The Empire Strikes Back: Down with those Silly Environmental Policies!

I defined this image as "The most amazing graph of the 21st century," and I argued that the rapid inversion of the declining trend of crude oil production is the cause of the US government's currently aggressive foreign policy. But the vagaries of oil production in the US haven't ceased to amaze us. We are now seeing a desperate attempt to keep oil production growing, even at the cost of dumping everything done so far in terms of "green" policies to mitigate climate change and ecosystem disruption. It is a major historical change. 

Sometimes, things change so fast in our world that we are left bewildered at seeing the rapid disappearance of the world we had thought was normal. The Covid pandemic was a case in point. It changed our habits, how we see ourselves and others, and affected our fundamental rights. In less than a couple of years, it propelled us into a "new normal" that became the way things are and have to be. 

The wave of rapid changes is not over. Now, change is sweeping through energy and environmental policies, and not in a good direction. A recent article in "The Epoch Times" reports about a document approved by the House Natural Resources Committee with the title, "GOP-Led House Panels Shift Gears, Go Full Throttle for Domestic Energy Production." It is a true tsunami poised to propel us into another kind of "new normal." Here are some excerpts.

"Republicans made it clear that many initiatives passed under the Biden administration promoting electric vehicles, carbon capture, green energy, and environmental protection are on the proverbial chopping block.

"Among the proposals that will dominate the committee’s and its subsidiary panels’ agendas in the coming months are bills prohibiting restrictions on hydraulic fracking without congressional approval, expanding natural gas exports, repealing the IRA’s Green House Reduction Fund, and amending the Clean Air, Toxic Substances Control, Solid Waste Disposal, and National Gas Tax acts.

"Within the tranche of proposed legislation on the committee’s “unleashing American energy agenda” are bills calling for permitting reform, promoting development of “critical minerals,” and prohibiting the import of Russian uranium. 

"Current energy policies not only degrade the economy but imperil national security... We are exporting wealth from here in the United States, many times to our adversaries, because of a not-in-my-backyard mentality,

"Grijalva’s proposed amendment to incorporate a statement that the impacts of climate change be weighed in evaluating proposals was defeated on a 21–15 party-line tally."

And more like that.

Let's try to unravel this set of ideas. We can start with the key sentence: "prohibiting restrictions on hydraulic fracking." It means that the Republicans want to ramp up the production of natural gas and crude oil at all costs, and the hell with "Climate Change" and "environmental protection." These silly ideas came from those scientists who think they deserve a salary just because they spend their time scaring the public with invented catastrophes that never arrive. Who do they think they are? 

The Republicans seem to be riding a wave of public opinion that sees environmental policies in a bad light. Indeed, most people were never enthusiastic about making sacrifices for a nebulous entity called "the environment." But, today, the public's trust in science has taken a considerable beating from the Covid crisis, and it is becoming more and more difficult to convince people to act in the name of a "science" that they see with increasing suspicion. Independently of individual opinions, when things get tough, most people tend to agree that there is no space for niceties and luxuries, as environmental policies are usually perceived. 

Apart from dumping regulations, neither the Republicans nor the general public seem to be able to see the glaring contradiction in what they are planning to do. Increasing oil and gas production means that more oil and gas will be used and exported. But once oil is produced and burned, it is gone. Then, the country will be impoverished, having lost some of its natural resources. (Unless, of course, you think that oil and gas are an infinite resource.... and that's precisely what the US elites think.). This is a classic case of hastening one's own doom, but it is normal. It happens all the time. 

Besides, there is an even more worrisome point in these ideas. Can fracking production be actually increased? The sentence about prohibiting restrictions on hydraulic fracking actually smacks of desperation. During the past 10 years, an incredibly rapid increase in oil production was obtained without the need for such a radical legislation. So why is it needed now? It may be a way for senators to show their determination, but it is more likely that the fracking industry is in trouble, unable to recover after the drop caused by the Covid pandemic. 

Let's see some recent data from "Peak Oil Barrel." 

You see that the US oil production collapsed in 2020 due to the Covid epidemic. Then, it restarted growing but has yet to return to the record level of Nov 2019. During the years of fast growth, up to 2019, it had grown more than 1 million barrels per year, a nearly 10% increase. It was a rate never seen during the whole history of US oil production. But, during the current recovery, it has declined to about half that value. The forecasts see a further reduction to nearly zero growth so that the 2019 record may not be breached before December 2024 -- if ever. Note also how production went down for about 6 months before the Covid shock. Something was rotten in Texas already by then. 

What's happening? One thing is clear: the US oil industry can no longer sustain the incredible growth rate that had been the rule up to 2019. We may well be close to the second (and final) peak of oil production in the US (as also noted by others)

So, as in the old Chinese malediction, we live in interesting times. An empire that does not expand is a dead empire, and the American Empire needs energy to keep its expansion going. A war, after all, is just a continuation of the economy by other means: the market is the battlefield, and "programmed obsolescence" is assured by the competitor's products. During the past decade, the US empire has accumulated considerable economic potential through the "fracking miracle." This potential has been turned in large part into a military potential. It is now time to dissipate this potential; it is the primary reason for what we see in the world nowadays. It is a concept explored in depth by Ingo Piepers.

