Global Manipulators Move Beyond Petroleum

The Saudis have a saying “My father rode a camel, I drive a car, my son rides in a jet airplane – his son will ride a camel.”

In July this year BP Amoco, the world’s second largest oil company, announced it had chosen a flower as its new emblem in a dramatic upheaval of the oil multinational’s global brand. Unveiling the new emblem, Sir John Browne, BP chief executive, suggested that “BP” be read not as British Petroleum, but as “Beyond Petroleum”.

The new green and yellow floral sunburst design distances BP from its core business of hydrocarbons. Replacing the company’s ancient shield is the BP Helios mark, named after the Greek sun god. The new logo was designed by consultants Landor, who pocketed a US$7 million fee for their services. TV advertisements are currently screening in Europe and international media stations promoting BP as the company going “Beyond Petroleum”. In the UK, one hundred million dollars per year has been allocated over four years for BP’s television advertising campaign focusing on renewable energies.

Meanwhile Shell, another hydrocarbon giant has been ‘scenario planning’ and has announced that “gas and renewables could meet almost 50% of the fuel requirements for power generation in Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries by 2020.” In 1999 the company established Shell Hydrogen as a core business to develop opportunities related to hydrogen fuel cells and the company is pouring billions into research and development of solar, wind and biomass energies. Like BP, Shell is running a series of television advertisements telling the world about petroleum alternatives.

In a related development, the Ford motor company announced in October 2000 that the internal combustion engine would be replaced by hydrogen fuel cells ‘soon’. Ford is one of three major automobile companies that have committed to providing mass produced hydrogen fueled cars by 2004.

So what’s going on? If you listen to the propaganda, the oil and car companies are just responding to ‘consumer demand’ for environmentally friendly alternatives. But how many car owners have you heard lately demanding ‘clean and green fuel’? How many car owners do you know that are demanding cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells? Only a decade ago, inventors that said cars could run on hydrogen fuel cells were laughed out of town!

Has climate change spooked the major fossil fuel polluters into doing something positive for the environment? Do the oil companies want to capture a bigger slice of the energy market, hence their interest in renewables? Have they suddenly decided to take ‘corporate responsibility’? The answer to all of the above is a cynical ‘yes’. But there is one other overriding factor which has forced the global oil companies to look ‘beyond petroleum’.

Oil is a finite resource. The cup that the world presumed to be running over with oil has been revealed to be half full. “Beyond Petroleum” signals the beginning of the end for hydrocarbon man. We are entering the post-petroleum world.

In the closing years of the 20th century, technological advances enabled petroleum geologists to accurately estimate the reserves of oil worldwide. The entire globe has now been explored for oil and natural gas. In the mid 1990s confident forecasts regarding ultimate oil and natural gas production, the timing of production peaks and subsequent rates of decline, were made. The conclusion reached was that oil production would peak in the first decade of 2000. A ‘production peak’ occurs when approximately half of the “Estimated Ultimately Recoverable” (EUR) oil has been recovered. From then on, it’s all down hill. Demand will exceed supply.

The present phase of petroleum exploration began with introduction of 3-D digital seismic methods in the late 1970s. This technical refinement coincided with the Iran-Iraq war and the accompanying 1980 oil price surge that produced a global public energy panic. A worldwide exploration boom followed immediately to find oil anywhere outside the Persian Gulf. But despite intense efforts by all of the world’s oil companies, only a few major oil fields were unearthed. The world now uses about 26 billion barrels of oil a year, but in new field discoveries, oil companies are finding the equivalent of less than 6 billion barrels per year.

Who are the people making these dramatic claims? How did they reach their sensational conclusions? What evidence exists to back up claims that the first decade of the 21st century is the beginning of the end for hydrocarbon man? This article will attempt to provide answers to these questions.

First up, who are the people making these dramatic claims? They are a small but vocal group of international petroleum geologists who have built new mathematical models to predict peak oil production and the ensuing decline of oil. They argue that it is not when the oil runs out, that is important, but when peak production is reached. Peak production signals the half way mark, and the need to begin the transition beyond petroleum. The principal proponents of the theory are Dr. Colin CJ Campbell, author of The Golden Century of Oil and the Coming Oil Crisis, and Dr. Jean Laherrere, whose work has appeared in highly, respected oil industry journals.

Campbell and Laherrere are both petroleum geologists with more than 40 years experience. They currently work for the Geneva based “Petroconsultants”, reputedly the world’s leading independent provider of data and analysis for petroleum exploration and production. In their 1995 report “World Oil Supply 1930 – 2050”,1 Campbell and Laherrere conclude that the planet’s oil supplies will be exhausted much sooner than previously thought. In making their forecast, Campbell and Laherrere used a formula devised in the fifties by geologist M. King Hubbert and used with extreme accuracy throughout the oil industry to predict peak yield in individual fields. They applied the Hubbert formula on a global scale, producing an authoritative model showing oil production as a bell curve with the apex at the point when half of the available oil has been used up. “World Oil Supply 1930 – 2050”, made available to oil industry insiders for US$32,000, says that world oil production and supply will peak as soon as the year 2000 and would decline to half the peak level by 2025. Campbell and Laherrere forecast large and permanent increases in oil prices after the year 2000.

About 80 per cent of the oil produced today flows from fields that were found before 1973, and the great majority of them are declining. According to Campbell we have been lulled into a false sense of security and the “myth of spare capacity has set the stage for another oil shock.”2 Campbell says most data on the world oil reserves show them marching steadily upwards over the past 20 years, but in reality, much of the world’s oil reserves have been overestimated by the oil companies who are concerned only with reporting reserves, not dwindling supplies. OPEC countries have compounded the reporting problems by continually revising their oil reserves upward, so that they could pump more oil under the quota system. Additionally, Campbell claims there has been a failure to backdate revised estimates of oil reserves to the beginning of operation of individual oil fields.

