty nasty emails.
I bet you have.
Well, what's a matter with you?
Don't you know there's more oil than man could ever use out there?
Yes, worse than that, actually.
I can imagine, actually.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Richard Einberg.
Hello.
Hello, Art.
Hi, Richard.
This is Ahab.
I'm calling from South Bend, Indiana.
I listened to you on 890.
All right.
Did you all left out of Chicago?
Yes, sir.
Well, I've got to tell you, I'm pretty hot to talk to the guests tonight, because this is my favorite topic.
We are insane in this country.
I mean, everything that you're talking about, we've known about since the 70s.
Yet the country has not done what it needs to do.
We've had this lull of low prices, and we haven't had the motivation or the leadership at the government level to start You know, decentralizing some of the local electric grid power so we don't rely on all these huge plants?
Well, I don't know that enough of the audience is old enough, but some will be, to remember.
We did indeed, we had this crisis, and people began to change the way they think and the way they acted, and all kinds of things happened back during that gas crisis, but boy, did we forget about it fast!
I mean, whoo-whoo!
Well, it's almost, I mean, really, the behavior of the industry.
In terms of supply and pricing.
I mean, it makes me believe every conspiracy thing I've ever heard.
I mean, it's almost like as soon as we got on track to getting away from the petro-economy, they cracked the valves open and dropped the prices down and everybody kind of forgot about everything.
The tax credits on renewable energy expired.
Congress let them lapse.
I mean, I've got a 25-year-old Grumman, a stainless steel solar water heater that still works to this day.
And, you know, but who in their right mind is going to spend a grand on a water heater, even if it lasts 25, 30 years?
It's still going great.
I don't know how long it's going to last.
When you can go to, like, any big, you know, appliance depot type place and, you know, get a gas water heater for, you know, 200 bucks.
The government has to get behind it, put some incentives so people will make, you know, good choices for our long-term benefit.
The government is us.
And look at us.
You just really pointed out how well All of us recovered as though the party's never going to end once, you know, the lights went back on.
We just started singing where we left off.
It's like we have collective amnesia.
Yes.
As soon as those dollars start to drop at the pump, you know, and the prices got back down to like a buck twenty, a buck out here, oh my god, everybody started getting the behemoths again.
We were back in biz.
Right.
And I'll tell you, I've spent most of my career in professional commercial horticulture.
And there are many, many callers I'm sure that could back me up on this.
Good old-fashioned ag school crossbreeding has already produced some killer fuel seed crops that grow on transition soil, marginal soil that we're not in use now.
I mean, I myself have witnessed some of the Michigan State's test crops up in Michigan here, just north of me, where they had a whole field of 25-30 foot hemp plants that grew in one season that were just like a giant tree the size of a small apple tree, solid seeds.
Yes.
Now, you tell me, marginal, marshy land where this stuff grows without even any fertilizer?
Go out there, crush the seeds?
I'm not saying it would solve everything.
No, you know, you really do raise a good point.
It makes you want to believe every damn conspiracy theory out there.
It does!
And what about you, Richard?
Yeah, well, needless to say, I agree with everything the caller has said.
We've suffered from, really, the curse of cheap energy in a lot of ways.
I mean, cheap energy has given us Amazing mobility and freedom and power, but it's also made us addicted to a way of life that is ultimately unsustainable.
Oh, you said it.
I mean, thank you.
Thank you for somebody saying it.
I mean, we are just no better as a nation than some crack addict.
They get, you know, busted into people's cars to steal some money to support their habit.
Now we can't support our own energy habits.
We gotta send, you know, our boys and girls all over the world now to go kick ass and make sure that the pipelines keep running.
Yeah, we better face up to it because that is what we're doing.
I mean, it's just, it's so sad and it's so unnecessary when all the know-how is here.
I mean, like that guy that called before, my God, this, you know, I mean, Art, I mean, I know that you know.
You were around in the 70s.
I mean, Chrysler had a little duster that they, you know, replaced half the body parts with aluminum and put an aluminum block in it.
The thing with the 74 Duster, what do they call it, like a fuel miser or something, that got 36 miles to the gallon.
Sure.
With early 70s technology.
I know.
And it still weighed like 3,200 pounds.
But again, the government, thank you caller, you're a good caller, the government is us.
They're not really much different, they represent us and what we want.
Right.
And so we're the ones driving this.
And same deal with the car companies.
