In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig

 

New government and BP documents, interviews with experts and testimony by witnesses provide the clearest indication to date that a hodgepodge of oversight agencies granted exceptions to rules, allowed risks to accumulate and made a disaster more likely on the rig, particularly with a mix of different companies operating on the Deepwater whose interests were not always in sync.

In Gulf, It Was Unclear Who Was in Charge of Oil Rig - NYTimes.com

I haven't said anything about the oil spill yet. I couldn't really decide how I felt about it. I was shocked of course. I was saddened. I was mad. But most of all I was scared.

I have accepted the reality of hydrocarbon depletion for a long time now. I don't think I have, however, fully accepted the consequences of that until now. I know that there is no way BP would have been drilling in this incredibly risky environment, a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, unless we were running out of easy places to find oil. This behavior, and others like it, is a direct result of our impending hydrocarbon depletion. But suddenly, I have come to the realization that there is a face to that risky behavior. The end of the oil age is going to be ugly.

The bottom line, of course, is that we must have our oil at any cost. We, the industrialized world in general and the United States in particular, have become so enamored of the joys that hydrocarbon consumption can bring to our lives that we will no longer tender any thoughts of an alternate approach. That is not hard to understand since we are so populous now (thanks to all that oil BTW) that we would only be able to support a fraction of our present consumption without it. So we will continue to drill. We will drill until we have nowhere else to drill and you and I will pay whatever it costs to see that it happens.

Now we know, all of a sudden, what that means. It means things like giant oil spills. Look for more of these kinds of things to happen. Look for them to happen in spite of the increased regulation and additional fortunes spent on keeping it from happening. This is where we are. The rest of the oil is out there hiding somewhere. And we are going to find it. No matter how ugly it gets.

The Chamber of Commerce vs. Climate Science

William Kovacs, the US Chamber of Commerce's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs, last year famously called for a "Scopes monkey trial of the 21st century" on climate change.

As much as we need to find a way to curtail our use of hydrocarbons, this article points out why we probably will never solve our energy/climate problems. Our economy is based on the free flow of cheap energy. In a very real sense, all wealth (in modern society) can be traced back to the use of oil. The owners of that wealth, and those who stand to accrue more wealth as additional oil is burned in the future, are going to fight any efforts that might limit that oil consumption. Because these are the same people that hold all of the power cards in today’s capitalistic, free market world, I think we will not see any significant constraints placed on our use of oil.

It is too bad because all of our real problems are also related to the burning of oil. We are approaching a limit to the amount of oil that can be extracted from this old Earth’s crust and, at the same time, to the amount of residue, from burning oil, that can be absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere without critically disturbing the habitat we all depend on for life. We should be backing off in our use of oil (and other hydrocarbons by the way) in any case.

Wouldn’t it be smarter to spend our creative energy trying to devise a way of life that will not depend on oil, but rather sustainable methods, for the basics of life such as heating, transportation and food production leaving what is left of our hydrocarbon stock as a legacy to future generations. There are some things, such as medicines and plastics, that petroleum can provide that aren’t easily replaced. There are probably many other things yet to be found. It may not be possible to come up with a hydrocarbon-free alternative lifestyle that is acceptable to the vast numbers of people now living and projected to be living in the near future. We need to try, though, because the present lifestyle will certainly not be around for long.

The Chamber of Commerce vs. Climate Science Mother Jones

Big flat TV sales could lead to big stress on power grid

[Link: McClatchy] "But the bigger picture, many say, is one of unnecessary stress on the nation's electricity supply for years to come."

I read articles like this and I have to chuckle. If we are aware of the stress an appliance like flat screen TV's will place on our power grid, and actually think it will be enough to strain it, how in the world can we be contemplating replacing our auto fleet with electric cars. The electricity requirements for a world full of electric cars, charging away between trips, must be horrendous. Has anyone stopped to wonder where all the new energy is going to come from if our grid is already strained in order to accomodate our TV watching.

Come on folks. Those cute little electric cars are going to need thousands of new power plants (most of them coal fired), all generating vast increases in CO2 emissions and other pollutions associated with power generation, to keep charged up. We are essentially going to be trading the pollution of the existing fleet of internal combustion engines with the pollution of coal powered power plants. This doesn't even include the added energy and pollution required to build and maintain all of these new power stations. We don't have a bunch of electrical energy laying around unused. Our TV's need all they can get.

