Slavery and the Value of a Barrel of Oil
Posted by Sonja Ebron
Edwin Drake drilled the first major U.S. oil well in 1859 outside Titusville, Pennsylvania. U.S. oil production that year was 2000 barrels but rose to over 4 million barrels per year within a decade, driven by the growth in internal combustion engines. That decade also saw the U.S. Civil War and the emancipation of slaves. Coincidence? Hardly.
Energy is the ability to do work. Oil represents a form of energy so dense and liquid that there is no adequate replacement. According to Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), longterm member of the House Subcommittee on Energy and the Environment, one barrel of oil does the work of 12 grown men doing physical labor for a year. [Four men by my calculations, but that's a distinction without a difference.] What is the market value of that work? $100,000 if they’re prisoners, $250,000 if they’re free. That’s the value of a barrel of oil.
And we’re squealing at $150 per barrel? In less than 150 years, humans have grown a global economy based on a very limited supply of extremely cheap energy. We’ve used up half the available supply, and we’ll use up the rest in far fewer than 150 years. I’m a pessimist today, so I don’t think those of us in the most developed countries have time to unwind and ramp down without a very difficult adjustment. Our fluorescent lighting and electric cars and rooftop gardens will help, but they are not enough.
There are neither substitutes nor good ideas for substitutes that will get us anywhere near the economic benefits of oil, not even a return to slavery. At least I hope that’s off the table…
Regentrification and the Suburban Doughnut
Posted by Sonja Ebron
With the price of oil going through the roof, it’s been interesting to catalog the links to transportation, consumer goods and food. With the credit crunch in full swing, we see there are also links to housing patterns. From blackEnergy’s archives, April 2005:
I had an interesting conversation this morning with a brotha in St. Louis. He’s concerned about the regentrification of our inner cities and sees it happening all over the country. Upper middle-class White people are buying up depressed properties neighborhood by neighborhood, investing tons of money in them, and moving in. Property values rise and Black folks can’t hang on.
We Have To Make Other Arrangements
Posted by Sonja Ebron
James Howard Kunstler is a pessimist on the effects of peak oil, no doubt about it. But he’s mostly right about the changes needed to survive the next few decades. For many years, Kunstler has served as the leading doomsday forecaster on the American economy and way of life, due to our unwillingness - perhaps inability - to grapple with the facts of declining access to cheap oil. He is certainly not alone in predicting the current crisis and the economic sand castles we’ve built on cheap energy, but his straight talk has only recently been welcome in mainstream media.
Georgia Avenue Food Co-op
Posted by Sonja Ebron
I had the great pleasure of visiting one of the Georgia Avenue Food Co-ops last week. The first co-op was started 17 years ago by Chad Hale and Brian Lowring, current and former pastors of the Georgia Avenue Church in the Grant Park/Summerhill area of Atlanta. The number has now grown to four co-ops serving 200 families. Designated members collect food for their co-op each Tuesday and Thursday from the Atlanta Food Bank, then distribute it among the families in the basement of the Georgia Avenue Church. Most of the families are headed by women, including many grandmothers raising grandchildren. I found myself inspired and encouraged by their example of cooperative economics.
Amandla!
Posted by Sonja Ebron
Welcome to blackEnergy’s blog. We at blackEnergy hope to start and maintain a discussion on energy in Black communities. The issues are large and complex, as they are for the U.S. as a whole on the topic of energy. But as we say, when America catches a cold, Black folks catch pneumonia. So we’d better get a head start.
On the real deal, I think our energy security is threatened by the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane, a combination of climate change and peak oil, and I think the “authorities” learned nothing of use to us from our experience with Katrina. We need to get informed and organized in a hurry. At least now we have time to prepare.