They wouldn't sell what we don't want.
Because nobody would buy it.
So it's us driving this.
That's what we've got to get through to ourselves.
That we are driving this addiction.
And they're just the suppliers.
Right.
And we need good information on which to base our decisions.
You're right.
In a sense, the government is us.
But we're going to make bad decisions as long as we have bad information.
And right now, I think most of us, most Americans, assume that, you know, cheap oil is our birthright.
That's what we've been told.
Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Richard Heimberg.
Hi.
Okay, is that me?
That's you.
Okay, this is Randall.
I'm a truck driver.
I'm calling from Coachella, California.
Yes, sir.
And since we're talking about oil, Uh, I'm a dinosaur.
I drive a truck.
I'll do 130,000 miles a year.
I'm, uh, working right now.
I pull off the side of the road so you have a good connection on my cell phone here, Art.
Thank you.
I have logged a gazillion miles in the last nine years listening to you and now, of course, George Snoring.
I own one car, a 1967 Buick Skylark with a V8, and I've got a bigger V8 sitting in the garage waiting to go in with a positive tracker in it.
I love being slammed in the backseat.
He doesn't drive it very far.
See, we can't give this up.
Plus, he's a truck driver.
I mean, as a truck driver, when you hear Richard saying the things he's saying, how do you feel about that?
Well, I have a feeling, after many years of listening to you and also just where I'm going, hoping to go spiritually, none of this that he's talking about in the last caller, I love the guy.
The truth of the matter is, he's right.
This nation is a nation of addicts of more than one kind.
The bottom line is, without a spiritual awakening, it isn't going to happen unless, and this is my question for you Richard, do you believe that the only way this is going to happen is what we've talked about, or I should say you have talked about, is we're going to have a big reduction in population?
Because you alluded to it earlier.
You said nature will take care of it.
Well, we're not going to stop.
Well, if you look out here right now, tonight, there's hundreds of trucks going into California to deliver, and there's hundreds of thousands of us doing this job.
How are we going to get food?
That's right.
Well, look, first of all, Mother Nature doesn't get angry.
She gets even.
She evens things out, and I'm afraid... Which do you think it'll be?
Do you think we will first Well, quite frankly, I think it's going to be a combination of the two.
or do you think that nature will uh... was promised a balancing act resulting in you know
two three billion people less
well uh...
quite frankly i think it's it's going to be a combination of the two
uh... i'd i'd doubt if we are going to make the kinds of drastic efforts that will
be needed short of uh... necessity
and that necessity is probably going to come in some pretty nasty forms
Beyond that, I dread to make more specific predictions, except to say that I think your caller is absolutely right, that there's a spiritual dimension to this.
Well, spirituality has a kind of ethical dimension to it.
I think as we awaken to the fact that we are dependent on a force greater than ourselves, namely the earth, we will find that the ethical path is a kind of eco-ethics.
where we acknowledge that the earth has its own consciousness, its own rhythms, and we
are here to serve that rather than it to serve us, ultimately.
And you see this kind of transformation taking place among the American people?
Well, as I say, it's going to be a process.
But I do see hopeful signs.
I mean, you know, I'm a college teacher.
I deal with a new crop of students every few months.
And, you know, I don't have to take very long explaining all this stuff to them.
They get it right away.
Okay, but still, if you were to examine the life that those students of yours are leading right now, would that be consistent with them getting it Well, maybe I'm fortunate in where I live and the students that get attracted to New College, but most of the students that I have, I think, are already on the path.
Maybe they're attracted to my program because they already have this sense, but they know that the world is about to change in profound ways, and they want to be out there and in front leading that change rather than having their lives destroyed by it.
Very good.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Heimberg.
Hi.
Hi, this is Tom.
I'm in Lafayette, Indiana.
I just wanted to add to the conversation that just this last week Ford came out with a new gas-electric hybrid.
It's called the Ford Escape.
It's an SUV.
It's an SUV?
Well, let's see, that's what people want.
Well, how does it do?
Well, they're claiming 60 miles to the gallon.
Oh, well, that would be serious.
And they also have an Escape that's just plain gas.
You know, no hybrid.
And they say the hybrid's only like 2,000 to 3,000 more than the plain gas one.
That's pretty interesting.
And they're expecting to sell all of them that they can build.
I bet they will.
Now, leave it forward.
You think that's right, Richard?
Have you heard of that?
