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If you think the oil situation is bad..
Posted by Phil Hart on April 26, 2008 - 12:30pm in TOD: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Demand/Consumption
Tags: housing bubble, oil prices [list all tags]
It's hard for oil not to be in the news at the moment, but we haven't seen coverage like this very often. This article by Jad Mouawad is from the New York Times, but today it was published as a full page feature in the The Age Business section in Melbourne:
If you think the oil situation is bad, worse is to come
To many experts, the steadily rising price underscored longer-term fears about a system that has supplied cheap oil for more than a century.
..global oil consumption will jump by 35% by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency, a leading global energy forecaster for the US and other developed nations. Producers will have to find and pump an additional 11 billion barrels every year.
And that's only 22 years away, a heartbeat for the petroleum industry, where the pace of finding and tapping supplies is measured in decades. The pursuit of oil will be just part of the energy challenge.
...
Refined into petrol, kerosene or diesel fuel, oil has no viable substitute as a transport fuel, and that is not likely to change much in the next 30 years.
The problem is that no one can say for sure where all this oil is going to come from.
That might not sound like such a bad thing for those concerned about carbon emissions and climate change. High prices might force people to conserve and encourage development of alternatives. But the energy crunch might also result in a global scramble for resources, energy wars, and much higher energy prices.
Some oil executives are sounding the alarm bell. At a recent energy conference, John Hess, chief executive of international oil company Hess Corp, warned that an oil crisis was looming if the world did not deal with runaway demand and strained supplies.
...
"The country has been living beyond its means," said Vaclav Smil, a prominent energy expert at the University of Manitoba. "The situation is dire. We need to do relative sacrifices. But people don't realise how dire the situation is."
On the same day, this is the front cover story:
The Age: Home prices dip as rates bite
MELBOURNE house prices have recorded their biggest quarterly fall in value since 1993 as interest rate rises and fears of a slowing economy dull buyers' appetites for homes.
The median price for a detached home in Melbourne in the March quarter was $432,500, a slide of 8.4% from the December quarter median of $472,250.
As expected, the outer suburbs are feeling the impacts much more acutely than inner city areas. The financial crisis and the impacts of peak oil have reached Australian shores.
This article is quite well balanced in its views, and pulls no punches when it comes to stating that future demand for oil will exceed supply siting fundamental population and energy needs issues. However the following comment is typical of the mainstream media in how it will initially and quite fairly reference oil price and supply issues but then revert back to how 'peak oil' is a load of hogwash (given proven reserves), used by some backward group of people infering their not to be listened to, This is a classic example...
"A small band of sceptics view today's record prices as evidence that oil supplies have peaked — that half the globe's supply has already been used up. But most experts believe there are still enough reserves, discovered and undiscovered, to last at least through the middle of the century."
Ofcourse, there are significant proven reserves, but the author fails to clearly articulate Peak Oil as a natural geological phenomenon which is understood by an inability for the production capacity of future oil resources to adequately make up for the shortfall of the existing declining oil supply on a world scale. It's introduction is not required for readers here. Again, if proven reserves are harder to reach, more energy and investment is required before oil can flow and diminishing returns on investment result. When you add the other issues mentioned in the article such as resource nationalism, increasing population, the high rate of growth of China, India and the Middle East etc, then you get a potent cocktail of factors weighing against the 'business as usual' approach. Peak oil will just put all the above factors right smack bang in our faces, as economic conditions deteriorate as a consequence.
As always, conservation will be up front and centre of any strategy to mitigate the effects of peak oil, both for business and for individuals. At least this article begins to approach some of the more fundamental problems in the oil market. However, demonising Peak Oil will not do anyone any favours. It is possible that the mainstream media will never truly grasp the concept of Peak Oil and continue to lay blame with whatever event or series of events has led to the latest price shock. The unfortunate thing about that is, it keeps people from standing back and seeing the issue with perspective where people may gain an extra insight into the broad conditions which have set the current events in motion. An understanding of Peak Oil will, hopefully, provide and lead to three key understandings.. No.1 is a realisation that economic growth is dependent on cheap and available energy. No.2 is that conservation is needed from here on in - and that its not just until the oil price drops. And No.3 is that relocalisation and permaculture actually do allow for meaningful solutions and that, hey, you may actually get to work in partnership growing food with your neighbours - and perhaps you can handle their singing in the shower after all.