The American elites understand what's happening. Hence, the effort to prop up the oil industry at all costs. So, will the Empire succeed in surviving for some more years? The current war is not being fought on the battlefield but on the oil fields. The side that runs out of fuel first will be the loser. 

In the long run, anyway, the winner will also lose: at some moment, production by fracking will not just decline: it will crash in one of the most brutal Seneca Cliffs ever witnessed by humankind. But do not despair: humankind has been thriving before the age of oil, and it may well do the same afterward. It will just be a very different world for those who will survive to see it. 

Below is a post I published in 2015, where I compared the growth of shale oil production to that of cod fishing in the Atlantic. In both cases, producers were blinded by a false sensation of abundance generated by production growth. They didn't realize that the faster you extract it, the faster you run out of it. 

The shale oil "miracle": how growth may falsely signal abundance. 

Originally published on "Cassandra's Legacy,  February 24, 2015

Oil production (all liquids in barrels per day) in the US and Canada. (From Ron Patterson's blog). Does this rapid growth indicate that the resources are abundant and that all the worries about peak oil are misplaced? Maybe not...

Sometimes, we use a simple metric to evaluate complex systems. For instance, a war is a complex affair where millions of people fight and struggle. However, in the end, the final result is a yes/no question: either you win or you lose. Not for nothing, General McArthur said once that "there is no substitute for victory."

Think of the economy: it is an immense and complex system where millions of people work, produce, buy, sell, and make or lose money. IEventually the final result is a simple yes/no question: either you grow, or you don't. And what McArthur said about war can be applied to the economy: "there is no substitute for growth."

But complex systems have ways of behaving, surprising you that can't be reduced to a simple yes/no judgment. Both victory and growth may create more problems than they solve. Victory may falsely signal a military might that doesn't exist (think of the outcome of some recent wars....), while growth may signal an abundance that is just not there.

Look at the figure at the beginning of this post (from Ron Patterson's blog). It shows the oil production (barrels/day) in the US and Canada. The data are in thousand barrels per day for "crude oil + condensate," and the rapid growth for the past few years is primarily due to tight oil (also known as "shale oil") and oil from tar sands. If you follow the debate in this field, you know that this growth trend has been hailed as a great result and as the definitive demonstration that all worries about oil depletion and peak oil were misplaced.

Fine. But let me show you another graph, the US landings of North Atlantic Cod up to 1980 (data from Faostat).

Doesn't it look similar to the data for oil in the US/Canada? We can imagine what was being said at the time; "new fishing technologies dispel all worries about overfishing" and things like that. It is what was said, indeed (see Hamilton et al. (2003)).

Now, look at the cod landings data up to 2012 and see what happened after the great burst of growth.

This doesn't require more than a couple of comments. The first is to note how overexploitation leads to collapse: people don't realize that by pushing for growth at all costs, they are destroying the very resource that creates growth. This can happen with fisheries just as with oil fields. But, also note that we have another case of a "Seneca Cliff," a production curve where the decline is much faster than growth. As the ancient Roman philosopher said, "The road to ruin is rapid." And this is exactly what we could expect to happen with tight oil.

How to talk about the gas crisis at a party

This is a real conversation that took place a couple of weeks ago although, of course, it is revised and rearranged in this written version. The protagonists are me and a friend of mine, Antonella. Imagine us holding glasses, at a party. 

Antonella: Ugo, you know, I was visiting a town on the coast, last week. They want to install a big regasification plan, there.

Ugo: I heard something about that.

A. The people, there, don't want the plant. They say it is dangerous. What do you think about that?

U. It might be dangerous, in some circumstances.

A. Yes, but do you think it is a real danger?

U. It is a long story.

A. But we need to do something. don't we? If we need energy, we need to import gas.

U. Really, it is not so simple.

A. Ugo, you never tell people what you really think. For once, could you tell me what's going on?

U (after having taken a deep breath). The situation is critical, to say the least. We won't be able to have new regasification facilities in Italy before 2023, if we are lucky. And even those planned won't be sufficient to replace Russian gas. Even if we were able to build more, liquid gas coming from overseas is much more expensive than Russian gas, and not infinite, either. If the war doesn't stop, we won't have sufficient gas to heat homes and to power the electric grid this Winter. And the Italian industry won't be competitive in the world market with the coming gas prices. That may mean a collapse of the economy, social disorders, and even mass starvation. And because of the leaks of methane, natural gas is worse than coal in terms of damaging the climate.

A ....................

U ...................

A. Of course, we can use hydrogen, right?

U. ............

She walks away, glass in hand.

I wrote a similar post about climate a few years ago, with the same person as the protagonist. 

Europe: How to Become Poor Peasants Again

 

"Les Glaneuses"  (the gleaners). A painting by Francois Millet (1857). Is this the destiny of the people of Western Europe?

All wars are wars for resources and, in modern times, they have been mostly for the resources that make the very existence of our civilization possible: fossil fuels. We all know how during WWII the attempt of the Germans to subdue the Soviet Union failed when they could not take control of the oil resources of the Caucasus. More recently, after President Carter declared that the oil resources of the Middle East are a "vital interest" for the United States (the "Carter Doctrine"), no one was surprised by the numerous wars and bombing campaigns waged by the US in the region. 