You know, I haven't heard this.
I knew that they were planning a hybrid SUV, but I hadn't heard the announcement that it had come out.
Well, they've got an SUV that'll get 60 miles to the gallon.
That's true.
It's good news.
They would have a really serious seller.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Heinberg.
Hi.
Hi, my name's Elaine.
I'm on the Oregon coast.
Hello, Elaine.
I wanted to know what ever happened to the Brutalis engine.
Brutalis?
Brutalis, it was a Brayton cycle engine, a constant pressure engine.
And what did this engine do?
It could burn biomass.
Somebody said earlier something about hemp plants, and the designer says, well, I wonder if they could finally find a use for kudzu or scotch broom.
That's a good idea.
Have you heard of that, Richard?
You know, that's something I haven't heard of.
There are so many of these things, you know, different energy efficiency devices, different kinds of motors and so on out there.
What we really need, I think, is a blue ribbon commission to look at all of the energy alternatives, everything from nuclear to solar thermal and solar PV, and evaluate all of them across a range of consistent and transparent criteria to see what we should be investing in.
Because we need to be investing not just a billion here or there, which is what the current administration is doing, but literally hundreds of billions of dollars In this energy transition.
Have you been asked to testify in front of Congress?
No, I haven't.
I have spoken with local government and also members of the House of Representatives, a couple of Senators, but I would like to get the message out to as high a level as possible.
Hello there.
You're on the air with Art Bell and Richard Heinberg.
Good morning.
Where are you?
Hello, Mark.
Hello.
Yes, I'm in Columbus, Ohio.
Okay.
How are you tonight?
I'm just fine.
Welcome to the program.
Thank you very much.
I'm a first-time caller.
My father and I both listen to your show a lot.
We listen to George.
And the reason I'm calling is back in the 70s, I was about, during the gas shortage, I was about 16, 17 years old.
And my stepfather, he owns some oil wells in West Virginia.
And the government at that time and the company, I'm not going to mention it, the oil company that he was selling oil to, they subsidized him at that time to quit pumping oil.
And also, I don't know if Richard knows much about that, but also they do the same thing with crops up here in Ohio.
They subsidize farmers not to grow corn and that type of thing.
I know that for a fact, too.
Oh, that's right.
Richard, do you want to comment on that?
Yeah, I can't.
I have no knowledge of that specific situation.
Well, they do subsidize farmers to just leave the land.
Oh, yeah, definitely with agriculture.
But the question about the oil well in West Virginia, I don't know about that.
Right, but, gee, Richard, if they subsidize farmers to not grow stuff, you were saying we were already at the peak of agriculture, right?
Right.
That doesn't make sense.
Why don't you stop the subsidies once you get the peak?
Right.
Well, the problem is with distribution.
We actually produce enough food to feed everyone, but the problems of distribution and economics keep it from getting to the people who need it.
So, it's a complicated situation, and of course there are a lot of marginally producing American oil wells where it actually costs more money to get the oil out of the ground than the oil is actually worth.
So, in other words, they will begin to pump that oil at some certain price.
All of a sudden, it's going to be magically profitable for them to bring it up.
Right.
But then we're talking about very expensive oil.
How expensive?
In other words, if there's a capped well down in Texas or Oklahoma somewhere right now, when do you expect they'll rip the cap off?
It depends on the particular well.
Maybe when oil gets up to $40 a barrel, that might be the trigger that would enable that particular well to be produced.
But we may be talking about a well that would only produce 5, 10, 20 barrels a day.
There are literally thousands of wells in the U.S.
that only produce a few barrels a day.
Boy, I'll tell you Richard, your message is pretty killing!
It really is.
I mean, when you begin to consider the implications for not just this country, but the whole world.
I mean it to be.
I'm not a morose, gloomy character myself.
This is not something genetic or personality.
I've got that.
This is the information that we need to hear.
Yeah, I think that I've got that.
Richard Heimberg is my guest, and I think I do have it.
The party's over.
His book.
You might want to read it.
Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies.
Us.
From the high desert.
In the middle of the night.
You're listening to Coast to Coast AM.
This is a recording of the Coast to Coast AM.
Thank you.