In an address to the UK House of Commons in July 1999, Campbell attacked the myth of spare capacity:

In “World Oil Supply 1930 – 2050”, Campbell and Laherrere backdated figures to the discovery of oil fields, revised estimates to compensate for excessive reporting of reserves and used the formula devised by Hubbert to assess the real situation of world oil. They concluded that if growth in world demand continues at a modest 2 percent per year, world oil production could begin declining in the year 2000 (outside the Persian Gulf) with world peak occurring about 2013 (inside the Persian Gulf). Even enormous and unlikely increases in Estimated Ultimately Recoverable oil would buy the world little more than another decade (from 2007 to 2018). In short, unless growth in world oil demand is sharply lower than generally projected, world oil production will probably begin its long-term decline soon – and certainly within the next two decades.

In the 1995 OPEC Bulletin, Laherrere argues that total amount of ultimately recoverable world oil is estimated at 2,330 billion barrels, but accounting for over reporting of reserves, it actually totals only 1,750 billion barrels.3 His analysis using production curves from depletion models indicates the midpoint of world oil depletion would likely be reached by about the year 2000 at about the current rate (1995) of production and then decline at a rate of about 2.7 percent per year. By 2050, Laherrere forecasts world oil production will have dropped to the levels of the 1960s.4

So who is listening to the likes of Campbell and Laherrere? Obviously the oil companies and the automobile companies. The G8 group of leading industrial nations is also listening. Fears that the world is rapidly approaching oil production peak galvanised the G8 into action in March 1998 at a meeting in Moscow, where energy ministers officially adopted the views of Campbell and Laherrere. They formed The Task Force on Renewable Energy that met for the first time this year. The Task Force has been established to identify the main barriers to the use of renewable sources of energy. Dr. Corrado Clini of the Italian Ministry for Environment and Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, Chairman of the Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies, have been appointed joint co-chairs of the Task Force.

The powerful International Energy Agency has also adopted the views of Campbell and Laherrere regarding the impending ‘production peak’ of oil. The IEA was established in 1974 with the aim of bringing OPEC to its knees. It was organised as an arm of the OECD and is made up of the world’s 25 richest Western nations, including Australia, Canada and the USA. In 1975, Anthony Samson, author of the highly acclaimed book, The Seven Sisters, described the IEA as an “instrument of Western collaboration, which was Kissinger’s special brain child…. Dr. Kissinger saw it [the IEA] essentially, though he did not publicly say so, as a counter-cartel to confront OPEC and break it.”5

One of the IEA’s chief planks in the post Cold War era has been to advocate liberalisation of oil markets. The IEA and its member countries (principally the US) are currently spearheading attacks on OPEC, advocating the need for “more open and transparent oil markets, which respond swiftly to market signals.”

Significantly, the IEA is organising the ‘World Climate Tech 2000’ conference to be held in November at The Hague. Over eight thousand participants are expected to attend the conference, which is billed as the largest international gathering of its kind, representing over 180 governments, United Nations bodies and related organisations, private sector associations and environmental groups. The conference will have a different theme each day, focusing on options for climate change mitigation. Wind, solar power, fuel cells and hybrids will be showcased.

Sponsor of the IEA’s World Climate Tech 2000 is the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), one of the UN’s “Civil Society” partners.6 The WBCSD is a grouping of the world’s top 152 companies (see below for full membership listing). The WBCS is promoting the ‘Earth Charter’, to be presented to the United Nations for ratification in 2000. The Earth Charter has been in the pipeline now since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit.7 It was drafted by the Earth Commission by Steven Rockefeller, chair of the Rockefeller Brother’s Fund and son of Nelson A. Rockefeller. Steven Rockefeller is a professor of religion and recently retired to “pursue his interests in philanthropy, ethics, and the environment.”8 Rockefeller’s ‘Earth Charter’ “will articulate a global ethic of sustainable living and environmental protection.”9

Let us now have a look at the information assembled here in this article so far. First up we have two of the world’s major petroleum companies suddenly going ‘beyond petroleum’. Then the world’s largest car manufacturer announces that the internal combustion engine will be replaced by hydrogen fuel cells ‘soon.’ Additionally we have disturbing claims that world oil production is no longer able to meet world oil demand. And we also have a gaggle of powerful transnational corporations abruptly developing an interest in global environmental sustainability, adopting charters of corporate responsibility and advocating the need for an Earth Charter so that we can all have a ‘sustainable’ future.

The big picture here appears to be what the globalists are calling “the transition”, or “The transition to Interdependence”. This transition was acknowledged in January this year by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair who commented: “Twenty years on from the oil shock of the 1970s, most economists would agree that oil is no longer the most important commodity in the world economy. Now, that commodity is information.” What we are witnessing is a transition from the old economy – based on oil – to the new economy – based on information technology.

For many readers, the discussion so far will have provoked immediate cries of ‘wolf’. We all remember the oil crisis of the 1970’s. The oil didn’t run out and it’s not going to! This is just another crisis like the Y2K emergency10 – it will never eventuate. But let us now take a look at some signposts that could indicate the end of hydrocarbon man.