Sometimes, though, the role of fossil fuels in wars is more subtle than just someone trying to steal someone else's resources. Wars may not be a question of scarcity but of abundance. That may be the case of the war in Ukraine that we can interpret as a direct result of the impact of "fracking" in the United States. During the past 10 years or so, the development of fracking led to a reversal of the static or declining production trend of fossil fuels that had been ongoing in the US for about 40 years. 

The result was that American producers could reappear in the global market as exporters of both oil and gas. A potentially lucrative area where to expand was Western Europe. The problem was that the European market was in the hands of Russian producers, who had established a network of pipelines that could export natural gas at low prices to Europe. "Liquefied natural gas" (LNG) from the US just could not be competitive with pipeline gas because of the costs of liquefaction, transport, and regasification. 

In the manuals of economics it is said that, in a free market, the cheaper product always wins against the more expensive one. In the real world, though, markets are far from being free. As any mafia boss can tell you, the cocaine market is not just a question of prices: you have to defend your turf. And not just that: sometimes, you can expand the area you control by friendly (or not-so-friendly) interactions with neighboring competitors. That's sometimes called "arm-twisting," but it may involve much more drastic and painful methods than just dislocating a shoulder. Similar considerations hold for fossil fuels, a market in which states normally behave exactly like mafia families. 

During the past few months, we saw a case of a not-so-friendly interaction aimed at expelling Russia from the natural gas market in Europe. The war in Ukraine is mostly a sideshow: the real thing is the market of natural gas, and the critical point was the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. Whoever did it, sent a clear message to everybody, not unlike placing the severed head of a horse in someone's bed: the European gas market is now the turf of another mafia family. 

That does not mean that Russian exports of gas to Europe will immediately cease. Completely replacing the Russian gas would require increasing the exports from the US to Europe by about a factor of 10. Maybe not impossible, and other gas-supplying countries may step in to help. But it is not something that can be done in a short time. You can see the situation in the graphs, below. The EU states import some 150 billion m3 of gas from Russia and only about 15 from the US. The US has a total export of more than 100 billion m3, but most of it goes to Canada and Mexico via pipelines. 

(images courtesy of Giuseppina Ranalli)

Hopefully, Russia will not stop sending gas to Europe using the existing pipelines. Then, a strong push toward renewable energy may help Europeans a lot. But the market is likely to behave exactly the way they say it should in the textbooks: a situation of scarcity leads to higher prices. In other words, with Europe desperate to get enough gas, producers are going to have a great time. Don't expect them to be kind to the poor Europeans: why should they be? Mafias are not supposed to be charitable institutions. 

So, in the coming years, we are looking at a situation of both scarcity and high prices of gas in Europe. That will have consequences. Many European citizens, especially the poor, will have to stay in the dark and in the cold this winter, and for several winters in the future. And there will be no European leader who will declare that the European lifestyle is "not up for negotiations," as President Bush 1st said about the American lifestyle. Can you imagine Ms. von der Leyen, the never-elected president of the never-elected European Commission, saying something like that? So, the lifestyle of European citizens is going to go down the drain, and perhaps it was unavoidable that it would, one day or another. But the real question is: will the European industrial system survive the high prices of energy? 

That's not obvious at all, and the Americans may soon discover that they killed the hen whose eggs they wanted. With energy prices five to ten times higher than before, European products may not be competitive any longer in the global market. That implies the collapse of the European industrial system and the return of the continent to the agricultural economy of a couple of centuries ago. It would be a return of the old "Morgenthau Plan" that aimed at doing exactly that to Germany after that WWII was over: destroying Germany's industrial economy and starving to death a large fraction of the German population. If something similar were to happen in Europe nowadays, that would also imply a certain reduction in the European population but, hey, I already noted how mafias are not supposed to be charitable organizations! And, as Ms. Victoria Nuland clearly explained to us not long ago, who cares about Europeans? They were peasants, once, so let those who survive return to tilling fields. 

Below, an article that I recently published in the Italian newspaper "Il Fatto Quotidiano" 

From the "Fatto Quotidiano" of 29 September 2022 (slightly modified)

by Ugo Bardi

The convulsive events on the global geopolitical scene continue to take us by surprise. What is behind the destruction of the Nord Stream pipeline? We can't say who did it, but one thing is certain: the conflict we are seeing is a war for resources much more than it is a warring war. To understand what is happening, we need to go back in time to find the roots of the current situation. 

In the book "Sea and Sardinia" (1921), DH Lawrence tells us how a favorite subject in the conversations among Italians was insulting the English. It was because English coal had become expensive, something that the Italians attributed to the wickedness of the English. The term "Perfidious Albion" had been invented a long time before but was beginning to become fashionable at that time. 

The history of English coal in Italy illustrates the factors still at play in the functioning of the Italian economy today. Italian industry needs energy, but there are not enough fossil energy resources in Italy to support a functioning industrial system. Thus, the industrial revolution arrived in Italy in the 19th century brought by English coal, imported by sea. But, with the end of the First World War, British coal had suddenly become much more expensive than before. It wasn't because the British were perfidious (maybe a little, but no worse than many others), it was because of depletion. As the British economist William Jevons predicted decades earlier, the costs of coal mining were rising and investments falling. As a consequence, the British coal production reached its peak in 1914, and then it began an irreversible decline. In the 1930s, coal shortages forced Italy into a deadly embrace with Germany - which could still produce it at low prices. We all know the results. 