Great line philgene, with that definition of Peak oil. "An inability for the production capacity of future oil resources to adequately make up for the shortfall of the existing declining oil supply on a world scale."
That's the best, most concise defintion I've read so far. Maybe if I force my wife to read it enough times it will sink into her overly optimistic viewpoint. The other day she said the price of oil was due to speculators, then it was we will avert any problems by switching to hybrid vehicles. I couldn't bring myself to explain why that won't solve peak oil. I've just run out of steam to convert her to a peak oiler. Instead I'm going to just act as an observer, almost like a naturalist in the Serengeti observing animal behavior, to delight when that light in her head finally blinks on with clear recognition.
I agree, but it has one problem: the Avg. Joe can't maintain enough interest to parse a sentence that complex and, so, will not get the message. This is a problem we face in educating others. We need a simple way to make a clear point.
The problem of Peak Oil is not because "oil" is almost gone. Go outside and look at the road in front of your house. That black stuff? That's what passes for "oil" these days. Picture the old oil gushers. Now picture the road. Gusher. Road. How much more work and energy do you think it takes to turn tar into oil? How fast could you do it? That's much of the half of oil that's left. And that's why Peak Oil isn't about how much "oil" there is. It's about how fast we can get it out of the ground vs. how fast we are using it.
Hmmm... that needs some paring down...
The problem of Peak Oil isn't that "oil" is almost gone. Go outside and look at the road in front of your house. That black stuff? That's what passes for "oil" these days. Picture the old oil gushers. Now picture the road. Gusher. Road. That's the half of oil that's left. And that's why Peak Oil isn't about how much "oil" there is, it's about how fast we can get it out of the ground vs. how fast we are using it. And it's coming out the ground more slowly all the time.
Or...
Peak Oil: we're using it faster than we can get it out of the ground, and we're getting less and less each year.
Or whatever.... anyone else got something short, sweet and understandable to the uninitiated without too much thought?
Average Joe: Yeah but thats just the greedy oil companys holding it back to push the price up in't it! (Usually delivered as a statement of fact)
Peak oiler: Um welll aaargh no not really....
Joe: There's plenty of oil they just want to rip us off. And the governemetn too . Look how much tax on petrol there is.
Peak Guy: Oil is actaully still pretty cheap considering the work it does
Joe: Cheap! (spluttering) How can call it cheap? It costs nearly a hundred bucks just fill the wifes Commodore. And the ute and the boat cost nearly two hundred just to go fisshing for a weekend. JUST FOR FISHING. How can can you call it cheap?
And so on and so forth.....
(feel free to add to the converstation)
Don't forget, "Yes there are problems, but as the price rises we'll develop new technologies and it'll all be alright."
I've had people tell me in all seriousness that since Titan has hydrocarbon seas... :)
Discussing prices years ago with my dad (an oil patch veteran):
He understood depletion (like in his own wells) BUT NOT PEAK. What he understood was:
"obviously the Chinese are willing to outbid us on what's left".
Suddenly there was no more discussion as the light went on. I mean, I know that's unfair and all, but I think it's not worth trying to make people understand PO per se..
"There are plenty of resources in the globe," Exxon chairman Rex Tillerson recently told an investor conference. The difficulty, he said, was "just continuing to have access to all of the opportunities".
Damned those brown-skinned people! How dare them try to steal our oil!
Seriously, how long do you think it will be before these guys are touting books like "The Day of the Saxon," funding anthropo-sociologist think tanks and singing the virtues of Social Darwinism?
This is one more depressing reading about PO. We are freaking doomed as i understand it.
Head for the hills and store up with cans and ammo or whateverer you think you will need.
The same article was published in Drumbeat a week ago but I think it's worth repeating. Here's my comment from last week:
When 'moderates' like Vaclav Smil say the situation is dire, the writing really is on the wall. Until recently Vaclav Smil was on the optimistic side (at least as regards fossil fuels), though he was certainly no cornucopian. In the chapter 'Fossil Fuel Futures' from his book 'Energy at the Crossroads' (2003) Smil critiques the imminent peak oil theory as unsubstantiated and indeed expresses a general reluctance to make any forecasts at all.
(pages 195-196)
etc. etc.
I remember when reading Smil's book three years ago thinking that if this guy changes his mind we're all done for.