Peak Oil: The End Of the Oil Age is Near, Deutsche Bank Says

[Link: Environmental Capital - WSJ] "Deutsche Bank expects the electric car to become a truly “disruptive technology” which takes off around the world, sending demand for gasoline into an “inexorable and accelerating decline.”

Five years ago I bought a new car. I had just retired and I wanted to have a car I could depend on in my retirement years. I told my wife that this could possible be the last gasoline powered car we would ever own. Our next car could very well be electric. At the time, we got a good chuckle out of that.

Well, it looks like Deutsche Bank has come to the same conclusion. Predicting the end of the oil age, they say the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine powered car that has come to symbolize the material age that we are living in. The Peak Oilers (myself included) have been saying that the oil age is eminent for some time now but they have been assuming the oil supply will begin to dwindle and we will be forced to give up our addiction whether we like it or not. I think Deutsche Bank is underestimating how many other ways we will find to use the oil if we don't use it in our cars but the point is still made. Whether we run out or just don't want to use it any longer doesn't really matter I guess. we are approaching the end of the petro-road and we should be getting ready for whatever lies beyond.

Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us - environment

[Link: New Scientist] "Not so, says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He argues that past episodes are a poor guide to what will happen in the future, for the simple reason that the sun is brighter now than it was then. Add that to the mix and the release of methane hydrates could lead to catastrophic, unstoppable global warming - a so-called 'Venus syndrome' that causes the oceans to boil away and dooms the Earth to the fate of its broiling neighbour."

Most conversations about Climate Change focus on the short term. What will the weather be like around here as Global Warming kicks in? This article is grappling with the bigger picture. As we pour CO2 into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons, we are returning the earth to a state that hasn't been seen for millions of years. Who knows what will happen as this occurs? All of earth's systems will be effected. Much of the earth may well become uninhabitable. The good news is that we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn eventually and we won't be able to add CO2 to the atmosphere. The bad news is that when we run out of hydrocarbons to burn we will also be out of energy needed to combat the changing conditions.

Peak Oil: Global Oil Production’s Peaked, Analyst Says

[Link: WSJ]

"non-OPEC oil production apparently peaked in the first quarter of 2007, and given precipitous falls in oil output from Russia to Mexico, there’s not much hope for a recovery. OPEC production—and thus global output—peaked a little later, in the first quarter of 2008."

We are growing complacent about the resource situation, particularly oil. The disastrous economic situation and resultant collapse of oil prices has led us to believe that there is no longer an oil supply problem. It was all just another speculative investment bubble you see. But Peak Oil doesn't work that way. We aren't using as much oil as we did but we are still using a lot of oil. All we have done is take the pressure off of the suppliers and when demand firms up again we are right back in the thick of it.
This article from the Wall Street Journal says we have already slipped over the peak and when recovery comes we will be already on the downward slope. Trying to grow with a shrinking energy supply. It isn't going to be pretty.

Carbon dioxide emissions could last millenniums

[Link: McClatchy Washington Bureau]

"Ultimately, the amount of fossil fuel available could be enough to raise the atmospheric CO2 concentration higher than it has been in millions of years,"

Most of us are still thinking of climate change like we think of other natural disasters such as earthquakes, tornados and floods. They come, we recover and adjust, then things return to normal. As this article attests, Climate Change is not that kind of disaster. For all intents and purposes, Climate Change is forever. We have loaded up the atmosphere with carbon compounds that have been locked away in the earth's crust for hundreds of millions of years and that carbon is not going to go away quickly.

We have essentially done two permanent things. We have used up a significant portion of the irreplaceable hydrocarbon supply that we once had available, most of the easy supply in fact, and we have used it in such a way that the atmosphere has been drastically modified for the foreseeable future. These two effects now define the new world that we are living in and will be living in from now on.

We are far from accepting this new reality. Society works in slow motion even when things are obvious so a slowly evolving, ill-defined new reality isn't likely to get a quick response. As the consequences of these effects (reduced energy supply and more extreme weather) become apparent we will, of course, have to deal with them but we really should begin to prepare now. The longer we wait the harder it will become.