1. The mad scramble for new energy sources

The world’s economy, so far, has been driven by an abundant supply of cheap oil. A coming oil crisis would cause economic and political discontinuity of historic proportions. If the world really has reached the peak of oil production, then the transnational corporations (TNCs) need to position themselves as the providers of new energy sources. Otherwise they would lose control of the global economy.11

Unconventional sources are now being considered as places to tap oil. These include coal and shale, heavy oil and tar, deepwater and polar areas. BP is pushing ahead with the development of Northstar, the first-ever offshore oil development in the Arctic. The Northstar project will use the unprecedented and untested technology of pipelines buried beneath the seabed to pump oil ashore posing a one in four risk of a major oil spill. There is no known way of cleaning up oil spills below the Arctic ice.

This appears to be a desperate grab for oil. Synthetic oil and natural gas liquids are also being explored as alternatives. Testing the viability of using methane hydrates (in ice crystals below the ocean floor) as an energy source is currently the largest international earth sciences project in the world. Five years ago, there was practically no interest from the oil companies in renewables such as solar, wind and hydropower. Now these are major new areas of investment. Shell has just allocated $6 billion to convert natural gas to clean fuel.12

2. Transport

The modern world – the global economy – could not exist without the low cost movement of people and commodities. Oil powered transport dominates the economic infrastructure that links and sustains the ‘new economy.’ Bill Ford’s announcement that Ford motor company would work to replace the internal combustion engine with hydrogen fuel cells ‘soon’ follows the unveiling in March 2000 of three new fuel-efficient cars, made by leading automakers Ford, General Motors and DaimlerChrysler. The concept cars are the result of a drive launched by the US government called “Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles”, which was aimed at producing – by 2004 – a family car capable of travelling 80 miles per gallon of gasoline, representing up to three times the fuel efficiency of conventional cars. The Partnership’s timetable called for each automaker to roll out “proof-of-technical-concept” vehicles by 2000, followed by production prototypes by 2004.13

3. The agro-chemical companies

Modern agriculture is the use of land to convert petroleum into food. World agriculture is now highly dependent on oil and natural gas for fertilisers and pesticides. As a base for the production of these materials, oil and natural gas are irreplaceable.14 Billions of people now depend on food production that requires substantial inputs of petroleum fuels to power farm machinery, for fertilisers, herbicides and transport. Without these inputs, agricultural productivity would markedly decline. The effect of the depletion of world oil and its close associate, natural gas, on overall world food production cannot be ignored. Vast hectares are powered, planted and harvested by machines that run on fossil fuels. Crops are hauled to central processing points, and then to market by huge trucks. Food is distributed to remote areas and cities by vehicles run on oil. If the fertilisers, partial irrigation (in part provided by oil energy) and pesticides were withdrawn, corn yields, for example, would drop from 130 bushels per acre to about 30 bushels.15 The additional hundred bushels has been produced on ‘ghost acres’, which do not exist except in the form of fertilisers, made with natural gas and oil for pesticides. When these ghost acres no longer exist, agricultural productivity will be dramatically reduced.

If we consider that we are entering the post petroleum world, it makes sense for the agro-chemical giants to get out of chemicals and into the life sciences – genetic engineering. Now we begin to understand the concern with ‘food security’.16 This is why the world’s top transnational food corporations have suddenly become concerned with ‘sustainability.’17

4. E-commerce and the New Economy

The fundamental driver of the 20th century’s economic prosperity was an abundant supply of cheap oil. If world oil demand increases significantly from the current 68 million barrels per day to near 94 million barrels per day in 2010 (as projected by the IEA), OPEC would be expected to increase production from the present 27 million barrels per day to as much as 48 million barrels per day. Then, in 2010, OPEC would be providing over half of the world’s oil and could largely control world oil prices. OPEC has no current plans to increase oil production beyond current levels after 2000. To do so would require enormous capital investment in infrastructure and would substantially increase the price of oil. For the industrial countries, the oil price spike of the early 1970s brought profound dislocations and a deep recession. The economic impact in Europe was correspondingly severe.

A fundamental question which the globalists must address is how to keep the economy going in a world that has gone ‘beyond petroleum’. This question was answered by Tony Blair. Information technology – the new economy – provides the answer.

In the post petroleum world, we will shop from home via the Internet. Once digital TV becomes widespread (by 2008), we can order everything we need online. Even if we are to cope with fuel shortages, limited transport and disruptions to supply, we can still order our consumer goods and vital supplies via the web. What a quick and efficient system, and its all so much more environmentally friendly! Everything will be delivered to the doorstep by a fleet of TNC owned delivery vehicles run on compressed natural gas18 (well, it’s good to know they’re doing their bit to save the environment!).

5. Sustainability

The Asian ‘recovery’ and the current burst of economic growth in China, South America and Eastern Europe is fuelled by oil. Demand is taxing the present system beyond production capacity. In February 2000, the International Energy Agency announced “industry oil stocks worldwide were lower at the end of last year (1999) than at any time in the past decade. Yet demand is constantly growing. The present gap between demand and supply means that no surplus oil is available to build stocks and that they continue to be drawn down to meet current requirements. To restore stocks by the end of 2000, even to the very low levels of 1999, an early and substantial increase in production will be needed… the IEA will reinforce its work on energy efficiency and energy diversification.”