Right now, any hype about oil is about the price and not about the peak. When prices rocket up on any market, people look for news to support it, instead of the other way around, like it actually should be.
Once big names start toning in, it usually means the market is played out (if the movement has been going on a while). I'm waiting for Yergins to chime in. Or Buffet? Back at the end of 2004, for instance, the USDollar was setting records of $1.35/to Euro. Buffet came out with visions of Dollar collapse. One year later, it was back under $1.20. And why did the price of oil turn back down after Katarina?!? Any contrarian investor would see signs here (Smil's conversion) of oil price collapse.
Well, collapse might be too strong of a term, but the moment oil goes back under $90, there will once again be the "I told you so" voices, and the public will lose interest again.
Cheers, Dom
Why, is this the same Jad Mouawad that did a hatchet piece on peak oil in the NYT last year?
Why yes, yes it is. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/business/05oil1.html?pagewanted=print
I laughed at the time because it was so ridiculous a premise; Jad took a hard look at steam injection in aging CA oil fields, extensively quoted Yergin, and painted the impression that peak oil is but a recurring fantasy of a bunch of Cassandras.
But he did cite the evidence that a formerly 200kbpd field had been resuscitated to the point of being a 85kbpd field so, uh, therefore, er, technology wins! Cassandras lose! Ha ha!
At any rate, I lost all respect for him then and he'll have to earn it back one small piece at a time. And that goes for his lying rag of a newspaper that sold us the Treasury busting Iraq war and has yet to properly apologize.
Perhaps they won't. Seems they are too busy trying to start the next one.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/26/world/middleeast/26military.html?_r=1&...
Hey come on - Dick Cheney and some anonymous intelligence and administration officials have told them there is a threat.
The fact that it can't be quantified is neither here nor there - we must wage war on Iran before it is too late - just imagine what would have happened if Saddam's drone planes had managed to land some of his chemical and nuclear weapons on downtown Oklahama City - you can be sure Iranian weapons are even more tangible and dangerous !
Plus they've got oil and rather a lot of gas, which they keep trying to sell to India and Japan, without any American involvement...
Yeah, Mouawad has been such a dewy-eyed slurper of energy-industry pap that it's been hard even to think of him as a "peak-oil skeptic" -- there's something too hard-nosed about the term "skeptic" to make it stick to his usual unresisting imbecility. And yet, he's now had two or three solid stories in a row in the NYTimes about oil. Something woke him up, I guess.
What's interesting to me is the speed this is occuring. I've been following this only three years, but during that time talk was generally about a longish plateau when peak was reached. However, it seems like we are experiencing peak oil on steroids. Perhaps the speedup is the result of multiple years of Chinese growth at 9% to 11%; that rate of growth has got to start effecting supply...
"What about the US?"
Mouawad poses that question near the end of the article, and answers it himself:
"The country has shown little willingness to tackle its energy needs in a rational way."
Low energy taxes, inefficient cars and trucks, an inefficient transportation sector in general, the world's longest commutes, and that complete unwillingness to use reason when confronted with the reality of our huge waste of resources.
Our lifestyle is our entitlement, non-negotiable, etc, etc.
Meanwhile of course "everyone else" wants to live just like we have been .... ?
So whose turn is it?
The USA must address this issue of environmental irresponsibility in a very big way.
150 years ago, American folks could maybe be excused for believing that we would not deplete resources and alter our environment in radical and negative ways. These folks were of course plundering the continent from the folks who had been here before, but could not imagine using too much water, wood, soil, and so forth. People just kept moving the frontier until they got to the other coast.
But now it is clear that our species has run out of frontiers -- globally. So do we fight over what is left, or do we make careful and reasoned choices about moderating consumption and peacefully trying to address the issues of overpopulation, overconsumption, and environmental injustice?
I note the tone of the campaign for POTUS and weep. H. Clinton says we would "obliterate Iran" if they attacked Israel. A fine lot of good that would do. What then? Of course no one in US politics or media bothers to note that Iran has not attacked other countries yet, and that the USa has done some very extreme meddling in the internal politics of Iran for decades.
So what direction will we choose? War or Peace?
And how does the world see the USA in regards to energy use and use of force around the world?
How do most folks in Australia or New Zealand see the USA?
"How do most folks in Australia or New Zealand see the USA?"
As a threat. "Be our friend or we'll bomb you."