And the sweet, sticky warmth of summer nights Gazing at the distant lights in the starlit sky
They say that all good things are damned someday All that's left is a crossroad
But don't you know that it hurts me so To say goodbye to you
Wish you didn't have to go No, no, no, no And when the rain Beats against my window pane
To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
The first time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
To talk with Art Bell, from East to the Rockies, call toll free at 800-825-5033.
line is area code 775-727-1222 to talk with Art Bell from East to the Rockies call toll-free
at 800-825-5033 from West to the Rockies call Art at 800-618-8255.
International callers may That's what the party's over is all about.
country's print access number, pressing option 5 and dialing toll free 800-893-0903.
From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
Thanks for watching.
you've been listening carefully this morning, it's...
It's chilling reality.
Well, it's funny.
You do a show about oil, but you end up talking, really, about everything else.
And I guess that is inevitable, since the message here is it's over.
And if it's not over today, it's over in the next few years.
It begins to get seriously over.
We're running out.
That's all there is to it.
So you end up talking about a lot of other things.
Geothermal, Richard.
Geothermal.
How much substance is there in pursuing that angle?
Well, I live near one of the country's biggest geothermal stations, the geysers, here in Northern California.
And it supplies a certain percentage of California electricity.
It's not a large percentage.
It's down in the single digits.
I'm not quite sure what the exact number is.
Geothermal is site-specific.
There are only certain places that have the resource, and then it's actually not renewable, unfortunately, because once you sink the pipe down and get that hot water up and take the heat out of water to turn turbines and generate electricity, well, that resource of hot underground water tends to deplete over time, and most geothermal sites are exhausted within a matter of a few decades.
Let me get your opinion on this.
We have, well, several currently at least viable technologies including the Sun and conversion of that energy.
People have had thoughts about putting up satellites and capturing energy in space at a much larger efficiency and then transmitting it to Earth.
Well, wind is a good investment.
There's no doubt about it.
As you say, it is relatively inexpensive and it can be brought online quite quickly, unlike nuclear.
per kilowatt, the cheapest right now. Where should we be going, Richard?
Well, wind is a good investment. There's no doubt about it.
As you say, it is relatively inexpensive and it can be brought online quite quickly,
unlike nuclear. For example, nuclear power plants take a long time to design and install and
they're very expensive, whereas wind turbines can go up quite rapidly.
I think that's where we should be putting most of our investment right now.
But there's no single silver bullet.
There's no one-size-fits-all for our national energy policy in the future.
We're going to have to explore a whole range of alternatives.
And all of them together are not going to be able to supply the same kind of continually growing cheap energy supply that we've become
used to.
So we'll have to change the way we use energy and use it much more efficiently and miserly.
And our lifestyles will have to change quite quickly.
Yeah, we'll have to move producers and consumers closer together.
All of this business of driving an hour or two every day to go to and from work or to
stores to shop and so on, that is going to have to change.
And we're also going to have to find ways to do...
do with fewer personal cars. I mean, the idea of car co-ops is, I think, a good one, and also
building more public transportation infrastructure the way they have in Europe. In many ways,
I think the Europeans are much better positioned to handle the energy crunch than we are in the U.S.
You know, it's funny, I listen to this and even in my own mind, I'm really not ready for the party to be over.
That's the truth.
I'm not.
I mean, I understand what we're facing and what you're saying I believe to be true, but I'm not ready for the party to be over.
I can't imagine living the kind of life that you're really talking about.
I can't imagine that.
You know, my car and a car co-op, give me a break!
Yikes!
I mean, that's a future most Americans just I agree, and it's taken me a while to get used to the idea too, and I'm certainly not looking forward to the kinds of changes in the economy.
Otherwise, it could be very disruptive in the next few years.
I would like to be proven wrong in a lot of what I'm saying.
I hope you are.
I have a nagging suspicion that you're not.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Richard Heimberg.
Hi.
How are you doing?
I'll tell you, I'm Paul from Glendale, Pennsylvania.
I started listening to you in 1996 when I went to Vegas, and I've been listening ever since.
You're doing a great job.
Thank you.
I think we ought to invade.
We're already over there.
They're playing us for a sucker.
I'm sorry, invade what?
Invade OPEC.
Make OPEC a memory.
Take it over.
They're playing us for a sucker.
You mean take over the OPEC nations?
Take over the whole thing.
The whole thing?
Everywhere where there's oil?
Well, basically most of it, you know.
We're already over there.
We're done with Iraq, basically.
Move on to Syria, Iran.
I would say do it, because they're starting it.
They're playing around with it.
They're playing around with the whole world economy.
So I think we have a right to do it.