Having emerged half-destroyed from the Second World War, the Italian industry was able to rebuild itself thanks to the US oil provided by the Marshall Plan. Even for oil, however, depletion had to be felt sooner or later. In 1970, the United States reached its production peak. The first major "oil crisis" followed, but the global market could offset the decline with other sources. Meanwhile, natural gas was rapidly becoming a low-cost alternative to oil. Gradually, Europe turned to import gas from Russia via pipelines. With this relatively low-cost gas, the Italian industrial system could survive.

In the last 10 years, however, things have changed dramatically. With the technology of "fracking", the United States has managed to reverse the decline in its production of both gas and oil. As a result, they have re-entered the world market as exporters. This explains many things: the oil and gas market is strategic in the great game of world domination and, in this game, there are no rules. Pushing Russia out of the Western European market makes it possible for the American industry to take back a market they had long lost. That's what's happening. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline is a signal that Europe will have to live without Russian gas, one day or another. 

And now? In this global strategy game, everything is always changing. It is true that imports from the United States are now able to replace Russian gas in Europe, at least in part. But it is also true that importing natural gas from the US is only possible in the form of liquid natural gas and this involves high costs, as well as a heavy contribution to global warming due to the inevitable losses in the process. To this, we should add a fundamental unknown: how long will the United States be able to maintain its production at the levels needed to supply Europe? 

Fracking has been seen as a miracle technology, but it isn't. As always, forecasts are difficult, but we can be sure of one thing: no mineral resource is infinite and sooner or later we will face the peak of fracking gas. And it all starts all over again with the frantic search for energy to keep the industrial society alive. 

In Italy, we are in a position of extreme weakness. We lack the infrastructure (regasifiers) necessary to import liquefied gas. We can build them, but it will take time and, meanwhile, the Italian industry could suffer irreparable damage. It is not certain that when we have regasifiers there will be sufficient gas available to import. Not only that, but the Italian industry could find itself not competitive in the world market if it has to bear the high costs of liquid natural gas. In both cases, we could be facing the end of the industrial cycle of the Italian economy, about two centuries after its beginning. The problem is that, before the industrial revolution, there were fewer than 20 million inhabitants in Italy and famines were not uncommon. 

It seems clear that for us there are no other ways out than a decisive shift toward renewables, already today much cheaper than fossil fuels and capable of completely replacing them. Politicians have not yet understood this, but moving to renewables would protect us from new crises of energy availability and from blackmail by producers. But it's not something that can be done overnight. Only a diplomatic solution to the conflict in Ukraine would give us the time needed to build a new infrastructure based on renewables. Can we make it? Nothing prevents us from trying. 

Italy: Giorgia Meloni as a Scapegoat for the Incoming Disaster

 

My blog titled "Chimeras" explores mainly mythological and literary themes, but the world we call "real" is often intertwined and affected by the world of our ancestral beliefs and fantasies. So, I published this week an interpretation of Giorgia Meloni's success in the recent Italian election in terms of ancient human sacrifices that all human societies practice when under heavy stress. Ms. Meloni is facing an enormously difficult task and she risks to be playing the role of the victim in a new sacrificial rite. Hopefully, it will be just a virtual sacrifice, but we can't exclude a real one. Below, I reproduce the text from the "Chimeras" blog. I recognize that it is a bit esoteric, but do not forget that it comes from a blog that deals extensively with human sacrifices.

 Reproduced from "Chimeras" 

The victory of Giorgia Meloni's party in the recent Italian election has generated a wave of hate on social media, with many people showing on their social accounts pictures of the dead body of Benito Mussolini hanged upside-down in a square. A clear message to Ms. Meloni, and a reminder for all of us of how nasty people can be. It is a characteristic of all human societies that, in periods of heavy stress, the removal of a high-rank leader may take the shape of a human sacrifice. The most common victims are men, but in the direst situations, women may take the role of sacrificial victims. Ms. Meloni is at risk of becoming a sacrificial victim, the scapegoat that Italians will search for when, this winter, they'll find themselves freezing in the dark.

In the Iliad, we read about the sacrifice of Iphigenia, the daughter of King Agamemnon, performed to propitiate the travel of the Achaean fleet toward Troy. After having destroyed Troy, the Achaeans repeated the ritual, this time with a Trojan girl, Polixena, daughter of King Priam. Both were high-rank women for whom we could use the term "princesses."

In "The Golden Bough," (1890), James Frazer noted how a high-rank victim makes the sacrifice more valuable and more effective to appease the dark deities to which it is dedicated. So, the victim may be raised to the role of "king" just before being killed: groomed, exalted, showered with gifts, and made to access the best goods available. The typical victims are men, probably because young males can be considered expendable, whereas the reproductive value of a young woman cannot be replaced. When things are truly dire, though, "queens" may be sacrificed, too, as especially valuable victims. 

Human sacrifices are often not explicitly recognized as such by those who perform them. For instance, the ancient Romans strongly condemned human sacrifices but they performed them abundantly in the form of bloody and cruel executions. Think of the killing of the Jewish leader named Yeshua bin Yusuf by the Roman government in Palestine, ca. 30 AD. On the cross on which he was nailed, there were the words in Latin "Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum." It was supposed to be a mockery, but it is also true that Yeshua was of a noble Jewish family, so he was a king or, at least, a prince. 

