There’s likely little doubt at this point, but I just wanted to point out that Peak Oil is mainstream consensus at this point. Buisnessweek has an article about Charles Maxwell, “the No. 1 analyst in his field [energy],” saying that “he now foresees unprecedented stress on the world economy as peak oil production arrives in or about 2015.”
Just think about that: if Maxwell is right, we’ve still got seven years until peak oil, and gas is $4 a gallon. Of course, he could be wrong. ASPO has claimed that peak oil was actually last year. If we figure that they’ve missed production growth and demand destruction that the ‘No. 1 analyst’ has accounted for, things will actually get much worse in the next decade. But whether it’s already happened or the worst is yet to come, it’s much more likely that it’s immanent than that it’s a myth. Yet there are still some peak oil deniers out there muddying the waters of consensus. What’s worst, the principle deniers are the ones best situated to know the truth and benefit from it, and their denials may actually be against their own pecuniary interest! Weird.
Thankfully, the financial analysts that businesses listen to is actually criticizing ExxonMobil for its shortsightedness:
“It really does Rex Tillerson no good to keep denying that oil production will be peaking,” he says. “Exxon’s business plan is from the past 150 years.”
Doing a little dance today over the decision in Boumediene and Al Odah v. US. It turns out that Congress didn’t accidentally suspend habeas corpus while authorizing the use of military force. Yay! More here, and the decision can be read here. Also, here’s a line that I really, really enjoyed:
“Abstaining from questions involving formal sovereignty and territorial governance is one thing. To hold the political branches have the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will is quite another. The former position reflects this Court’s recognition that certain matters requiring political judgments are best left to the political branches. The latter would permit a striking anomaly in our tripartite system of government, leading to a regime in which Congress and the President, not this Court, say “what the law is.” (Boumediene v. Bush, 35-6)
Working in the Arendt archives this week, I came across this draft of a letter of Hannah Arendt’s, responding the poet Auden’s essay on Falstaff and his criticisms of certain aspects of her account of forgiveness in The Human Condition:
Dear Wystan Auden -
I just read the Falstaff piece — had some trouble getting the old issue of Encounter –, think it is quite wonderful, have a number of points I’d like to raise, especially about Greek tragedy; but am writing now because of “forgiving.”
You invoke Christian charity, but don’t you think Christian charity is curiously absent from these passages? You convinced me that a line should be drawn between forgiveness and judicial pardon. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that Christian charity has more in common with judicial pardon than with forgiving. The Law, like charity, looks upon all with an equal eye, makes no distinctions, has no regard for the person, and may pardon even if he does not repent. Judicial pardon shares with forgiving that it pardons a crime for the sake of the person who did it. (It will hardly pardon Bluebeard who is a murderer, but it may pardon a crime passionel because murder is committed by somebody who was not a murderer.) You talk about charity as though it were love, and it is true that love will forgive everything because of its utter commitment to the beloved person. But even love violates the integrity of the wrongdoer if it forgives without have been asked to. Is not forgiving without being asked really impertinent, or at least conceited — as though one said: Much as you tried, you could not wrong me; charity has made me invulnerable? The trouble with charity as with the law is that it levels out distinction. And judicial pardon, from this viewpoint, seems to be the point where the law breaks down; the man who receives it is no longer judged solely according to the law.
Of course I am prejudiced, namely against charity. (Continued)
We’ve arrived in our new home, and things are settling down. On our first night here, our car was broken into it, and it’s taken a bit of time to get internet running smoothly, but I’m finally ready to start blogging more regularly.
DC is a wonderful, wonderful town: I love the Mall and the Capitol Hill district, and the many universities in the area. It’s somewhat bittersweet that Peter Levine is saying a simultaneous farewell to the city as we arrive. Unfortunately, we don’t live in the District proper. We’re just barely living inside the Beltway, though, so I guess I’m officially out of touch with the American People.
I’ll be doing some follow-up work at the Library of Congress, and I may post some results here. I’ve got a great letter from Arendt to Auden on forgiveness and judgment, for instance, that would make a good post tomorrow…. Also, I’ve just picked up Richard Sennet’s new book on The Craftsman. Should be an interesting summer!
I’m currently in the process of writing wedding vows with my fiancé, Antoinette. I’ve been casting about everywhere for inspiration and influences, to the extent that Antoinette has accused me of treating the vows like an academic paper. She’s right, of course: erotic love is one of the original philosophical themes, and the prospect of making claims about it in front of an assemblage of family, friends, and colleagues is daunting. I can’t stand up there and make vague references to Aristophanes’ absurd myth of gendered division and reunification, despite its familiarity to wedding-goers and Hedwig and the Angry Inch lovers everywhere. So I’ve been doing my research. (Continued)
My partner graduates from law school this week, and I’m reminded of Arendt’s husband, Heinrich Blücher, counseling one of his Bard students to go to law school:
“I decided to study law,” one of his students later recalled, “and came to him to ask advice. ‘I think our society is headed for calamitous events,’ I said, ‘I can’t see the law remaining stable for many years. Of what use would it be to be trained in it?’ ‘ The use,’ he said, ‘ is that you will be one of the ones to remember what it was.’”
It’s not the sixties anymore, but it’s still extraordinary to me that lawyers are able to sustain a link to English fox hunting, millworker’s promises, and the chancery system. The practice of law remains, at least in part, the practice of remembering what law was, of identifying those moments when it changes, and of preserving the continuity and sense of tradition that those legislative interruptions would otherwise efface. Valuable memories indeed.
There’s a great piece in the Boston Globe on the relationship between the African slave trade and current global inequalities: Shackled to the Past.
One thing that’s always irritated me about broadly materialist historical explanations is the tendency to miss the importance of contingent historical events. Geography is not destiny, as Jared Diamond suggests, but rather it becomes a destiny when mixed with certain kinds of choices and chances. In The Longterm Effects of Africa’s Slave Trades, Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that Africa’s exceptional poverty is directly linked to the slave trade:
if the slave trades had not occurred, then 72% of the average income gap between Africa and the rest of the world would not exist today, and 99% of the income gap between Africa and the rest of the underdeveloped world would not exist. In terms of economic development, Africa would not look any different from the other developing countries in the world.
(Continued)
Many academics know about the great book by Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White. However, I think it’s not common knowledge outside of academics who specialize in race that he’s been involved in two journals, Race Traitor and The New Abolitionist, both focusing on undoing white privilege by abolishing whiteness. This is all old news at this point, but I’m just now reading some of the online archives over at Race Traitor, and loving the unreconstructed marxism of it all: “Abolish the White Race - By Any Means Necessary,” “Aux Armes! Formez vos Bataillons!” and “A Real Citizen’s Review Board.” (Continued)