Okay.
I appreciate your point of view, and hey, Richard.
You know what?
There's going to be a lot of guys out there like him.
Yeah, I think actually that's pretty close to the game plan.
But, you know, here we might learn a little lesson from history.
There was a big empire around a couple thousand years ago that also had its military garrisoned in far off countries and was dependent on resources from far away.
Would that be the one where the sun never set on it?
Yeah, well the Roman Empire is what I'm thinking of.
Oh, we could go back even further.
Yeah, even further.
And the tendency of empires is to collapse because after a while they start spending more on uh... garrisoning their their colonial troops than they're
spending on infrastructure at home
and that's what's happening with the u s right now we're actually
starting to spend more on keeping our military going abroad keeping the
resource flows going and we are on when our people and their needs
uh... that's when a society reaches that point i think it's a dangerous situation
wildcard line you're on the air with richard heinberg good morning
Hi.
Richard.
It's a pleasure to be on.
Good.
Getting back into the old days and the Industrial Revolution there, there was a fellow that invented a machine that was unlike the cotton gin, separating cotton, etc., etc., what that did to that industry.
He invented a machine You can stop right there.
He's right, Richard.
Hemp is a remarkable resource that we have turned our backs on, largely, in the United States.
I read in the Wall Street Journal, Richard, that it would be Some incredible number of, like, 500 billion dollars it could contribute to our economy.
Right.
Well, here in Northern California, where I live, it's already the biggest cash crop.
Yeah, I know.
That's an aside, really.
But what your caller is saying is absolutely true.
Hemp, as an industrial crop, forget about the mind-altering attributes of certain strains of the species.
As an industrial crop, we're crazy not to be taking advantage of it.
There are other sources of biomass.
Switchgrass, actually, has been experimented with.
Switchgrass, of course, is legal to grow and could be a very effective crop for growing biomass for energy purposes.
Seems like you ought to testify in front of Congress.
That's what I think, Richard.
Do you think they could handle that kind of testimony, that kind of reality?
Do you think they could handle it?
I don't expect to be invited any time soon.
I spoke recently with one member of Congress who is actually on the Energy and Technology Subcommittee.
We could think of them as the hosts of the party.
Right.
This individual told me that in private, many of her colleagues are aware of at least some of what I'm talking about now, but they're really unable to say anything in public because it would be bad for politics.
They wouldn't be re-elected.
Remarkable.
All right.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Richard Heinberg.
Hi.
Hi.
How are you doing?
Uh, the caller, uh, two back about, uh, that we should just go, uh, take over everything and get rid of OPEC and all that.
Yes.
You know, that seems to be, you know, the typical kind of muttonhead American idea.
Um, you know, people don't realize, you know, you know, we do need to conserve and everything, but I think a bigger thing is everybody talks about, you know, I mean, what we're in the middle of right now, you know, we're sending over You know, people, young people, they're dying, um, and all the money that's wasted, and, you know, when this all happened in the 70s, when all of a sudden the squeeze was on and everything, I don't understand, you know, if OPEC or whoever it is, whoever they are over there, if they want to charge us $100 for a barrel of oil, let them charge us $100 for a barrel of oil, but just
Well, that's not outside the range of possibility.
of food that they have to, you know, import from us over there, just jack the price of
that way up and say, you know, how much of it do you want?
We'll take as many barrels as you got.
All right, Richard, do we have, Richard, do we then anticipate some sort of food for fuel
war?
Well, that's not outside the range of possibility.
actually happening right now is that the US...
adventure in Iraq has alienated, in fact, many of the Arab oil-producing nations.
As we spoke about earlier, China is increasing its oil imports dramatically.
Actually, China and the U.S.
are in competition for Or OPEC oil to a much greater degree right now.
Actually, Richard, wouldn't it scare the neighboring nations to a degree?
I mean, it would do a lot of things.
Our invasion of Iraq probably has scared the hell out of quite a few countries there.
Syria and Iran come to mind immediately.
Should they be worried?
Yes, although on the other hand, I think they've seen how the invasion was handled and the incredible Well, we are.
Yes, we are.
of many aspects of the invasion and how the U.S. is in a sense mired in place now and
really not in any position to invade any more countries. We're having a tough time just
handling this one country that we've conquered. Well, we are. Yes, we are. Although I have
a sort of a theory about that and it's maybe just grasping at straws, Richard, but my theory
is that now that America is in Iraq, literally every terrorist organization from the entire
world is probably pouring their assets into Iraq.
