Which candidate will be more loathe to kill over oil?

Gay rights and human rights in general, home foreclosures and the economy in general, health insurance, global warming - all topics that matter to me. All areas where the candidates are close enough that I feel they're both better than McCain.

Unfortunately I think the importance of these issues is going to pale beyond the dramatic when it comes down to this:


"World civilization is based on oil. The world is running out of oil. The oil companies and governments are not telling the truth about how close we are to the end. Dick Cheney knew about peak oil back in 1999 when he spoke to the London Petroleum Institute as Halliburton CEO. He predicted it would come in 2010. After that it's just a matter of years before it runs out. Whoever controls the remaining oil determines who lives and who dies."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joe-lauria/the-coming-war-with-iran_b_96428.html

Can either of these two individuals vying for the democratic nomination make a difference in what is soon to become one seriously fucked up and dangerous planet?

I really don't know. But if my gut leans in one direction, if anyone has a chance to be guided by a sense of what is truly right not just for America, but for the world as one, I think it's Obama.

U.S. Presidential candidates' staffs briefed on peak oil and the plastic plague

by Jan Lundberg

Just to cover my bases, in case politics and laying groundwork can do wonders, I have just spent a week in Washington, D.C. talking with staffers of Senators Obama, McCain and Clinton. Their understanding of peak oil is rising at a critical time, perhaps in time for the election, but certainly afterwards for Presidential or Senatorial initiatives. The related issue of plastics and their threat to the oceans and public health was something I was able to link to peak oil with all of them -- without eyes glazing over, nor popping out. Ideally, our catching up to China and its ban on plastic bags could become a policy option or lively point of debate.

Last June the M King Hubbert Tribute asked some peak oil activists to brief U.S. presidential candidates on the subject. The process ensued and peaked in recent days on Capitol Hill. The organizer, Jason Brenno, guided us:

Some ideas we have had so far for candidates are just very basic steps probably to be done in order: Assemble a team of experts to assist you (the candidate) in understanding this problem to

* Help you articulate this problem and begin to advise you on solutions
* Sign you up for newsletters, get peak oil publications, etc.
* Have your staff begin to read publications, books etc.
* Recognize that Peak Oil is as serious a problem as Global Warming and that the that the more disruptive effects of peak oil will surface well before those of Global Warming, however, they need to be treated as very serious intertwined problems that need attention now
* Begin to alert the public of this problem

http://www.energybulletin.net/40601.html

From the standpoint of the oil industry obviously - and I'll talk a little later on about gas - for over a hundred years we as an industry have had to deal with the pesky problem that once you find oil and pump it out of the ground you've got to turn around and find more or go out of business. Producing oil is obviously a self-depleting activity. Every year you've got to find and develop reserves equal to your output just to stand still, just to stay even. This is as true for companies as well in the broader economic sense it is for the world. A new merged company like Exxon-Mobil will have to secure over a billion and a half barrels of new oil equivalent reserves every year just to replace existing production. It's like making one hundred per cent interest; discovering another major field of some five hundred million barrels equivalent every four months or finding two Hibernias a year. For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world often greet oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow..

- Cheney At London Institute of Petroleum, 1999