Two geologists on saving the earth

[Link: Energy Bulletin] "Our economic system is entirely based on the creation of materials. Material wealth comes out of the earth and the level of our lifestyle is entirely based on our consumption of resources. The thing that has allowed that to accelerate so there is even a middle class in many countries, including our own, is cheap energy. Petroleum. If that becomes less available, less cheap because it’s less available, that is going to limit everything that we do. It’s going to have a major impact. It’s going to limit whether we can produce non-petroleum alternatives."

This is a good discussion of the problems that we are going to be facing from now on in our society. The primary disconnect between our ambitions and our resources. We can have a materialistic culture with a few people or live frugally with a lot of people. In the long term our choice is to limit our numbers or our appetite. Unfortunately we have become so many that the long term is knocking at our door.

How America Can Quit Its Oil Addiction

[Link: Newsweek Issues 2009: Rules for a New World | Newsweek.com]
"Around this cheap and versatile fuel, the United States built an impressive civilization—one featuring universal car ownership, highways stretching to the horizon, endless suburban tracts, affordable airline travel, malls, Disneyland and other aspects of the American Dream. But the United States no longer produces enough oil to sustain this civilization—yet it continues to rely on petroleum for a huge proportion of its energy needs."

People who should now know better continue to proclaim that if we really don't want to base our energy consumption on petroleum and other hydrocarbon supplies we need only change our minds and start towards using something else. Something that won't involve complicated political maneuvering with despicable foreign despots. Something that won't continue to feed vast quantities of carbon compounds into our atmosphere causing ongoing climate change. Something that won't require us to modify our extravagant lifestyles. Something, in fact, that doesn't exist.

It isn't a matter of will. There are no technologies that can be scaled to provide the energy density we need to go on with our life as is. Our lifestyle is a hydrocarbon lifestyle. Even if we could build a new infrastructure to harness the wind from continents filled with windmills, convert all of our roofs to solar collectors and convert all of our agriculture into producing biomass to be converted to fuels, the resulting world would not be the same as we have now. We would not have the same mobility or lifestyle flexibility that we have now. We would not have the disposable energy wealth to spend as we have now. Such a world would be complicated and difficult because it takes energy to build energy production. We would be realizing a much smaller marginal energy gain from these new supplies. As I have pondered before, how would windmills be built if we only had windmill power to build them with.

We use our petroleum reality based mind to imagine a new non-petroleum world. Forgetting that we wouldn't have any petroleum to build it with.

To curb demand for oil, add a tax when prices tank | ajc.com

[Link: ajc.com] "What is to be done? As economists have long recognized, the most economically efficient way to alter the behavior of consumers — to use less oil — and businesses — to develop products that allow consumers to use less oil — is to raise the cost. And if the market can’t be counted on to send reliable price signals, then a tax can be used to ensure that the cost remains high enough to encourage the desired behavior."

This proposal has the proverbial snowball's chance of getting any support but there is a bigger problem. Where is the extra electrical capacity going to come from when all those tens of millions of electric cars are plugged in every night. We need to up the power available, somehow, without using more hydrocarbon fuel. Nuclear? More coal? Impossible extension of the alternate power pool? It just ain't that easy folks.

Op-Ed Contributor - Have You Driven a Bus or a Train Lately? - NYTimes.com

[Link: Have You Driven a Bus or a Train Lately? - NYTimes.com] "The Obama administration should ask the companies, as a condition of financial assistance, to begin shifting from being just automakers to becoming innovative “transportmakers.” As Barack Obama’s new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, recently said: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do important things you would otherwise avoid.”

As transportmakers, the companies could produce vehicles for high-speed train and bus systems that would improve our travel options, reduce global warming, conserve energy, minimize accidents and generally improve the way we live."

This is a wonderful idea. The United States must direct its transportation system towards universal and comprehensive public transportation while we are still able. This moment in time may be the best (only?) opportunity for that to happen. There will come a time, and I believe that it will be not to distant, when we will still need transportation but will not be able to continue to absorb the cost associated with the automobile or the externalities of the automobile based transportation model. If a functional public system is not ready when that time arrives it may never happen.

Green movement forgets its politics

[BBC NEWS | Science/Nature]: "Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being, writes that 'there are over one - maybe even two - million organisations (worldwide) working toward ecological sustainability and social justice'.