How do most folks in Australia or New Zealand see the USA?
Probably somewhere to travel or exploit.
Can you fear something and still like it?
All over the world there is a love of Hollywood, Coca-Cola, fast food and good cheap cigarettes.
None of which in any way has led to the betterment of humankind.
But.............
What developed country or undeveloped country for that matter can cast the first stone?
What fabulous markets the US has and had, which everyone seeks to directly or indirectly access.
Moslem counties are no exception. The use and over use of oil has led to great wealth in some countries. Who is to blame, the user or the dealer?
America owes it's meteoric rise to immigration and two world wars, which it did not start but greatly contributed to finish at great personal suffering and cost.
Most of the world owes a debt of gratitude for that.
If it is opined that if the US had stayed out of Europe and Asia, the world would be a better place, then maybe they have a case for resentment.
The rest of the world now, may not aspire to what America has become (but they once did) because they can see the proverbial writing on the wall.
The bigger you are the harder you fall and I think the world probably fears the many implications, of the mighty USA's implosion which may eventuate.
Argh, I just reread this and its a stupid rant with too many assumptions and opinions.................I'm posting anyway.
Thanatos - the death wish - Freud might have said.
cfm in Gray, ME, Milliways
The fundamental weakness in the simplistic version of the peak oil hypothesis is that it is based on physical resources without sufficient regard to the economics. Its curves proved accurate when applied to individual fields and countries but in these cases the presence of other suppliers kept the price of oil “relatively” stable, relative to what we are likely to see now that resource limitation is looming for the whole field rather than a part. The future demand numbers given by the article and elsewhere are absurd if taken literally. They are what the demand would be if prices remained relatively stable. The numbers need to be seen as a measure of how much of the world will soon be priced out of the market. China and India, for instance, will be priced out of the market. They will not be pleased and they do have nuclear arsenals.
I would argue that we will be priced out before they are, because labor is so much cheaper over there, that is a serious factor for us being priced out before them. The dollar is falling and the Chinese would dump our bonds and securities on the market, basically calling us out on our debt which we can't pay back and hyperinflation will become rampant. Also by this time, which I would say would be within 5 years, oil will be bought in Euros and not dollars which will further screw us over. Our buying power in the world market is artificial for the most part. By here, I actually mean the United States, I think Australia, New Zealand and Europe will be better of than us.
-Crews
I was addressing the hypothetical increase in demand posited by the article. That demand, I believe, is based on the assumption that China will not remain so low cost in labor. I believe the Chinese have earmarked those bonds to buy food with. Professional economists will tell you it doesn't matter what currency the oil is actually bought in. They usually neglect the finer point that pricing needs to be in a stable currency.
The order in which countries will be priced out of the market will probably be as follows:
The very poorest nations are already being driven to bankruptcy.
The next to really have to reduce demand heavily are likely to be the Western nations, as they use most oil and so that is about the only place where the requisite demand reduction can take place to balance the numbers.
This will not take the form of no more oil, but of very heavy price increases and a large reduction in demand.
I would suggest that the BRIC countries would be relatively resistant to demand reduction for a couple of reasons:
They have something to trade for the oil in the way of actual physical goods, and the use of oil is a lot more essential to them than it is in the West at the margin - not going out so much in the evening or accepting a lower paid job is a lot more acceptable than not having kerosene to cook with.
I would however see the recent rise in consumption flattening in those countries.
Lastly there are the oil exporters, who will rapidly follow West Texas's ELP model, but should keep right on with large increases in oil use right up until the time that they can't do that any longer.
I don't think the order of price-out will be influenced all that heavily on how much pricing out a given country will reduce demand. Brazil and Russia are particular cases considering their domestic oil supplies (potential in Brazil's case, uncertain potential/depletion in Russia's). Saying oil is less essential to the West is debatable. Actually my information may be out of date since it comes from the 1970s when it became obvious where this was all heading. Back then it looked like there were technical fixes for the energy use in the transportation but agriculture was a different matter.
I have been arguing with my kids for years that we face three waves of crisis: financial, energy (including peak oil) and ecological (especially it seems climate change though that might show up as water first). It now looks like they are crowding in on each other in critical ways.