On 4 October 2000, the IEA governing board met to “assess the world oil situation”. In a veiled warning of things to come, the IEA reaffirmed its intention to give “new impetus to longer-term policies to reduce oil demand, improve energy efficiency, diversify supplies and accelerate the deployment of new energy technologies.” The Agency “confirmed the availability of security stocks in IEA countries and their readiness for use in the event of significant supply disruption.”19

On 10 October 2000, the IEA released its “Highlights of the Current World Oil Market Report.” The report says:

In June 2000, the UN Economic and Social Council20 reported on measures that must be implemented to achieve a “sustainable energy future.” The following points are under consideration:

– Integrated resource planning and demand side management to assist electric utility companies;

– Renewable energy development;
– Energy recovery from solid waste including landfill gas;
– A global initiative on transport energy with the World Bank, addressing transport energy planning, traffic management, road pricing,21 alternative fueled vehicles, emissions testing and mass transit. (continued below)

Corporate Partners of the New World Order

The United Nations Global Compact was announced at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland in 1999. In a speech to delegates, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan committed the UN to a ‘Compact for the new century’. The announcement signaled a historic alliance between transnational corporations and the United Nations, which Annan described as a ‘creative partnership’. “The goals of the United Nations and those of business can, indeed, be mutually supportive,” Annan told the delegation. The Global Compact has enabled TNCs to have privileged and unprecedented access to the United Nations. Up until 1993, the UN’s Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) carried out research, working to develop a code of conduct for TNCs. Corporations were extremely hostile toward the UNCTC and in 1993, an organisational ‘restructure’ saw the Centre disbanded. Subsequently, UNCTAD (the United Nations Commission on Trade and Development) became the new UN focal point for work involving TNCs. UNCTAD’s role, however, has been to facilitate free trade and foreign investment flows, particularly in the developing world, not keep the power of TNCs in check.

Considering the evidence presented in this article so far, it is possible to make the following conclusion:

We are confronted with the greatest transformation of human affairs in all history. The world will soon pump oil at maximum capacity. Once this happens, even minor disruptions will send immense shocks reverberating through the oil market, resulting in sharp and sustained increases in the prices of crude and refined products. This will cause economic growth to slow. Recession, even depression is possible. These looming problems became critically apparent in 1995,22 and have now been exacerbated by escalating tensions in the Middle East.

The peak of world oil production was reached in 2000, the roll over of the global energy clock (the real Y2K emergency). The corporations are now starting to unveil environmentally friendly technologies that they patented and locked away years ago. The TNCs must take control of alternative and renewable energy sources so that the masses continue to be dependent upon them. This way, continued profits and stability of the world economy is ensured.

The TNCs have banded together to usher in a new era of ‘corporate social responsibility’. This new ‘ethic’ will see TNCs becoming concerned with human rights, the environment, labour standards, women and minorities. Corporate social responsibility means just that. The corporations will take responsibility for our social development. They will maintain that their good deeds are propelled by global environmentally sustainable ethics.23 This makes their charge for clean and green technologies more credible and believable.24

The TNCs have begun a swift and bold program to implement sustainable agriculture systems, to ensure that agriculture is more productive as demand rises and the use of fossil fuels declines. Genetic engineering not only enables the TNCs to respond to the increasing demand for food, but also enables them to increase their control of the world’s food resources through mergers and vertical integration of markets. By setting global ‘standards’ for sustainable agriculture, they will be able to dictate what food is grown, where it is grown, how it is grown and any other ‘treatments’ that are deemed necessary.25

The UN is widely perceived to be the only global body with enough ‘clout’ to solve the collective problems of humanity and the only organisation which can solve problems that cross borders and transcend national boundaries. Following the announcement of the Global Compact in 1999, the UN and the transnational corporations (the members of the WBCSD) have been busy working on an Earth Charter which will be introduced so that their control will be all pervading. The alliance between the TNCs and the UN is a tactic that will ultimately consolidate control of the global agenda.

The risk of chaos, disorder and destruction faces the TNCs if they fail to adapt appropriately in time. But the people of the world see the dramatic consequences of global climate change before them. They see the need to change their ways and they are willing to make ‘The Transition’ beyond petroleum.

The destroyers of our planet have usurped us. In the first decade of the new century, we may have had an opportunity to throw off the shackles of corporate control. A post petroleum world would offer many opportunities for independence, not the globalist vision of interdependence being foisted upon us. A post petroleum world would provide scope for food self-sufficiency, not food security, which the corporate capitalist system offers. A post petroleum world would provide the opportunity for people to look for real and lasting alternatives to the capitalist system.

In the closing paragraph of The Seven Sisters, Anthony Samson makes a dire prediction about the future of the oil economy:

From the evidence presented in this article, it would appear that Sampson’s prediction is coming true. ‘The Transition’ to the post petroleum world is occurring and it will be used to usher in a new era of global governance and corporate control.

Footnotes:

1. The report was published by Petroconsultants.

2. Campbell, C.J., “Myth of spare capacity setting the stage for another oil shock”, Oil & Gas Journal, 20 March, 2000.

3. Laherrere, Jean. World Oil Reserves – Which Number to Believe?, OPEC Bulletin, February 1995, p. 9-13.

4. Ibid.

5. Sampson, A., The Seven Sisters, Coronet Books, Hodder & Stoughton, Great Britain, 1975.

6. The other “Civil Society” partner is the International Chamber of Commerce. At the time of writing, these are the only two “Civil Society” partners officially acknowledged by the UN.

7. The Earth Charter has been developed by the Earth Council, a grouping of self appointed ‘earth commissioners’ including Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union, and Chair of Green Cross International; and Maurice Strong, who is head of the reform agenda at the United Nations and Chair of the Commission on Global Governance.

8. Rockefeller Brother’s Fund Annual Report, 1997

9. Ibid

10. If another energy crisis develops, wait to see all those Y2K contingency plans dusted off. Maybe Y2K was the roll over of the global energy clock.

11. Imagine all those people out there buying up solar power systems and then being independent of the electricity companies, or equally, the world's car owners buying hydrogen fuel cell cars and never paying another cent for their petrol. Now we understand why there is a drive to commodify water – to make water available on a user pay basis. If water is to be one of the fuels for cars of the future, then we will have to pay for it. Keep an eye out for Shell’s latest television advertisement about how the company

is helping an inventor develop a prototype car that runs on water.