So in a way it puts them all in one place where we can do what we're doing.
So it's, you know, a two-edged sword is what I'm saying.
In a sense, perhaps we can have the battleground there.
Right.
Well, that was the theory that was put forward by a number of people in the Defense Department, and there's certainly some truth to it.
But as we've seen in Spain in the last few weeks, I don't think that Iraq has become the sole focus of international terrorism.
That's true.
All right, West of the Rockies, hi, you're on the air with Richard Humbert.
Good morning, Art.
How are you doing there, Richard?
Yes, hello.
Summing up in two words here, national security, and the reason being with our current state of political affairs and our war on terrorism, you've got to think about this for a moment.
If we had Joe Schmuck's telly with some type of free energy system or a real efficient power plant, you've got to think about the freedom of mobility and the choke points we're talking about.
We have to use our waterways.
Right.
But if you have something that you don't have to stop for fuel, and you could put it in a car that could fly or an airplane, how are our world political powers going to, you know, put up these choke points, roadblocks, and stop our freedom of mobility?
And I don't see that happening.
And besides, even if you have the technology available, you know, to drive a tank round trip from coast to coast, Richard?
wouldn't make much difference because that were political power structure and
you know in the current infrastructure you know it cost enormous amount of
money it would take years to put it in there you know put it in the
infrastructure and meanwhile we would rely on the oil to ship the magic bullet
to the processing plant to produce something that's more efficient. Richard?
I'm not quite sure how to how to answer that I think I followed it
It was sort of a, I guess damned if we do and damned if we don't kind of thing.
If we come up with something to change the infrastructure, is itself going to be so traumatic, so incredibly traumatic and expensive and energy consumptive.
There's probably, well, you know Richard, in the old days when we had piston aircraft even now a jet aircraft really you have this point when you're crossing the ocean for example to Japan when a little red light comes on in the cockpit and it says point of no return or it means point of no return and what that means is come hell or high water baby you just used up over half your fuel now you're either you're going on to your destination or you're going into the water but you're not going home
Right, well we have about half of the oil that nature originally gave us left.
Do we really know that scientifically?
About a trillion barrels of oil in the ground.
We scientifically know that for sure.
Well, within a 10% margin of error.
Now if that's true, that last trillion barrels of oil is very valuable and we should be using it for Uh, the most important life-sustaining purposes, rather than just guzzling it down.
We should be using it to fund the transition to renewable energies.
We should be using it for absolutely essential purposes.
Yes.
And that's the kind of thing, those are the kinds of hard choices we need to be making.
Triage, in a sense.
And that's the message, and the party's over.
Right.
Yeah, in the book I try to inform the reader just how important oil is to our way of life and give the scientific arguments for why oil is about to peak in production and then discuss all the various alternatives from nuclear to solar and wind.
And then, in the final chapter, talk about the choices that people can make in their individual lives.
By the way, we've got such a short, so it's going to be a great book.
Grab it up, folks.
Just very quickly, the nuclear option.
What is your position on that?
Well, there are a number of problems with nuclear power, of course.
The safety issue and also the possible source of weapons and terrorism.
Yes, but all that being said, is it a viable...
As a source of energy, it is viable.
There's something called energy return on energy investment, or energy profit ratio.
It takes energy to get energy, and with nuclear power, historically, when you add up all the energy required to build a nuclear plant, operate it, process the fuel, and then decommission the plant at the end of its cycle, it's actually not producing a very high energy profit.
I really want to thank you for coming on the air with me tonight.
I think what you said here tonight should be said in front of Congress or the Senate or something.
Thank you, Richard.
Well, thank you, Art.
It's been a pleasure speaking with you and your listeners.
Good night.
There you have it.
And I really mean that, too.
What he just said should be Required listening in Congress and the Senate.
Some committee has got to call this man and let him tell the truth.
And let them digest this information and see if they really want to do anything about it.
Because I know a lot of you do.
That's it for the weekend.
That's all there is.
I've got to go.
This is Art Bell from the high desert in the middle of the night.
As always, good night.
Good night in the desert.
Shooting stars across the sky This magical journey
Will take us to sunrise Filled with the longing
Seeking for the truth We make it to tomorrow
Will the sun shine on you?
Oh.
Good night in the desert.
I'm a legend.
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