Two of the economic laws that apply are Keynes Law, which says that "demand creates its own supply" and Says Law, which says that "supply creates its own demand". On the Keynes side, demand has pushed the price of oil up to a level where massive investments will yield massive profits. On the Says side, the reduction in relative cost of alternatives will increase the demand for the alternatives. These laws are often expressed as "price cures price". It is better to think in terms of relative price cures price.
As the relative price of oil goes up, it will be automatic for us to substitute. We can substitute by using less over all or by using more alternatives. We do not need a government sponsored subsidy program to find the best alternatives as the best are those available at the lowest total cost.
There are 5 x 10^30 methanogens at work on this planet today. They hold more carbon than all the plants and known carbon reserves. The earth will never run out of oil. The iron age did not begin because the earth ran out of stone. There are many trillions of barrels of oil and equivalents untapped on this planet. Long before we use them all, substitution will occur. The amount of wood it took to build a log cabin was 10 times as much as it now takes to build a house 10 times the size. Very inexpensive sheet-rock has replaced wood and very inexpensive plastic pipes have replaced copper.
Another applicable law is Amara's Law. We tend to over estimate a technology in the short run and underestimate in the long run. Right now, the public is too pessimistic to over estimate technology even in the short run but horizontal drilling combined with hydraulic fracturing is in the process of shifting massive known reserves into the recoverable category.
Jackass er I mean jackafuss
So you see exponential growth?
Population
Wealth
Food
Resources
Would you advise what you are/would invest in right now.
Perhaps oil tankers, motor vehicle industry, aircraft, fishing, tourism.
Do you understand why plastic, sheet-rock are relatively cheap?
What is your explanation for the rising cost of resources, food and energy supplies.
Why even bring this up? It is not a tenet of Peak Oil. Obfuscation? Red herring? The issue is not substitution, it is speed and effectiveness of substitution. And if you think societies, nations, empires don't fall due to resource depletion, you're the worst kind of economist/lay economist: one that doesn't recognize the limits of the discipline.
Cheers
You forgot, this time it's different. Our empire will not fall. Malthus has been defeated. We are about to join the other billions of intelligent life forms surfing the galaxies.
The singularity will take root, unless, or course, the bad karma of PO gets in its way.
;-)
Cheers, Dom
I don't think you understand Peak Oil. Since you are speaking in support of an economics point of view, I am not surprised. The argument is that once decline sets in, it will accelerate more quickly than economies can adjust. There have also been tons of discussions about the effects of price on demand, etc.
Economics are not being ignored. They are being given their rightful place at the children's table, however.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes
Cheers
Relegating economics to “the children's table” may result in your ignoring a lot of important data.
Your link refers to a brand of economics that is ludicrously out of date, the preserve of apologists of the status quo.
You say,“once decline sets in, it will accelerate more quickly than economies can adjust”. I suggest that current evidence shows that prior to actual decline, the price of oil “will accelerate more quickly than economies can adjust” if we mean by that, that non-market means of distribution will predominate.
Gloom: Are you aware that it is 2008 not 1978? Tell me the fundamental value of the Yuan in US currency and then we can discuss when the rice bowl dwellers will be "priced out".
Have you been watching the price of rice lately?
Peak oil (fossil fuel), global warming, resource depletion, population, and on and on, are all linked and interacting in complex, nonlinear ways. We can't understand any one aspect without understanding them all I fear. I just posted this comment to Gristmill:
Needed: A systems science approach
At this point it seems to me we know all of the relevant variables, stocks, and flows. We have a handle on most of the interactions and feedbacks. Isn't it time to construct a systems dynamics model that allows us to test these ideas/numbers. Anyone up for it? Its too big for one person to tackle, but a host of interested and qualified people could do so.
From my POV this is the only way we are going to have a hope of finding leverage points to guide the world back to a sustainable system.
George
Visit my academic site as well.
George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life
Your assertion is the very realization I came to even before becoming aware of the Peak Oil issue. It is why I named my blog A Perfect Storm Cometh. It was just so obvious to me.
We had massive problems with the budget in the US. We had the massive spending on the Iraq and Afghan invasions. We had an economy already teetering. We had a fascist cadre running the country and too few people and no nations willing to stand against them. We had an administration actively agitating against GW being an issue, let alone doing something to stop it. We had GW beginning to wreak havoc around the globe... How in the hell was any of the mitigation going to occur with a fractured world populace and a massive economic downturn coming?
Add to all that the additional collapses in housing and the rest of the economic mess that goes with it, add PO, and add a general rotting from within of the societal core on a global scale...