12. If you’re wondering about all that Caspian oil we hear about, consider that the bid for Caspian oil is production – rather than exploration – oriented.

13. For further details on the implications for trade and transport, see Fleay, B.J., “Beyond Oil: Transport and fuel for the future,” National Symposium of the Chartered Institute of Transport in Australia, Launceston, Tasmania, 6-7 November 1998.

14. Oil and natural gas also play an important role in the production of products ranging from paints and plastics to medicines and inks.

15. Youngquist, W., Population and Environment, A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, “The Post Petroleum paradigm and population”, Volume 20, No 4, March 1999.

16. Food security, (not food self sufficiency) is the principal concern of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Food security is all about making us more dependent upon mass production. Food self sufficiency on the other hand would mean more independence for individuals.

17. An excellent example is Unilever’s ‘Sustainable Agriculture Initiative.’ Unilever ranks third among the world’s food titans, and is a member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. According to Unilever, sustainable agriculture must be “productive, competitive and efficient while at the same time protecting and improving the natural environment and conditions for local communities.” One of Unilever’s chief advisers is Björn Stigson, President of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development and former executive vice president of the life sciences company Asea Brown Boveri. Unilever is also discussing the need for ‘sustainable agriculture standards’. This means rules for global agriculture.

18. The Brisbane City Council announced in October 2000 that it would convert 120 vehicles from its bus fleet to run on compressed natural gas.

19. IEA member countries are required to have 90 days supply of oil in reserve.

20. United Nations Economic and Social Council, Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for Development, “Follow up to the first session of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for Development: energy sector”, Report of the Secretary General.

21. Road pricing means road tolls.

22. The same year that the Millennium bug was discovered.

23. The World Bank describes these ethics as “the New Environmentalism”. See the World Bank publication “Ten Principles of the New Environmentalism”, World Bank Finance & Development, December 1996.

24. The WTO push for privatisation and outsourcing of government contracts should make sense now. The future of government will merely be as a surveillance and monitoring organisation – big brother, a paramilitary agency.

25. ‘Treatments’ could include a range of measures including food irradiation and food additives. With the development of ‘functional foods’ and ‘nutraceuticals’, the lines between food and medicine are blurring. Drug companies will merge with food and biotechnology companies.

What You Can Do

Here are some positive actions which can assist us to become independent, not interdependent:

1. Become familiar with renewable energy. Purchase items which run on photovoltaics (‘PV’). This could be something as simple as a solar powered flashlight, a lantern, or a backup power supply.

2. Find out about energy efficient cooling and heating of your home. Look in libraries or on the internet for information about natural heating and cooling.

3. Plant an organic food garden using open pollinated non hybrid seeds. If you live in a townhouse or flat where there is no garden, consider container gardening instead.

4. Install energy efficient light bulbs.

5. Get a rainwater tank at least for drinking water purposes.

6. Recycle household grey water for use in the garden. (Many local Councils have outlawed drinking water tanks and recycling of grey water. Check first with your local ‘authority’ first.)

7. Diversify your energy sources. Don’t be dependent upon one source for all of your energy needs. Consider a range of energy sources such as electricity, gas, solar, and wood heating/cooking.

8. Where possible, buy locally produced goods instead of those offered at supermarkets and department stores.

9. Start a community market in your area.

10. Start or become involved in a Local Energy Trading System (LETS).

11. Plant fruit trees in your back yard and front yard.

12. Replace manicured lawns with herbs, native grasses and bush foods.

13. Cook your own! Reduce dependency upon mass manufactured foods, particularly very basic foods such as bread. Make your own fruit juices, snacks, cakes and spreads.

14. Do your shopping in bulk. This not only saves money and time but reduces the cycle of dependence upon supermarket products and the ‘just in time’ system.

15. If you’re strapped for time, try switching off the TV.

Members of the World Business
Council for Sustainable Development

3M Company
ABB Asea Brown Boveri
ABN AMRO Bank
Aguas de Barcelona (AGBAR)
Alcoa
Anglo American plc

Anova Holding
Aracruz Celulose
Arthur D. Little
Asahi Glass
Assurances Générales de France
AT&T

Aventis
BASF
Bayer
Billiton
BG Plc
BOC Group

The Boston Consulting Group
BP
Brodrene Hartmann
Broken Hill Proprietary Co.
BT
Cargill Incorporated

CEMEX
CH2M Hill
Chemical Works Sokolov
China Petro-Chemical Corporation
CIMPOR
Codelco

Companhia Vale do Rio Doce
Conoco
DaimlerChrysler
Danfoss
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu
Denso Corporation

Det Norske Veritas
Deutsche Bank
Dow Chemical Company
DuPont
Eastman Kodak Company

Environmental Resources Management
ESKOM
Estudio Juridico Gross Brown
F. Hoffmann-La Roche
FALCK Group
Fiat Auto

Fletcher Challenge Limited
Ford Motor Company
Fortum Corporation
General Motors Corporation
Gerling- Konzern Insurances
Grupo IMSA

GrupoNUEVA
Grupo Vitro
Heidelberger Zement
Heineken
Henkel
Hitachi Chemical

Holderbank
Imperial Chemical Industries
Interface
International Herald Tribune
International Paper Company
Italcementi Group

Japan Atomic Power Company
John Laing plc
Johnson & Johnson
JSC NORD
Kajima Corporation

Kansai Electric Power
Kikkoman Corporation
KPMG
Lafarge
LG Group
L’Oreal

Michelin Group
Mitsubishi Corporation
Mitsui & Co.
Mitsui Chemicals
Monsanto Company

Nestlé
Newmont Mining Corporation
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp
Nissan
Nokia