Moving to our times, we, like the Romans, strongly condemn human sacrifices. But, like the Romans, we may indulge in bloody sacrifices much more often than we are willing to admit. The Christian roots of our view of the world originate from the slaughter of the Christian martyrs, starting from the 1st century AD. In more modern times, we can see World War One as a ritual slaughter of millions of young men, sacrificed to obscure and malevolent deities called "states." The most difficult moments of WWI also implied the sacrifice of Queens. One of them was Mata Hari, a famous actress and dancer, ritually sacrificed in 1917 in France. The same destiny befell the wife and the daughters of the Czar of Russia in 1918. 

World War Two had similar threads of ritual killing. The Japanese "kamikaze" fighters are a good example of how a society under heavy stress may punish its young men in a ritual of death. On the other side of Eurasia, the German government embarked on an elaborate mass murder program that involved the elimination of people considered inferior ("Untermenschen"), Jews, Gypsies, and even German citizens. Not for nothing, the term "holocaust" is used for these mass exterminations. 

Another ritual killing of WWII was that of the Italian leader Benito Mussolini, in 1945, together with his lover, Claretta Petacci (in the image). Their bodies were hung upside down in a public square after a cruel ritual of beating and mangling them. They were the sacrificial victims designated to atone for the defeat that had nearly destroyed Italy and killed hundreds of thousands of Italians. Claretta Petacci was not responsible for the disaster, but she was killed, too. As it often happens in history, a young woman may be the ideal victim for the atonement that the sacrifice is about. 

And now, let's take a look at our times. If there ever was a society under stress, it is ours. We passed all the limits of survival: destroyed the old-growth forests, killed off large numbers of species, poisoned the atmosphere, depleted our mineral resources, eroded the fertile soil, polluted water and the atmosphere, set the planet on a path to irreversible warming, and a few more little things, including having deployed a sufficient number of nuclear warheads to wreck the ecosystem and, most likely, kill everybody. And we haven't renounced our beloved habit of making war against each other. 

Would you be surprised if we were to indulge in large-scale human sacrifices? We are not yet there, but the path seems to be traced. Have you noted how popular are "Zombie" movies? Take a look at them in light of what I have been saying here: don't you see them as a blueprint for the mass extermination of suburbanites? Truly, the fascination with this idea casts much light on what our society has in mind for the near future. We are not yet to the point of seeing the elites booking zombie-killing safaris in the suburbs of our cities. But other possible large-scale sacrifices are possible. I already mentioned how, during WWII, the German government hired the country's doctors to cull the undesirables. They complied, happily. That could be easily done in our times, too.

Human sacrifices, though, are not so much about numbers, but about the visible high status of the victim. Now, after the electoral victory of Giorgia Meloni in Italy, many people commented by publishing on their social accounts the images of Mussolini's dead body and of his lover Claretta Petacci. A clear message to Ms. Meloni.  For sure, Italy is going toward a difficult period. With the supplies of natural gas cut, this winter Italians are going to find themselves freezing in the dark, and without a job. Whoever will be leading the country at that moment, risks being deemed responsible for the disaster. And it is also true that people can be extremely nasty when they are in a dire situation. 

Look at this image with Giorgia Meloni's face upside down. It is reported to have been taken in Torino during the electoral campaign of 2022 in Italy. "Fasci Appesi" means "hang the fascists." Giorgia Meloni seriously risks becoming a new sacrificial victim, perhaps not just a virtual one,  to appease the dark Gods that humans have themselves created. I mentioned how the victims were exalted and turned into kings before killing them and we might even imagine that Meloni was chosen as "queen" for exactly this purpose by the subconscious societal mindsphere. 

Several commentators, in Italy, have expressed the same idea, although not in terms of human sacrifices, but simply in terms of political expedience. In this interpretation, the hastily organized election of September had exactly the purpose of placing at the top a figure that will act as a target for the ire of the population, when Italians will actually realize what it means to be without electric power. The term "scapegoat" has been correctly used. It doesn't mean that Ms. Meloni will be shot and hanged by the feet. Simply, that her rapid demise as a leader will lead the way to an authoritarian government that will impose draconian (a word charged with meanings) measures on the Italian population. On the other hand, Meloni may also do better than expected and succeed in spite of everything. Who knows? Good luck, Giorgia, because you'll need a lot of it.  

