Anything but time
"ASK ME for anything," said Napoleon to his lieutenant. "Anything but time."
With those three words, Napoleon was referring to the binding agent of operational military art, the concept of "Time, Space, and Force." What Napoleon was saying to his subordinate was that in the context of war, there are always setbacks. Terrain, for example, is sometimes captured and lost to the enemy, but lost terrain can be regained. And forces are lost in combat but can be rebuilt and reconstituted from the strategic reserve. But lost time? Once it has passed, time is lost forever. You will never see it again, and no general, however great, can win it back.........
Napoleon and Time
As I said at the beginning of this article, Napoleon's words passed through my mind and have been echoing there as I reviewed the reports from the Alaskan front. "Anything but time," said le general. Because the energy future of the world is all about time, and we have no time to lose. There is no time to lose in controlling the raging demand for oil, no time to lose in focusing on conservation and improved efficiency, no time to lose in switching to alternative energy sources, no time to lose for people to just plain understand Peak Oil. "Ask me for anything. Anything but time.".........
The U.S has been drifting for years, if not for decades, without a rational policy approach to its energy consumption. The U.S. national attitude toward petroleum is that if the economy needs petroleum to function, we can just go out and buy the stuff from other places, using U.S. dollars. Just think of how many assumptions are implicit in that approach and take a look at where it has led the U.S. as a nation. (OK, if you insist, here is a hint: Think in terms of "debt" and "empire."
A strategic mistake leads to lost time, and who has time for that?What will it take to create a workable energy policy in the U.S.? Is it even possible? Are we really just all on the cusp of what some commentators label as the "crackup boom," the final debauch on the way to the Greater Depression? Can we fix it? But again, a national policy mistake leads to lost time, and who has time for that?
One Last Comment
The U.S., and the West in general, has focused its attention on other people as the source of trouble in the oil markets, with countless hours devoted to worrying about whether or not the Iranians or the Saudis or the Venezuelans will cause trouble. And here we are, an utterly and shamelessly oil-dependent culture, waking up to the fact that rust in the pipelines of Prudhoe Bay has taken down 400,000 barrels of oil in one fell swoop...........