Noranda
Norsk Hydro
Norske Skogindustrier
Novartis International
Novo Nordisk
OAO Gazprom

Ontario Power Generation
Petro-Canada
Phelps Dodge Corporation
Placer Dome
PLIVA d.d.
PowerGen plc

Procter & Gamble Company
Rabobank Group
Rio Tinto
RMC Group
Rohm and Haas

Rosneftegazstroy JSC
Royal Philips Electronics
S.C. Johnson & Son
Samsung Electronics
Seiko Group

Severn Trent
SGS Société Générale de Surveillance Hld
Shell International
Siam Cement
Sibirsky Aluminium Group
Skandia Insurance Company

Skanska AB
Sonae S.G.P.S.
Sonatrach
Sony Corporation
Sociedade Portuguesa de Papel
Ssangyong Cement Industrial

Statoil
STMicroelectronics
Stora Enso
Storebrand
Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux
Sulzer Ltd.

Suncor Energy
Swiss Re
Taiheiyo Cement Corporation
Taiwan Cement Corporation
Teijin Limited
Texaco

ThermoRetec Corporation
Time Warner
Tokyo Electric Power Company
Toray Industries
Toyota Motor Corporation
TransAlta Corporation

TXI
UBS
Unilever
Unocal
UPM-Kymmene Corporation
Volkswagen

Votorantim Participações
Western Power Corporation
Westvaco Corporation
Weyerhaeuser Company
WMC Limited
Xerox Corporation

Yasuda Fire & Marine Insurance Co.
Zurich Financial Services Group

Living Under Fascism

Davidson Loehr
7 November 2004
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
PRAYER:

(This prayer followed the announcement that the daughter of our ministerial intern of two years ago was brutally murdered this week. Leslie Mazzara, 26-year-old daughter of Cathy Harrington, was stabbed to death, along with one of her two women roommates, in Napa, California on Monday 1 November. I also announced that her church has set up a fund to collect checks sent to help defray her expenses – which will exceed $10,000. If you are interested, checks should be made payable to People’s Church with “Cathy’s expenses” in the Memo line, and mailed to People’s Church, ATTN: Treasurer, 115 W. Loomis, Ludington, MI 49431-2020.)

This is usually the Veterans Day service. I had planned to devote the prayer to veterans because, as a Vietnam veteran, veterans are very dear to me.

But there will, unfortunately, be many more chances to address the plight of our soldiers and our veterans. This week I, and many here, grieve for the pain of Cathy Harrington over the murder of her daughter just six days ago.

Today, let us pray that all who suffer may find some peace. May all parents, relatives and friends of lost or dead children find light at the end of their dark and fearful tunnels.

May those who terrify and endanger us and our children be brought to justice.

And may we once again find or create that necessary but fragile web of interrelatedness which alone can give us both safety lines and safety nets as we go – whether bravely or timidly – into our future.

Amen.

SERMON: Living Under Fascism

You may wonder why anyone would try to use the word “fascism” in a serious discussion of where America is today. It sounds like cheap name-calling, or melodramatic allusion to a slew of old war movies. But I am serious. I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying. That’s what I am about here. And even if I don’t persuade you, I hope to raise the level of your thinking about who and where we are now, to add some nuance and perhaps some useful insights.

The word comes from the Latin word “Fasces,” denoting a bundle of sticks tied together. The individual sticks represented citizens, and the bundle represented the state. The message of this metaphor was that it was the bundle that was significant, not the individual sticks. If it sounds un-American, it’s worth knowing that the Roman Fasces appear on the wall behind the Speaker’s podium in the chamber of the US House of Representatives.

Still, it’s an unlikely word. When most people hear the word "fascism" they may think of the racism and anti-Semitism of Mussolini and Hitler. It is true that the use of force and the scapegoating of fringe groups are part of every fascism. But there was also an economic dimension of fascism, known in Europe during the 1920s and '30s as "corporatism," which was an essential ingredient of Mussolini’s and Hitler’s tyrannies. So-called corporatism was adopted in Italy and Germany during the 1930s and was held up as a model by quite a few intellectuals and policy makers in the United States and Europe.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago (in “The Corporation Will Eat Your Soul”), Fortune magazine ran a cover story on Mussolini in 1934, praising his fascism for its ability to break worker unions, disempower workers and transfer huge sums of money to those who controlled the money rather than those who earned it.

Few Americans are aware of or can recall how so many Americans and Europeans viewed economic fascism as the wave of the future during the 1930s. Yet reviewing our past may help shed light on our present, and point the way to a better future. So I want to begin by looking back to the last time fascism posed a serious threat to America.

In Sinclair Lewis's 1935 novel "It Can't Happen Here," a conservative southern politician is helped to the presidency by a nationally syndicated radio talk show host. The politician - Buzz Windrip - runs his campaign on family values, the flag, and patriotism. Windrip and the talk show host portray advocates of traditional American democracy — those concerned with individual rights and freedoms — as anti-American. That was 69 years ago.

One of the most outspoken American fascists from the 1930s was economist Lawrence Dennis. In his 1936 book, The Coming American Fascism — a coming which he anticipated and cheered — Dennis declared that defenders of “18th-century Americanism” were sure to become "the laughing stock of their own countrymen." The big stumbling block to the development of economic fascism, Dennis bemoaned, was "liberal norms of law or constitutional guarantees of private rights."

So it is important for us to recognize that, as an economic system, fascism was widely accepted in the 1920s and '30s, and nearly worshiped by some powerful American industrialists. And fascism has always, and explicitly, been opposed to liberalism of all kinds.