____________________________________________________

From the blog of Alfio Krancic: il Governo Meloni, an interpretation similar to mine. The author does not say what will be the destiny of Giorgia Meloni, accused of genocide, but we may imagine it

Early November 2022, the Meloni government takes office

New government oath in the hands of President Mattarella;

5 November: 1st Council of Ministers;

November 7; Spread at 275 points;

November 10: Increase in food prices by 30%;

November 12: 100% gas price increase; 90% gasoline and diesel;

November 16: A wave of frost hits Italy;

November 18: The government decides that indoor temperatures must not exceed 17 °C;

November 19: First demonstrations with clashes in the squares. Interior Minister Salvini accuses social centers of stirring up the mob;

November 20: Clashes with victims in Rome. Barricades and urban warfare. Salvini accuses the black bloc;

November 21: The government allocates 10 billion euros to Ukraine;

November 24: Demonstrations against living costs end with clashes in the streets, with several victims. Brawl in Parliament when Salvini takes the floor;

November 25: The headquarters of the right-wing parties, Fratelli d'Italia (FdI), Forza Italia (FI) and Lega are stormed by angry crowds;

November 26: Stern warning from President Mattarella to the Government;

November 27 Spread at 380 points;

November 29: Food prices increase even more;

November 30: 3 million people protesting in the streets. Violent clashes in many cities;

December 2: The grip of frost does not leave Italy and Europe;

December 5: Gas emergency: reserves can't last more than 2 weeks;

December 6: Salvini criticizes the Meloni government in a speech at the Papeete beach. Meanwhile, the polls give FdI at 6%, FI at 5% and the League at 4%.

December 7: The Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat) claims that since the birth of the center-right government, 100,000 people, mostly elderly, have died of hunger and cold in 6 weeks. The news provokes violent demonstrations with deaths, injuries, and looting.

December 8: President Mattarella sends an ultimatum to the government.

December 9: To mitigate the lack of food, the government markets insect meal and dried grasshoppers.

December 10: Spread at 590 points. There is talk of bankruptcy of the Italian state. First demonstrations of the left in favor of a return of Draghi.

December 12: Salvini and Berlusconi withdraw from the government. 

December 13: Prime Minister Meloni resigns. Demonstrations of jubilation throughout the country.

December 15: Defections in FdI, FI and Lega. Half of the deputies form a group in favor of Draghi's return. Mattarella appoints Draghi as Prime Minister. He immediately forms a new government.

Warranties sent to Meloni, Berlusconi and Salvini for genocide, treason, and more.

December 18: The Covid 22 epidemic breaks out. Tens of thousands of infected. The new Minister of Health Roberto Speranza recommends a very tight lockdown. The government approves. Curfew from 4 pm to 12 am the next morning. The army appears in the streets with tanks and armored vehicles. Draghi in a dramatic appeal to unified networks says that the measures have been taken for the good of the Italian people because of the disasters of the "fascist" CDX government and because of the new pandemic. People stop taking to the streets and hide in houses. On the balconies and windows appear sheets with rainbows and slogans: "Everything will be fine!", "We'll do it!" The ventennio of Draghistan begins.

(h/t Miguel Martinez)

The Age of Exterminations VIII -- How to Destroy Western Europe

US Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau Jr., (1891-1967). He was the proposer of the "Morgenthau Plan" that would have turned post-war Germany into a purely agricultural region, exterminating tens of millions of Germans in the process. It was approved by President Roosevelt but, fortunately, it was never put into practice. 

In the book titled "The Death and Life of Germany" (1959), Eugene Davidson tells us how, after that WW2 was over, the US military authorities explicitly ordered the American servicemen in Germany, and their wives, to destroy the leftovers of their meals. They wanted to be sure no food would be left for their German maids and their starving children. It was not an isolated story. After that Germany surrendered, in 1945, the general attitude of the Allies was that the Germans had to be punished. For this purpose, they deliberately limited the supply of food to Germany. 

This attitude of the Allies predated the German defeat. In 1944, Henry Morgenthau Jr., Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, had proposed the plan that would take his name, the "Morgenthau Plan." It called for the transformation of Germany into a purely agricultural society at a medieval technology level. That would have been obtained by the complete destruction of Germany’s industrial infrastructure. A consequence of the plan would have been the death of tens of millions of Germans: a primitive agricultural economy would not have been able to sustain the German population. 

The Morgenthau Plan was initially approved by President Roosevelt, and it was even publicly diffused in the press. It was later abandoned by President Truman, but it remained a practical set of guidelines for the allied policies in Germany until 1948 and an untold number of Germans starved to death. Some people speak of at least one million victims of the famine (or even several million) during the period from 1945 to 1948. Others propose smaller numbers, but we'll never know for sure. 

As we all know, the Germans were far from being innocent in the global extermination game. In addition to the Shoah, the German government engaged in the extermination of other ethnic groups, including German citizens judged to be a burden for society. In 1942, they developed the “Generalplan Ost” (General Plan for the East) that foresaw the extermination of tens of millions of Slavs in Eastern Europe. The survivors would be used as servants and laborers for the German "master race" (Herrenvolk) who would colonize the former Slavic lands.

It is impressive for us to remember how, less than a century ago, there were Western governments happily engaged in planning exterminations involving tens of millions of Europeans. Could these dark times return? It is said that society is just three hot meals away from barbarism. We could rephrase this old saying as, "society is just one defeat away from extermination." 

Indeed, the events of the past few months saw Western Europe inflicting a terminal defeat on itself by abandoning its main source of energy: Russian oil and gas. For the time being, Russian gas keeps flowing into Europe and the lights are still on, although it cannot be said for how long. 

Yet, Europe continues planning for its own defeat, as we can read in the recently published "REpowerEU" plan. The plan is mostly greenwashing, recommending such things as hydrogen and other useless technologies. But the substance of the plan is in its calling for huge investments in new regasification facilities that will allow importing large amounts of liquefied gas from the US. The EU plans to switch to sources that will be much more expensive (and also more polluting) than Russian gas. 