And yet... and yet... there is no real climate change movement. There is no organised effort leading society towards a legislative framework that would urgently drive down greenhouse gas emissions across the board, and begin to sequester carbon dioxide.

Not in the UK, or in the US, or internationally. The 'movement' that Hawken refers to is, he notes, 'atomised' and 'largely ignored'."

I agree with this idea. Individual citizens can make a government policy work, or not, but it cannot really make it happen in the first place. For this to happen, government leadership must be committed and inspired. We will not solve the problems of limited resources and climate change without committed leadership and cooperative citizens.

World Energy and Population

[Link: World Energy and Population]

This article is the first of two articles on global availability of energy through the first half of this century. This article discusses the actual energy likely to be available and the second article delves more deeply into the consequences of these trends and is shown here. This is not the only attempt to approach this subject in the popular press. Several writers, most of the peak oil variety, have done these same sorts of projections. Some of those articles are more strident than this one and I consider that a plus. We don't need additional reasons to fear the future. I like the scope of this presentation though, because the author has tried to isolate the effects without overly complicated or hopeful assumptions about future developments in the field.

With gas and heating fuel prices heading for the sky we have all begun to feel that something new and momentous is happening. When new circumstances arise unexpectedly, it is sometimes difficult to keep from looking for a magical cause or maybe even hoping for a magical cure. Forget it. That won't happen this time either. The best we can do is try to understand what is really happening. Articles like this can help with that. A rational solution can only be derived from a realistic perception of the problem at hand.

Manufacture and Transport of Export Goods Accounts for About 25% of Chinas CO2 Emissions

"The study, carried out for the Tyndall Centre, suggests that counting carbon emissions within national borders, as is currently the case under the Kyoto Protocol, may be inadequate in deciding who is responsible for emissions reduction. Fair, globalized trade might imply that a nation’s entire carbon footprint should also include imported goods and services manufactured elsewhere, the researchers suggest."

[Link: Green Car Congress]

One of these days the jig is going to be up for the United States. It is common knowledge that we have, for quite awhile now, been using an inordinate amount of the worlds oil for our own purposes. Now it looks like we are producing a lot of other people's pollution as well. It won't be possible for us to pull this off for long I'm afraid. If you follow the energy news you know that oil producers are already hedging their future commitments in favor of assuring oil supply for their own citizens. It can only be a matter of time, in this age of global accountability, until exporters of manufactured goods start refusing to accept the responsibility for the pollution associated with the manufacture of goods for other nations. The United States will have a lot of decisions to make when the global accounting books are opened to the public.

OPEC countries ignore West's agenda

"Washington apparently didn't note the recent statement of Saudi oil executive Sadad Al-Husseini: 'There has been a paradigm shift in the energy world whereby oil producers are no longer inclined to rapidly exhaust their resource for the sake of accelerating the misuse of a precious and finite commodity."

[Link: St. Cloud Times Opinion:]

It is hard to fault the logic of the Saudis on this one. If there were a hint of logic in the human race, that would be what we would all be trying to accomplish. Oil has been so undervalued these last 100 years. By using oil for heating and transportation we are going to use all of this precious resource up in the next couple of decades even though both of those uses could be done in other, granted less convenient, ways. In the meantime critical uses such as advanced medicines that are derived from hydrocarbons will be withheld from future generations.

I doubt if OPEC will be able to hold on to that goal when the U. S. starts running short of gasoline. Mr. Bush or those that will follow in his footsteps would never be able to let that happen. We are far too committed to this valuable commodity. We are determined to go down driving.

Energy crisis cannot be solved by renewables, oil chiefs say

The world is blinding itself to the reality of its energy problems, ignoring the scale of growth in demand from developing countries and placing too much faith in renewable sources of power, according to two leaders of the global energy industry

[Link: Times Online]

This is very serious talk from the heads of major oil. Most of the things they are talking about are not news to anyone who has been following the oil depletion story line. Maybe not news but a little more intimidating when you consider the source.

Demand for hydrocarbon fuels will outstrip supply. Inadequate supply will not be sufficiently bolstered by renewable fuels. Attempts to deal with climate change will falter as we resort to burning coal and trying to convert it to liquids for transportation. If the heads of Royal Dutch Shell and ExxonMobil say so it might make sense to listen.