Mussolini, who helped create modern fascism, viewed liberal ideas as the enemy. "The Fascist conception of life," he wrote, "stresses the importance of the State and accepts the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with the State. It is opposed to classical liberalism [which] denied the State in the name of the individual; Fascism reasserts the rights of the State as expressing the real essence of the individual." (In 1932 Mussolini wrote, with the help of Giovanni Gentile, an entry for the Italian Encyclopedia on the definition of fascism. You can read the whole entry at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/mussolini-fascism.html)

Mussolini thought it was unnatural for a government to protect individual rights: The essence of fascism, he believed, is that government should be the master, not the servant, of the people.

Still, fascism is a word that is completely foreign to most of us. We need to know what it is, and how we can know it when we see it.

In an essay coyly titled “Fascism Anyone?,” Dr. Lawrence Britt, a political scientist, identifies social and political agendas common to fascist regimes. His comparisons of Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Suharto, and Pinochet yielded this list of 14 “identifying characteristics of fascism.” (The following article is from Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 23, Number 2. Read it at http://www.secularhumanism.org/library/fi/britt_23_2.htm) See how familiar they sound.

1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial, ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military

Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism

The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.
6. Controlled Mass Media

Sometimes the media are directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media are indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security

Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined

Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected

The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed

Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment

Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections

Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

This list will be familiar to students of political science. But it should be familiar to students of religion as well, for much of it mirrors the social and political agenda of religious fundamentalisms worldwide. It is both accurate and helpful for us to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. They both come from very primitive parts of us that have always been the default setting of our species: amity toward our in-group, enmity toward out-groups, hierarchical deference to alpha male figures, a powerful identification with our territory, and so forth. It is that brutal default setting that all civilizations have tried to raise us above, but it is always a fragile thing, civilization, and has to be achieved over and over and over again.

But, again, this is not America’s first encounter with fascism.

In early 1944, the New York Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted, “write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? How many fascists have we? How dangerous are they?”

Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in The New York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against the Axis powers of Germany and Japan. See how much you think his statements apply to our society today.

“The really dangerous American fascist,” Wallace wrote, “… is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.”

In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added, “They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.” By these standards, a few of today’s weapons for keeping the common people in eternal subjection include NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, union-busting, cutting worker benefits while increasing CEO pay, elimination of worker benefits, security and pensions, rapacious credit card interest, and outsourcing of jobs — not to mention the largest prison system in the world.

The Perfect Storm

Our current descent into fascism came about through a kind of “Perfect Storm,” a confluence of three unrelated but mutually supportive schools of thought.

1. The first stream of thought was the imperialistic dream of the Project for the New American Century. I don’t believe anyone can understand the past four years without reading the Project for the New American Century, published in September 2000 and authored by many who have been prominent players in the Bush administrations, including Cheney, Rumsfleid, Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Donald Kagan to name only a few. This report saw the fall of Communism as a call for America to become the military rulers of the world, to establish a new worldwide empire. They spelled out the military enhancements we would need, then noted, sadly, that these wonderful plans would take a long time, unless there could be a catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor that would let the leaders turn America into a military and militarist country. There was no clear interest in religion in this report, and no clear concern with local economic policies.

2. A second powerful stream must be credited to Pat Robertson and his Christian Reconstructionists, or Dominionists. Long dismissed by most of us as a screwball, the Dominionist style of Christianity which he has been preaching since the early 1980s is now the most powerful religious voice in the Bush administration.

Katherine Yurica, who transcribed over 1300 pages of interviews from Pat Robertson’s “700 Club” shows in the 1980s, has shown how Robertson and his chosen guests consistently, openly and passionately argued that America must become a theocracy under the control of Christian Dominionists. Robertson is on record saying democracy is a terrible form of government unless it is run by his kind of Christians. He also rails constantly against taxing the rich, against public education, social programs and welfare — and prefers Deuteronomy 28 over the teachings of Jesus. He is clear that women must remain homebound as obedient servants of men, and that abortions, like homosexuals, should not be allowed. Robertson has also been clear that other kinds of Christians, including Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are enemies of Christ. (The Yurica Report. Search under this name, or for “Despoiling America” by Katherine Yurica on the internet.)

3. The third major component of this Perfect Storm has been the desire of very wealthy Americans and corporate CEOs for a plutocracy that will favor profits by the very rich and disempowerment of the vast majority of American workers, the destruction of workers’ unions, and the alliance of government to help achieve these greedy goals. It is a condition some have called socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, and which others recognize as a reincarnation of Social Darwinism. This strain of thought has been present throughout American history. Seventy years ago, they tried to finance a military coup to replace Franlkin Delano Roosevelt and establish General Smedley Butler as a fascist dictator in 1934. Fortunately, the picked a general who really was a patriot; he refused, reported the scheme, and spoke and wrote about it. As Canadian law professor Joel Bakan wrote in the book and movie “The Corporation,” they have now achieved their coup without firing a shot.

Our plutocrats have had no particular interest in religion. Their global interests are with an imperialist empire, and their domestic goals are in undoing all the New Deal reforms of Franklin Delano Roosevelt that enabled the rise of America’s middle class after WWII.

Another ill wind in this Perfect Storm is more important than its crudity might suggest: it was President Clinton’s sleazy sex with a young but eager intern in the White House. This incident, and Clinton’s equally sleazy lying about it, focused the certainties of conservatives on the fact that “liberals” had neither moral compass nor moral concern, and therefore represented a dangerous threat to the moral fiber of America. While the effects of this may be hard to quantify, I think they were profound.

These “storm” components have no necessary connection, and come from different groups of thinkers, many of whom wouldn’t even like one another. But together, they form a nearly complete web of command and control, which has finally gained control of America and, they hope, of the world.