If applied, the REpowerEU plan could lead Western Europe to a situation similar to what the Morgenthau Plan foresaw for Germany in 1945: deindustrialization. For this to happen, it is not necessary for Europe to go dark. It is sufficient to increase the cost of energy to such a level that European industrial products would cease to be competitive in the world market. That would generate a spiral of decline that would strangle to death the European economy. Eventually, Europe would become unable to import a sufficient amount of food for its population. Famines would necessarily follow. A new Morgenthau plan, this time Europe-wide. 

Is that possible? As usual, history does not really repeat, but it rhymes. The events of World War II are not so remote from us that we can exclude that they would be repeated in some forms -- including widespread famines and exterminations in Europe. Below, you can find an interpretation of the current situation by Michael McGarrity -- who comments on the Facebook group "The Seneca Effect." This text is reproduced with his kind permission. 

Medieval EU: Plant Oats, Raise Goats.

By Michael McGarrity 23 May 2022

How many years will it take for Russia to adapt and stabilize to a new level of sanctions? Probably not long but, in the meantime, I believe that Europe will deindustrialize as plentiful, reasonably priced, Russian energy and food now sanctioned must be substituted by some yet to be identified source. Today, the German Prime Minister was "hopeful" that in 2023 Energy Production in Senegal may be ramped up to provide additional energy for Germany. This is highly irrational. Siemens, a great German technology company that requires large quantities of energy to produce its products, is now scrambling to find new sources. 

It is likely that many countries will be buying Russian energy through third-party countries such as India. Germany may now buy Russian energy from India at greatly increased prices, it will be rebranded as Indian, not Russian energy while companies such as Siemens lose competitive advantage in the world markets due to greatly increased energy production costs. Over the long term, a general reduction in global energy supplies will harm those who have to pay the highest prices. By this winter, the EU faces significant risks of energy and food shortages. The domino effect on energy will have lag times in the EU. They are not yet evident, but they are already operating.

As European energy and food stores deplete, likely by this winter, the EU economy will become medieval. Russia is self-sufficient in terms of energy and food, but there is not a sufficient supply of energy and food in the world to replace the sanctioned Russian sources in the coming years. The die is cast. The EU is due for a minimum of two years of deindustrialization. Russian Arctic natural gas facilities can't be switched on and off like a light switch. Grain that is not planted can't be harvested. Fertilizer that doesn't exist can't fertilize crops. Some yet to be implemented substitute energy sources such as Senegal will take years to be realized. China, India, and Mexico will quickly take over markets held by great German companies like Siemens. The cake is baked for the EU in terms of rapid deindustrialization, which may be permanent.

All this is part of the delusional thinking underlying the sanctions on Russia, yet to be realized in terms of impact. The reality is that 440 Million EU Citizens are on a fast track to a dystopian Medieval life and there is no turning back due to the scale of the problem, which is related to physical, not ideological constraints. The Russian economy might be destroyed by the sanctions, but no Russian will go hungry or cold. Russia may evolve a self-sufficient standard of living similar to that of the mid-1990s, while Europe goes back to the 1400s: goat carts and bearskin clothes.

I'm no expert in Geopolitics or Finance. I'm an expert in large-scale disaster recovery testing. Nothing theoretical, all practical exercises timed to the minute of what it takes to restore systems, supply chains and such. Politicians such as the German Prime Minister, touting notions of instant natural gas production in Senegal are delusional. It's time for EU citizens to start planting oats and raising goats.

How to keep gasoline prices low: bomb your gas station

 

An Italian fighter plane (note the "fasci" symbols on the wings) shot down in England in November 1940 during the bombing campaign mounted by the Italian Air Force during WW2 (source). Sending obsolete biplanes with open cockpits against the modern British Spitfires is one of the most glaring examples of military incompetence in history. Among other things, this old tragedy may give us hints about the current situation in the world and, in particular, why the consumers of fossil fuels tend to bomb their suppliers. 

Not everyone in Europe has understood exactly what is happening with gas prices, yet, but the consequences could be heavy. For a brief moment, prices rose of a factor ten over what was considered as "normal." Then, prices subsided a little, but still remain way higher than before. Electricity prices are directly affected by the trend and that is not only traumatic for consumers, but also for the European industry. 

So, what's happening? As usual, interpretations are flying free in the memesphere: those evil Russians, the conspiracy of the Americans, it is all a fault of those ugly Greens who don't want nuclear energy, the financial lobby conspiring against the people, etcetera.

Let me try an approach a little different. Let me compare the current situation with that of the 1930s in Europe. Back then, fossil fuels were already fundamental for the functioning of the economy, but coal was the truly critical resource: not for nothing it was called "King Coal."

The coal revolution had started to appear in Europe in the 19th century. Those countries that had large coal reserves England, Germany, and France, could start their industrial revolutions. Others were cut off from the bonanza: the lack of coal was the main cause of the decline of the Southern Mediterranean countries. The Turkish empire, the "sick man of Europe," was not really sick, it was starved. Of coal. 