But what do they suggest we do to tackle these problems? Are you ready for this? Reduce our consumption (otherwise known as conservation or, as they suggest, "energy efficiency"). That is really the revolutionary message in this article. I have not seen anyone of any stature in industry or politics(especially the oil industry) suggest that we actually try to consume less. Isn't consumption what makes America tick? Certainly a politician couldn't say something like that. Let's keep our eye on this trend. It could actually change things.

Coal-to-Liquid Boondoggle - washingtonpost.com

To turn coal into liquid fuel it must be fired up to 1,000 degrees and mixed with water. Then the gas that's created is transformed into fuel that can be used in cars and jets. Unfortunately, creating CTL, as it is known, is a very intensive process requiring coal, water and cash. To wean the United States off of just 1 million barrels of the 21 million barrels of crude oil consumed daily, an estimated 120 million tons of coal would need to be mined each year. The process requires vast amounts of water, particularly a concern in the parched West. And the price of a plant is estimated at $4 billion.

[ Link: washingtonpost.com]

Does anyone notice a huge hole in this discussion of the pros and cons of coal liquification? The purpose of this new wonderful technology is to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, right? Supposedly, that will help us with our national security, help fight climate change (if we handle it right) and lead the way in our response to oil depletion. The only problems are water and financing. We have all the coal we could ever want. The article does mention in passing that the process is accomplished by heating the coal up to 1000 deg. F. However, where that energy is going to come from they don't say. Natural gas? More coal? Oil? Nuclear? Whatever is going to be used to heat the coal is either going to add back to our dependence on foreign energy and/or limit the net energy from the process, isn't it? By definition we don't have any extra fuel laying around or we wouldn't be doing this. And what about all of the energy required to catch and store all of that CO2? I'm sorry but I don't see how this is going to help.

Scientists link world's big dams to methane and global warming

In a study released earlier this month, the scientists claim the world's 52,000 dams contribute more than 4 percent of the warming impact linked to human activities. The study even suggests that dams and reservoirs are the single largest source of human-cased methane, a gas that traps heat in the atmosphere.

[Link: Shaun McKinnon - AZCentral.com]

Well, that pretty much does it. All of this time I have been quietly patting myself on the back as I used all of my electrical tools and toys. I live in Seattle. Most of the electrical power in these parts comes from the massive Columbia hydroelectric system. No greenhouse contributions from me, I thought, as long as I keep my power usage electric. This article has torn a big hole in that construct. So much for electric cars and public transport as a way for Seattle to do its part for global warming. The more we understand the less we know it seems.

So you want to save the planet? What should you consider first?

When the OPEC oil embargo hit in October 1973, Rosenfeld did a little math. He discovered that if Americans used energy as efficiently as the Europeans or Japanese, the United States could have been exporting oil in 1973, rather than sitting in rationing lines at gas stations. The solution, he realized, was not to bend the Arab oil regimes to America's will but to end America's thralldom to them by wasting less energy.

[Link: OpEdNews.com]

I remember those days after the OPEC Oil Shock. Gasoline rationing, everybody trying to figure out how to save energy, Jimmy Carter's "moral equivalent of war" speech, all of those things. I did my part. I added insulation and bought some double paned glass for my house, even bought a cool little gas-stingy car from Detroit which is the worst car I ever owned, by the way. The double paned glass in particular was a direct result of the realization that, as the author notes, conserving energy is every bit as good as finding new energy or, more importantly, not using imported energy. My purchase was subsidized by my power company, acting on that logic. That is all good and society has used it to save a lot of energy in the intervening time period. I am sure there is much more savings to be made in that way. I think that to really deal with the energy problem that we have, however, we are going to have to take energy conservation to a another level.

Peak Oil, or more correctly oil depletion, by definition has one principle cause. Excessive consumption of hydrocarbons and the products that depend on hydrocarbons. Global warming is really just a symptom of that same excessive hydrocarbon consumption. Both of these issues have come to crisis even with the great improvements in energy effciency that have been introduced since the energy crisis in the '70s. Clearly a more drastic reduction in consumption is needed if we are to have a chance of dealing with these two problems. Consumption is the product of the number of consumers and the average level of consumption of those consumers. With that in mind, it is my personal opinion that nothing will be accomplished until there is real population reduction. I don't have any idea how society will deal with this reality but I know that somewhere down the line mothers need to have many fewer babies, and they need to teach those babies to consume less by consumming less themselves. I am going to leave that one there. There is almost no common ground in our society where that discussion might be held. Which leaves us with the other factor, consumption itself.

