行星大火灾？

石油顶峰危机进程的最大讽刺是，世界正迅速沿着由于化石燃料燃烧导致的气候改变的道路前进，气候的改变威胁着几十年来的人类文明和这个行星上的生命。除非来自于那些燃料消耗所排放的二氧化碳量急剧下降，全球大灾变才可能不会发生。因此，对环保主义者来说，石油顶峰本身未必是一个悲剧，因为人类目前所面临的关键挑战便是让世界对化石燃料过度依赖的断奶。碳氢化合物所能容许的太阳能预算的失衡已经造成了生物圈的严重断裂，如果这个问题不能迅速解决的话，生物圈的失衡将终结未来。43

然而，化石燃料，尤其是石油的高消耗已经构成了目前世界资本主义经济的结构。因此，资本主义制度对易开采石油即将终结的直接反应必将是转化为一个新的能源帝国主义——石油开采最大化战略依靠可能的各种方式来达到安抚Rachel Carson 曾说过的“利润和生产之神”的目标。44然而，这呈现出大量全球大火灾的威胁：全球暖化，石油顶峰，快速增长的全球饥饿（部分归因于日益增长的生物燃料生产），还有核战争——所有这些都是为了确保这个必定让不公平现象越来越严重的资本主义制度的安全。

面临着现在正朝向地球生命而来的巨大危机，世界急需转到一个新方向——公社福利和全球公正——整个行星的社会主义。我们应该懂得：人类种族目前面临的巨大危险主要并不是因为自然环境的约束，无论是地质的或气候的，而是源自于这个精神错乱的旋转得失去控制的社会制度，最重要的就是美国资本主义。这便是我们这个时代的挑战！

2008年5月25日

注释：

1. 有影响力的主流经济学家(和前尼克松白宫战略家) Kevin Philips 最近主张中东以及其他地方的石油可能显示出似乎美国资本主义全球危机的唯一最重要的战略（非货币）因素，并且这也与由现行能源运行机制转换到新的能源制度（new energy regime）之全球需求紧密相关。 见Phillips,坏钱：肆无忌惮的财政，失败的政治和美国资本主义全球危机 Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (New York: Viking, 2008), 124–27. 事实上，控制全球石油的努力能被看成是美帝国主义地缘政治的中心问题，同时，这也被用来阻止美国霸权的衰退。 见 John Bellamy Foster,对非洲的警告：新美帝国主义大战略 “A Warning to Africa: The New U.S. Imperial Grand Strategy,” Monthly Review 58, no. 2 (June 2006): 1–12.

2. Michael T. Klare, 鲜血与石油Blood and Oil (New York: Henry Holt, 2004), 82.

3. Colin J. Campbell and Jean H. Laherrère, 廉价石油的终结“The End of Cheap Oil,” Scientific American (March 1998): 78–83; 国际能源机构，International Energy Agency, 世界能源概览 World Energy Outlook, 1998 (Paris: OECD, 1998), 94–103.

4. Matthew R. Simmons, “Has Technology Created $10 Oil?,” Middle East Insight (May–June 1999), 37, 39.

5. Matthew R. Simmons, “An Oil Man Reconsiders the Future of Black Gold,” Good Magazine, February 11, 2008. The insert in square brackets in the quote is in original.

6. Matthew R. Simmons, Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy (Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons, 2005).

7. John Wood and Gary Long, “Long Term World Oil Supply (A Resource Base/Production Path Analysis),” Energy Information Administration, U.S. Department of Energy, July 28, 2000.

8. See Klare, Blood and Oil, 13–14.

9. Sam Nunn and James R. Schlesinger, cochairs, The Geopolitics of Energy into the 21st Century, 3 volumes (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, November 2000), vol. 1, xvi–xxiii; vol. 2, 30–31; vol. 3, 19.

10. Edward L. Morse, chair, Strategic Energy Policy Challenges for the 21st Century, cosponsored by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University and the Council on Foreign Relations (Washington, D.C: Council on Foreign Relations Press, April 2001), 3–17, 29, 43–47, 84–85, 98; see also Edward L. Morse, “A New Political Economy of Oil?,” Journal of International Affairs 53, no. 1 (Fall 1999), 1–29.

11. White House, National Energy Policy (Cheney report), May 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/energy/National-Energy-Policy.pdf, 1–13, 8–4.; Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, International Economic Outlook,2001, http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/archive/ieo01/pdf/0484(2001).pdf, 240; International Petroleum Outlook, April 2008, tables 4.1b and 4.1d; Klare, Blood and Oil, 15, 79–81.

12. Klare, Blood and Oil, 82–83.

13. Alan Greenspan, The Age of Turbulence (London: Penguin, 2007), 462–63.

14. James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy, “The Changing Role of National Oil Companies in International Markets,” Baker Institute Policy Report, no. 35 (April 2007), http://www.bakerinstitute.org/publications/BI_PolicyReport_35.pdf, 1, 10–12, 17–19.

15. Fareed Muhamedi and Raad Alkadiri, “Washington Makes It’s Case for War,” Middle East Report, no. 224 (Autumn 2002), 5; John Bellamy Foster, Naked Imperialism (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2006), 92.

16. U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, International Petroleum Monthly, April 2008, tables 4.1b and 4.1d.

17. Richard Heinberg, The Party’s Over (Garbiola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers, 2005), 127–28; Michael Klare, Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet (New York: Henry Holt, 2008), 41; Greenpeace, “Stop the Tar Sands/Water Polluton,” http://www.greenpeace

.org/canada/en/campaigns/tarsands/threats/water-pollution.

18. Energy Watch Group, Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook, October 2007, 33–34.

19. The distinction between “early” and “late” peakers is to be found in Richard Heinberg, The Oil Depletion Protocol (Garbiola Island, B.C: New Society Publishers, 2006), 17–23. For some representative works from the “early peaker” perspective see Kenneth S. Deffeyes, Hubbert’s Peak (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); David Goodstein, Out of Gas (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); and Heinberg, The Party’s Over. Cambridge Energy Research Associates is the leading independent representative of the “late peaker” view. See http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/home/home.aspx.

20. International Energy Agency, World Energy Outlook, 1998, 83–84. The increased prominence of unconventional oil has recently led to increasing references to “liquids” as opposed to “oil” as such in Department of Energy reports. See Michael T. Klare, “Beyond the Age of Petroleum,” The Nation, October 25, 2007.

21. Richard Heinberg, Power Down (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2004), 35; James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005), 67–68. In an important paper on the implications of peak oil for global warming, Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and the Columbia University Earth Institute provide a graph (in one scenario) of a plateau in oil-based CO2 emissions, stretching from approximately 2016 to 2036. Pushker A. Kharecha and James E. Hansen, “Implications of ‘Peak Oil’ for Atmospheric CO2 and Climate,” Global Biogeochemistry (2008, in press), figure 3.

22. “Oil Officials See Limit Looming on Production,” Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2007; Klare, Beyond the Age of Petroleum.”

23. Phillips, Bad Money, 130–31, 153; Energy Watch Group, Crude Oil: The Supply Outlook, October 2007, 71.

24. Phillips sees this descrepancy between the analysis at the top and public statements in Washington as due in large part to a desire to keep from the public the view that the U.S. system is itself peaking. See Phillips, Bad Money, 127.