How can there be people that don't see this?
The world has never seen the likes of what is coming.
A perfect storm, indeed.
“How can there be people that don't see this?”
How can people know more than they are told? There is a fundamental flaw in our political system. We have a president elected by the people, a legislature that is elected by the people, a judiciary appointed by those elected. But there is a 4th branch of "government", the media, which provides the people the information on which to act. And that branch of government is privately owned and not surprisingly provides the people with (dis)information that serves the interests of the owners.
I think there are several failure points and the lacking of the media is just one symptom.
First there is the issue of whether or not the human brain can even grasp the situation (on average of course). Homo sapiens is intelligent and creative enough (the combination I refer to as cleverness) to have built this world. But humans are not sapient enough to have made better judgments along the way. Even now there is no wisdom in the average human mind to either correctly recognize the situation for what it is, or cope with the issues once they are recognized. Hence people who grasp a small part of the picture tend to focus on that one, seemingly solvable piece (e.g. peak oil OR global warming OR soil depletion OR...) Wisdom is absent from our so-called leaders. It is absent in our media players. It is absent in the majority of citizens. Otherwise we would not be in the current looming crises. I would prefer to call the current human species Homo calidus, man the clever as opposed to Homo sapiens, man the wise.
But even if the average human is incompetent in the area of sapience we would have hoped that academics would have fostered what wisdom we could muster. People can be educated even if they are not sufficiently wise to choose the subjects they study. But even here we failed. Much as I hate to say it, after nearly 20 years in academia I have yet to see significant wisdom brought to bear in educating our young.
We are the blind leading the blind and I don't think there are many one-eyed persons about.
Even with all of this I think there is a way forward. We will not be able to avoid a collapse, possibly even an evolutionary bottleneck (Olduvai Gorge Theory style) but if we act now to change the average person's perceptions of how the world really works we will be able to lessen the blow. We will be able to Power Down (Heinberg) in a more controlled manner. But I do think there is little time to lose. The solution is to get people to understand the true physical nature of the economy and what is physically feasible (investing energy in bootstrapping the right mix of alternatives) vs. what is delusional (borrowing against the future or maintaining our current lifestyle). The way to do this is to tie economics to the physical fact that all work takes energy and the true currency of the economy is energy. A conceptually simple way to do this (though it will not be easy to implement) is to adopt an energy standard for money. I go into this in my blog (click on my name below for the hot link) over the last month or so. The current way of thinking about money is what has led us to under appreciate the nature of economic work and has allowed distortions in our perceptions of worth/value to accumulate. Today people really do believe there is a free lunch.
I have been asking the question of what is wrong with this world for a long time now. Why, if we are so smart, with such a rich history of making mistakes, is the world not settling into a good life for a reasonable number of people? We seem to have learned nothing from the past. And we have unwisely made a mess of things.
George
I agree 100%. When it's possible for people to graduate from college without ever taking an Intro to Philosophy course or taught an in-depth history of the USA and world (not the almost worthless overview courses)--especially for those majoring in business (including economics) and sciences (including engineering)--it becomes clear the Ideology of government/business--the "Church of the Invisible Hand"--has currently won the day.
How to change this state of affairs? My answer is to use the already started longterm economic decline (which may eventually reach crisis proportions) as a teachable moment. Such a teachable moment today clashes with BAU ideology and prevailing class/power structure, which makes it very difficult to reach a large number of people through the corporate media watched by the great majority of people. The internet provides a platform independent of MSM, but it's highly atomized as many use it to pursue a vast amount of trivia.
Al Gore as a member of the dominant class/power structure was able to free himself from it to warn about AGW, but no one else from that structure has joined him, and even Gore refuses to dig up the roots of the problem tree to expose the "Church of the Invisible Hand" for what it is--the root of the problem. It's this ideology/worldview that must be altered before any real progress will be made to create a new paradigm with the least amount of pain. Somehow the dominant class/power structure must be made to see it's in its interest to seek this change. As we've seen so far, it is violently unwilling to do so.
No. No that church.
I mean the Church of the Invisible Hand.
It is a ubiquitous part of the government that refuses to identify itself clearly as a state run religion (one that devoutly worships an invisible deity known only as "The Hand").
The stealth reach of this church is everywhere and media is but one small part of its vast holdings.