I don’t know how much you know about the energy industry, but it’s where I work. I personally work for a utility, but still… we see quite a bit from the actual energy exploration and commodities side of the business, and we pay attention, so that we can understand how the way the world is changing can affect our business.
I bring it up because the New York Times seems to have finally noticed this week that the energy world is changing. It’s been kind of a quite revolution, but the reality is that with the development of Canadian Oil Sands and domestic natural gas resources becoming available via hydraulic fracturing, suddenly North America is an energy exporter again. Kind of amazing, I know. Here we’ve been talking about energy independence since before I can remember, and the reality is that it arrived four or five years ago. Its realization only awaits the infrastructure build-out necessary to bring what’s been found to market.
So why isn’t gasoline cheaper? Well, bottom line, petroleum is an internationally-traded commodity, and lately countries who didn’t use to use much of it up until recently are now using lots, lots more. Which is to say that Chinese people also want to own cars, and believe it or not, Chinese cars also burn gasoline.
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| Although the conversion to natural gas is pretty straight forward, the Honda Civic NG is currently the only mass-market natural gas sedan on the market in America. |
Actually, in my office we’ve been saying for awhile now that it’s way past time American cars stopped burning gasoline and started burning natural gas, but for whatever reason, the idea hasn’t much caught on, either with car makers or the industry-supporting media. I don’t understand it, really, but they seem to prefer building more expensive, less efficient electric cars, and bottom line, it doesn’t look like the economics are there for it long-term. Especially because the conversion to natural gas engines is both cheaper and easier, and the infrastructure requirements to get NG-cars in place are far, far less.
But what do I know?
Heh.
In any event, domestic fuels are a long-term spur to domestic manufacturing, according to the Times. Personally, I don’t see why that would be—it’s as easy to put natural gas on a ship and send it to China as it is to put component parts from China on a ship and send them to America to be assembled into a single finished product—but that’s what they said. They also noted that Big Oil is actively pursuing a host of petroleum development opportunities in Africa and elsewhere, so that when one considers that some of the critical tax breaks for renewable energy technologies are set to expire soon, the reality is that it looks likerenewables’ early-adopters are gonna be long-term losers.
All of which highlights the perils of incentivizing industry. I mean, you want to support growth industries, nurture them until they can stand on their own, but the fact is that picking winners and loser command-economy-style is a notoriously tricky business. Ask the Soviets. Or the Red Chinese.
In any event, it looks like the only remaining insurmountable problem is global warming. Like it or not, nobody’s got a good way to stop burning carbon-based fuels, and anyone who says they do is either lying or ignorant of the realities of the industry. Without tax breaks, renewable are dead. And while it’s true that natural gas is much less carbon intensive than either petroleum-based fuels or coal, it’s still a carbon-based fuel that puts out a Hell of a lot of CO2 per megawatt hour. Yes, it’s better than the alternatives, but it’s still not great. Like it or not, nuclear is still the best hedge against global warming long term, but unfortunately, it also scares the Hell out of people.
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Sadly, Axle Rose isn’t going to reunite with his old bandmates for the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame show. I was ready to call him crazy for bowing out in such an oddly public way, but honestly, the letter he wrote is far from crazy. It looks more like he and the Hall couldn’t agree on which members of his band constitute the Hall-of-Fame version, and since he owns the rights to the Band’s name and works, the fact is that it’s his decision. An unfortunate decision, to be sure, but still his, and that’s the point.
He owns a band, that band is still called Guns n’ Roses, and they’re still putting out music that Axle would really like for you to hear, preferably when they come to town for a concert. The fact that lots of music fans, radio-dudes, and industry execs all want to relive what Axle views as ancient history is not, at this point, productive to what he’s trying to accomplish. So… thanks, but no thanks.
If you’ve ever written something and then decided that you wanted to write something totally different, only to have folks tell you, “Hey, you can’t write that! It’s not at all like Bronx Angel! And anyway, aren’t you a Communist now?!” then you’ll understand what Axle is trying to say here.
*sigh*
In any event, the media circus appears to be in reference to the fact that Axle released his letter to the Hall publicly, but again, what was he supposed to do? Had he not made his wishes public, it is a sure-fire bet that somebody would’ve gotten up there and tried to thank the Hall on his behalf right after the rest of the old band played a bunch of the old songs. Since he clearly doesn’t want that, he cut it off ahead of time—and very publicly. And it doesn’t hurt his ticket sales that he got his name in the paper.
You ask me, the thing that really sucks here is that we’re now likely to get a performance by Velvet Revolver in lieu of Guns n’ Roses, and that sucks a high hard one. The band without Axle is no better than Axle is without the band. I mean, I liked Slash’s solo album and all, but it would’ve been a MUCH better album with Axle singing on it. Take a listen, and I think you’ll hear what I’m talking about, especially on that song that Fergie “sang”.
I put the “sang” in quotes there ‘cause I don’t really consider what Fergie does to be singing.
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Finally, the estate of Ian Fleming has authorized a new 007 novel by author William Boyd. I confess that I’ve never heard of Boyd, but I find it unfortunate that he’s decided to give the next book a “classic” 1960s setting. What, the world has gotten too complicated, so Boyd wants to jump in the way-back machine and rewind to the Cold War? That strikes me as a cop-out. Bond was envisioned as a contemporary spy dealing with contemporary—if occasionally outlandish—problems. If the changes on the world stage now require some work on the part of the writers, it is at least work that has been attempted with some success recently. For example, the movie version of Casino Royale succeeds admirably in updating the settings of the original novel while leaving the core of the tale itself still in one piece. And the newest book, Carte Blanche byJeffery Deaver (the author of The Bone Collector, among others), was also really entertaining, I thought.
I was planning to write a review of Carte Blanche here, but if Deaver isn’t going to do any more Bond novels, then what’s the point?
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That’s all I got this week.
The Milford Y-Tri Club and I are doing our first big brick workout tomorrow morning, and then I’ve got Monday off. Sally and I are planning to take the kids to Six Flags New England.
Hallelujah!
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