Like it or not we live in a society that promotes consumption. Consumption is jobs. Consumptions is sales. Consumption is the preferred social activity. Consumption is the economy, stupid. I am old enough that I was raised by parents who became adults during the great depression. Consumption, for them, was painful. Things were precious and needed to be protected. The less consummed the better. Somewhere along the line that philosophy has gotten stood on its head. My children do not consider anything permanent. If a new trend comes along, they chuck the "old" to make room for the new. This is not a knock on them. Society has driven that behavior down their throats. If you have the resources that is the way you do it. It is not just my kids. Our friends kids act that way as well. I will admit that, as a consumer, I am somewhere in the never-never land between my parents and my children. I tend to turn over my stuff and pursue the latest toys, but it hurts.

Is there a way to get out of the consumption-as-a-way-of-life mode of operation? Maybe. What would have to change. First, we would have to start looking at our stuff a little differently. We would have to put a premium on durability. The best stuff would last forever and come with full instructions for maintaining it with that in mind. If it didn't last forever it would have to be easily repairable and the replacement parts would have to be readily available, forever. And it wouldn't go out of style. Technical improvements would be slowly introduced after thorough testing and would really be improvements. Ideally, the old stuff could be upgraded. Hey, you might even be able to make it yourself. Taking care of your stuff would be important so you would only have stuff you really needed. In a best case scenario, the big stuff would be pooled with neighbors and family. Everybody doesn't need everything all the time. Specifically, since we are ultimately trying to eliminate hydrocarbon consumption, we would buy our stuff to minimize hydrocarbon depletion. The best stuff wouldn't require hydrocarbons to run it, or produce it. No plastics. Low energy, sustainable production methods. Recycled supplies. The best stuff is produced and sold locally. No global supply networks. In a word the best stuff is not much stuff.

Doesn't sound like a very good economic model does it? That is the rub. For most of history that is the way things worked, you know. It is only when the hydrocarbon wind-fall came along and allowed us to imagine there were no limits that this consumptive economic model could really take off. Maybe we can get back into that old pre-oil frame of mind. One thing is certain. The people in the yellow pages aren't going to like it at all.

Doing right thing isn't easy, even for those who want to

A USA TODAY/Gallup Poll finds that more Americans than ever — 60%, up from 48% a decade ago — believe that global warming has begun to affect the climate. A slightly larger percentage think it will cause major or extreme changes in climate and weather during the next 50 years.
And in a reflection of the impact the environmental movement has had on Americans' attitudes in the nearly four decades since the first Earth Day celebration, most people now believe that they should take more steps as individuals — such as riding mass transit and making their homes more energy efficient — to help reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.
Even so, most people are wary of any government effort to protect the environment by imposing restrictions on how they live, work or get around. A majority of those surveyed in the poll, conducted March 23-25, said they wouldn't want a surcharge added to their utility bill if their homes exceeded certain energy-use levels. And most Americans would oppose any laws requiring cars sold in the USA to dramatically improve their gas mileage or restrictions on development to try to limit suburban sprawl.

[Link: USATODAY.com]

I believe in the reality of Peak Oil. I believe that the consequences of excessive oil use has permanently altered the earth's climate. I believe that there will be dire consequences for all living things resulting from the climactic superposition of these two unprecedented events. I did not participate in USA Today's poll(see link) but if I had I am not sure whether I would have answered much differently than the people who did. I am a victim of my times like everyone else. I was raised on the leading edge of the oil age and it encompasses the entirety of my world view. I have very little to work with in building a new reality. It is intellectually easy for me to say that the problem we all face is eliminating excessive consumption. It is emotionally difficult, in the extreme, to make a list of things I am willing to throw out or, in a way even worse, things that I will newly adopt to take the place of the things that I have thrown out. I am retired. A lot of my reticence can probably be attributed to the fact that I fit the "old horse not being able to learn new tricks" model. But not all of it. The oil age is a pretty strong addiction.