is it OK to kill for oil?

in this question, i don't mean "Big Oil" and their greedy profit motives ... when i ask, "is it OK to kill for oil?", i mean is it OK to use military force, or even any kind of force, to obtain oil if the continuity of the US as a modern state were jeopardized.

what vote would you cast if your fellow citizens were starving because agriculture collapsed due to insufficient energy resources? how passive or aggressive would you be if our homes went dark at night and frigid cold in the winter? what if the US, as an industrialized society, could no longer sustain itself ... no jobs, no production, nothing but radical, painful change ...

for an interesting consideration of this topic, although it's a little dated, check out the Congressional study on these very issues: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/Petroleum/fields.htm

we've seen a never-ending parade of justifications for the US to use force, both military and economic, to put the squeeze on foreign governments to ensure the smooth flow of oil to thirsty US markets ... today, the good guy Americans are bringing freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people - not a selfish bone in our bodies ... how can we keep telling ourselves we're the good guys?

as a Democrat, i keep telling myself that none of "our guys" would stand for this international impropriety ... after a little squirming and i few "i'm pretty sures", i try to convince myself that "our guys" would honor a very simple set of rights and wrongs ... "we are not like the republicans", i tell myself ... those bastards only care about Big Oil and nothing of the national interest ...

i worry that Democrats, while perhaps very different than republican corporatists, are nevertheless complicit, perhaps with very different justifications, in the use of force to procure oil ... perhaps they see it as their most sacred responsibility: the protection of the nation ...

if Democrats, or republicans for that matter, choose to use force with the backing of the American people, at least they are acting democratically although I personally would strongly disapprove ... HOWEVER, to permit the use of force, for good reasons or bad, without telling the American people the truth, is, in my view, both unconscionable and criminal ...

the questions are: do you believe the use of force is justified if the survival of the US is threatened by our inability to procure the oil we need and do you believe most elected Democrats agree with your position?

finally, what would your position be if the US was being threatened not with a cut-off of oil but with a threat to our survival caused by a shift away from using petroDollars as the primary currency?

There is oil in this hemisphere, we can make oil from coal and we can open
friendly relations with our Latin neighbors to obtain the oil we need. Do we have a god
given right to another's nations resources. NO.

We're shipping jobs overseas; they will need it more.

Right?

Although I agree, it is almost a sacred idea in Washington that we must do everything we can to maintain the economy. Morals makes poor biscuits or some such argument.

I know that sounds sort of simple but I do no feel we have the right to take peoples goods just because we have built our way of life around it. Of course many people feel that killing for real property is a right. I have always wondered just what in my home, besides my children, I would think to kill someone if they wished to take it. But with our world history of killing each other over so many things I am sure I am out of step.

Look at the greater subsidies the american taxpayer provides to the fossil fuels
industry, free wars, road subsidies, car company bailouts, oil drilling subsidies,
oil exploration subsidies, and on and on. This economic distortion, creates
an artificially cheap price, and this then leads a public to have grossly
unrealistic expectations.

The difference with the "no" today vs.. 30 years ago, is that the rest of the
world's industrializing economies are willing to pay for that oil as well, and
if the US starts expropriating assets, it is zero-sum games, and world war will ensue.
No longer is the US the only country to be thinking this way, but every
country on earth asks the same question.

energy independence there is going to be some very big resource wars in our future.

energy, than causing genocide and stealing from others. You make choices-- someone with no empathy or conscience, could possible be so blase about it.

I want us to become energy independent in order to prevent resource wars.

First, let me compliment you on an excellent post. You've
asked a good question, one that we all need to ask ourselves.
One that we must answer, both as individuals and as a nation.
In fact, one that every country on Earth will need to answer.

Second, let me apologize to those offended by my answer. It
isn't my intent to offend, or to hurt feelings.

Yes, I would kill for oil. If it came down to it, I suppose
I would be willing to die for it - which is a much tougher
question, you know.

People talk of bio-fuels, but the truth is we'll be converting
land and water from producing food to producing fuel. We will
still be killing for fuel, perhaps with starvation instead of
with bullets.

The basis for my reason is that, given the present population,
not having oil will bring us to a mass die-off. In the U.S.,
we might lose as much as half the population. I'm absolutely
serious.

And if I have to choose between dying from a bullet or IED,
or dying from starvation, I think I'd rather take the quicker
option.

Again, my apologies to anyone offended by my post.

Kicked and nominated.

and I understand.

"The basis for my reason is that, given the present population, not having oil will bring us to a mass die-off. In the U.S., we might lose as much as half the population. I'm absolutely serious."

You have brought up what the real, underlying issue is before us all that NO ONE wants to talk about.

Too many people. And I doubt seriously many of them have plans to stop having sex and producing multitudes of humans, who are far worse than locusts.

And before the flame, think of this. My Protestant grandmother and grandfather born in the late 1800s had four children. The last time I counted (about 15 years ago), they had 176 direct descendents alive at one time on the planet (this number includes the ones who passed on). My grandmother lived a good long life to the ripe old age of 94 (without doctor visits or any antiaging treatments).

Today it seems that not having enough oil will bring about the die-off. Tomorrow it will be something else.

While I agree with the gist of your argument that where oil means survival of our families then kill we will if kill we must.
What makes today especially odious and obscene however is that we have not tried to conserve in our luxury oil needs
to save oil for our necessities. In fact as far as conserving goes we aren't doing jack shit.