But it was not strictly necessary to have coal mines to industrialize: it could be done by importing coal from the producing countries. Sailing ships could carry coal at low cost just about everywhere in the world, the problem was to transport it inland. Coal is bulky and heavy, the only way to do that is to have a good network of waterways. And having that depends on climate: the Southern Mediterranean countries are too dry to have it. But Northern Mediterranean countries had the network and could industrialize: it was the case of Italy. 

Italy went through its industrial revolution much later than the Northern European countries but succeeded using British coal. That, of course, meant that Italy became dependent on British coal imports. Not a problem as long as the two countries were friendly to each other. Unfortunately, as it often happens in life, money may well take the priority over friendship. 

In the early 1920s, coal production in England reached a peak and couldn't be increased any more. That, of course, led to higher prices and cuts in exports. At that time, nobody could understand how depletion affects production (not even nowadays people do). So most Italians took the reduced coal supply from Britain as a geopolitical attack. It was an evil strategy of the decadent plutocracy called the Perfidious Albion, specifically designed to harm the young and growing southern countries.  

The Italian conquest of Ethiopia was the turning point of the struggle. Britain reacted by stopping the exports of coal to Italy. That, and other international economic sanctions, pushed the Italian economy, already crippled by the cost of the war, to the brink of collapse. Given the situation, events played out as if following a prophecy written down long before. Italy had to rely more and more on German coal and that had obvious political consequences. 

The tragedy became a farce when old Italian biplanes tried to bomb Britain into submission in 1940. The campaign lasted just two months, enough for the Italian contingent to take heavy losses before it was withdrawn (*). It was not just a tactical blunder, but a strategic disaster since it gave the British and their allies an excuse to bomb Italy at will. Which they did, enthusiastically and very successfully. 

The curious thing about this disastrous campaign is how it inaugurated a tradition: bombing one's supplier of fossil fuels. Italy's bombing of Britain was just the first of a long series: in August 1941, the British attacked and bombed Iran to secure the Iranian oil wells. They were much more successful than the Italians against Britain and Iran surrendered in less than a week. In the same year, in November, the Japanese attempted the same trick by bombing the United States, their main supplier of oil. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was a tactical success, but a major strategic disaster, as we all know. 

After WWII, the "Carter Doctrine" implied the strategic value of oil producers in the Middle East. One of the outcomes was the protracted bombing of Iraq from 1991, still intermittently ongoing. Other oil suppliers bombed by Western states were Libya and Syria. 

In short, the tradition of bombing one's suppliers of fuels remains alive and well. Whether it can accomplish anything better than the disastrous attempt of Italy in 1941 is debatable, to say the least. After all, it is equivalent to blasting away your neighborhood gas station in order to get the gas you need, but this is the way the human mind seems to work. 

So, on the basis of this historical tradition, let's try to build a narrative about what's going on, right now, with the gas supply to Europe. We just need to translate the roles that some countries had in the 1930s with those of today. 

Coal --> Natural Gas
Italy --> Western Europe (EU)
Britain --> Russia
Germany --> USA

The correspondence is very good: we have a consumer of fossil energy (now Europe, then Italy) which is militarily weak, but threatens the supplier (Now Russia, then Britain) with military action despite the obvious superiority of the latter. The weak consumer (Europe/Italy) feels that it can get away with this suicidal strategy because it has the backup of a powerful ally (Now the USA, then Germany). 

Just like Britain did in 1936 to Italy, Russia appears to have reduced the supply of gas to Europe. In both cases, the result was/is a crisis in the economy of the consumers. Just as it happened in the late 1930s, the stronger ally is coming to the rescue: in 1936, Germany started supplying coal to Italy by rail, now the US is sending cryogenic gas to Europe -- both are expensive methods of transportation, but allow the supplier to access a market that would have been barren, were it not for political reason. But becoming the customers of a militarily powerful country has political costs. 

The correspondence is so good that the current situation could easily develop into a similar outcome as in 1941, with the European Union doing something completely idiotic: attacking Russia, hoping for the support of the powerful US ally. (also, traditionally, attacking Russia is done in Winter: what could go wrong?). 

One conclusion of this story is that humans always tend to worsen whatever major problem they happen to face. Apart from this, perhaps there is an alternative scenario that could lead Europe away from the perspective of nuclear annihilation: maybe we can learn something from the Italian experience. 

In 1936, during the coal embargo imposed by Britain, Italy carried out an attempt to reduce its consumption of fossil fuels that went under the name of "autarchy" (Autarchia). It was based on the renewable technologies available at that time, and it involved some crazy ideas, such as making shoe soles out of cardboard and dresses out of fiberglass. But, on the whole, the idea of relying as much as possible on national and local products made plenty of sense. It didn't work, mainly because the government squandered the Italian resources in useless wars, but, who knows? Today it might work better if we don't make the same mistake. 

(*) The Italian pilots had to fight with obsolete canvas biplanes: much slower than the British Spitfires, poorly armed, without an armored cockpit (the pilots used sandbags as makeshift armor), without sufficient heating, without the right training. And, of course, poor reliability of almost every mechanical system in a cold climate. Most of the Italian losses were due to mechanical failures, while no British planes are reported to have been lost to the Italians. If the definition of "epic" involves fighting against an overwhelming superior enemy, then the experience of the Italian force in the Battle of Britain can surely be defined in this way: an epic disaster. Whoever had this absurd idea deserved to be hanged, and at least one of them was.