What’s coming

When all fascisms exhibit the same social and political agendas (the 14 points listed by Britt), then it is not hard to predict where a new fascist uprising will lead. And it is not hard. The actions of fascists and the social and political effects of fascism and fundamentalism are clear and sobering. Here is some of what’s coming, what will be happening in our country in the next few years:

* The theft of all social security funds, to be transferred to those who control money, and the increasing destitution of all those dependent on social security and social welfare programs.
* Rising numbers of uninsured people in this country that already has the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance in the developed world.
* Increased loss of funding for public education combined with increased support for vouchers, urging Americans to entrust their children’s education to Christian schools.
* More restrictions on civil liberties as America is turned into the police state necessary for fascism to work
* Withdrawal of virtually all funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System. At their best, these media sometimes encourage critical questioning, so they are correctly seen as enemies of the state’s official stories.
* The reinstatement of a draft, from which the children of privileged parents will again be mostly exempt, leaving our poorest children to fight and die in wars of imperialism and greed that could never benefit them anyway. (That was my one-sentence Veterans’ Day sermon for this year.)
* More imperialistic invasions: of Iran and others, and the construction of a huge permanent embassy in Iraq.
* More restrictions on speech, under the flag of national security.
* Control of the internet to remove or cripple it as an instrument of free communication that is exempt from government control. This will be presented as a necessary anti-terrorist measure.
* Efforts to remove the tax-exempt status of churches like this one, and to characterize them as anti-American.
* Tighter control of the editorial bias of almost all media, and demonization of the few media they are unable to control – the New York Times, for instance.
* Continued outsourcing of jobs, including more white-collar jobs, to produce greater profits for those who control the money and direct the society, while simultaneously reducing America’s workers to a more desperate and powerless status.
* Moves in the banking industry to make it impossible for an increasing number of Americans to own their homes. As they did in the 1930s, those who control the money know that it is to their advantage and profit to keep others renting rather than owning.
* Criminalization of those who protest, as un-American, with arrests, detentions and harassment increasing. We already have a higher percentage of our citizens in prison than any other country in the world. That percentage will increase.
* In the near future, it will be illegal or at least dangerous to say the things I have said here this morning. In the fascist story, these things are un-American. In the real history of a democratic America, they were seen as profoundly patriotic, as the kind of critical questions that kept the American spirit alive — the kind of questions, incidentally, that our media were supposed to be pressing.

Can these schemes work? I don’t think so. I think they are murderous, rapacious and insane. But I don’t know. Maybe they can. Similar schemes have worked in countries like Chile, where a democracy in which over 90% voted has been reduced to one in which only about 20% vote because they say, as Americans are learning to say, that it no longer matters who you vote for.

Hope

In the meantime, is there any hope, or do we just band together like lemmings and dive off a cliff? Yes, there is always hope, though at times it is more hidden, as it is now.

As some critics are now saying, and as I have been preaching and writing for almost twenty years, America’s liberals need to grow beyond political liberalism, with its often self-absorbed focus on individual rights to the exclusion of individual responsibilities to the larger society. Liberals will have to construct a more complete vision with moral and religious grounding. That does not mean confessional Christianity. It means the legitimate heir to Christianity. Such a legitimate heir need not be a religion, though it must have clear moral power, and be able to attract the minds and hearts of a voting majority of Americans.

And the new liberal vision must be larger than that of the conservative religious vision that will be appointing judges, writing laws and bending the cultural norms toward hatred and exclusion for the foreseeable future. The conservatives deserve a lot of admiration. They have spent the last thirty years studying American politics, forming their vision and learning how to gain control in the political system. And it worked; they have won. Even if liberals can develop a bigger vision, they still have all that time-consuming work to do. It won’t be fast. It isn’t even clear that liberals will be willing to do it; they may instead prefer to go down with the ship they’re used to.

One man who has been tireless in his investigations and critiques of America’s slide into fascism is Michael C. Ruppert, whose postings usually read as though he is wound way too tight. But he offers four pieces of advice about what we can do now, and they seem reality-based enough to pass on to you. This is America; they’re all about money:

* First, he says you should get out of debt.
* Second is to spend your money and time on things that give you energy and provide you with useful information.
* Third is to stop spending a penny with major banks, news media and corporations that feed you lies and leave you angry and exhausted.
* And fourth is to learn how money works and use it like a (political) weapon — as he predicts the rest of the world will be doing against us. (from http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/110504_snap_out.shtml)

That’s advice written this week. Another bit of advice comes from sixty years ago, from Roosevelt’s Vice President, Henry Wallace. Wallace said, “Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.”

Still another way to understand fascism is as a kind of colonization. A simple definition of “colonization” is that it takes people’s stories away, and assigns them supportive roles in stories that empower others at their expense. When you are taxed to support a government that uses you as a means to serve the ends of others, you are — ironically — in a state of taxation without representation. That’s where this country started, and it’s where we are now.

I don’t know the next step. I’m not a political activist; I’m only a preacher. But whatever you do, whatever we do, I hope that we can remember some very basic things that I think of as eternally true. One is that the vast majority of people are good decent people who mean and do as well as they know how. Very few people are evil, though some are. But we all live in families where some of our blood relatives support things we hate. I believe they mean well, and the way to rebuild broken bridges is through greater understanding, compassion, and a reality-based story that is more inclusive and empowering for the vast majority of us.

Those who want to live in a reality-based story rather than as serfs in an ideology designed to transfer power, possibility and hope to a small ruling elite have much long and hard work to do, individually and collectively. It will not be either easy or quick.

But we will do it. We will go forward in hope and in courage. Let us seek that better path, and find the courage to take it — step, by step, by step.

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