We are big fat spoiled energy sucking pigs when it comes to this non renewable resource.
Kill for oil will we? For What? So we don't have to feel one iota of discomfort or connection to the reality
of this worlds limited ability to provide fossil fuels?
We are killing now not for our sacred right of survival but because as I have said before we are gods chosen consumers.

You commented: "In fact as far as conserving goes we aren't doing jack shit."

It's worse than that. We're digging a deeper hole - building highways and
remote suburbs as if there's no tomorrow (irony intended).

If we started right now this instant to transform our cities and our lives -
and to control our population - we might get through this in a sane manner.

That's a gigantic if. Please forgive me if I doubt we'll do anything to
soften the blow. When peak oil hits, it will be like Katrina times 600.

"if the continuity of the US as a modern state were jeopardized"? it is absolutely in jeopardy now, tomorrow, and in 20 years. * & his master Cheney simply cannot conceive of another approach, outside of maintaining the status quo, that would not cripple the US economy, and by extension, the world economy. oil men wear oil blinders. in a way, they're realistic: there is no other way to maintain the current level of energy used outside of fossil fuel.

that's why we're in iraq. all other rationales are just that.

My essential answer is 'no.'

It would never be okay. I can't imagine any circumstance where it would be even tolerable, let alone 'okay.'

But I also think the example you set up is likely fundamentally wrong. We would never get to a point where we are out of oil and as desperate as you suggest. Not because oil isn't a finite resource, but because if we ever get to a place where that point is on the ofrseeable horizon to John and jane Q., we'll have found alternatives. Even the 'oil boyz' in power now will have found alternatives before it gets to that point. Quite simply, a company like Archer Daniels Midland would replace Exxon as the object of our national wrath.

I'd also like to think a Democratic government would do things differently. Instead of setting the rules in favor of an ADM, they'd be at least a bit more egalitarian about it and allow for the true 'little guy' innovators to play the game, too. An 'ADM solution' is really the same technology used with a different fuel source. The 'little guy' innovators would be looking for - and likely finding - whole new energy paradigms.

But, back to your question, I don't think we'll ever find ourselves in the dire straights you postulate.

ahhh, you seem to be basing your analysis on an assumption that i intended more of a Peak Oil scenario ... i may have inadvertantly implied that in my post; i'm not sure ...

if you follow the OP link provided to the 1975 Congressional study, however, you'll see that the concern was not "running out of oil" but rather a curtailment of oil sales by OPEC or, taken more broadly, oil producing countries ...

the conclusion reached at the time of the study, perhaps no less relevant today, is that we have not built the foundation necessary to transition to alternative fuels within the postulated very short timeframe ...

would you change your response under these clarified circumstances?

... I didn't go to that link.

But at the essence, my reply is still the same ..... no.

What to do about it if it happens and we're unprepared? As awful as this sounds ... tough shit. It will push us to negotiate fairly and/or to beg appropriately humbly ..... and it will kick us in the ass toward self-reliance ... you know ... that 'bootstrap' shit the repugs are always spouting.

I also think it will only be under a regime like we have now where an embargo becomes even possible.

Will think it's just fine once gas prices reach a certain level and the economy can't sustain their wasteful lifestyles.

Americans have an over developed and unrealistic sense of entitlement- by in large, they're an insular and propogandized people- and they'll act like others throughout history have once their empire's resources are threatened.

wallet, I can't pay my bills.

have i misunderstood your post?

what values do you believe I have that you disagree with?

we've been told so often we think they're true, we find that the real issue is not about oil. The real question is "Is it OK to kill to maintain (mostly amerikan) corporation's strangle-hold on our resources?

For example, we've been led to believe that we've had cheap gasoline all these years, when if you count up the enormous subsidies, taxes, and hidden costs built into this fiasco of an economy, we find we've been dramatically over-charged for our "lifestyle" for over 50 years. Add in the back-end expenses (health-care deficit, indentured servitude, degradation of living standard, loss of innovation, etc.) to this "lifestyle" and you begin to see why the amerikan economy is inevitably doomed. It may not happen in this cycle of crisis, or the next, but inevitably it must collapse in on itself.

Like any pyramid scheme, it can only continue as long as it takes in more and more suckers at the bottom to pay the thieves at the top, and eventually you run out of suckers.

even those who might advocate just going in an taking "our" oil . . .

we generally refer to these people as hypocrites -- and the country is teeming with them . . . (many, in fact, hold positions of leadership,
influence and/or power) . . .

See: Iraq.

What they come down to is one question: "Does Might Make Right?"

School yard bullies and neocons agree that it does.

here's perhaps the most disturbing one:

"do you believe most elected Democrats agree with your position?"

Is it okay to steal. Now, I believe there are a few universal laws that the world should abide by, and if we did, we'd all be bettter off with our fellow humans. Just two laws humans need to obey---DO NOT KILL AND DO NOT STEAL. So, no, I don't believe in stealing someone else's resources when you can arbitrate, buy said resources.

to kill for oil. Maybe water, but not oil. Karmic payback will be a bitch.

"Thou shalt not kill", for those who like the King James Bible. Or "You shall not murder." if you're into real modern day English.

What part of 'not' do they not understand?

Mark.