UNITE! Info #294en: |
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An energy strangulation document from 1978
05.11.2007 |
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Intro note:To a writer who wishes to remain anonymous publicly I'm grateful for sending me, recently, the below message, referring to a document from 1978 which I shall quote some lines from and comment on rather briefly. |
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| [QUOTE:] Date: 04 November 2007, 15:28 CET Subject: regarding global energy policy Hello Rolf, Following is a document you are perhaps aware of, and which, I believe, is relevant to the position you are advocating regarding the strangulation of energy production. It's a report on how to manage the so called "transition" period of energy, i.e. the "depletion" of "fossil fuels" by imposing price increases, etc. to gradually divert from the use of such sources. I just skimmed through it, for it is rather long, but thought it was worthwhile to bring it to your attention. http://www.trilateral.org/library/stacks/energy_managing_transition.pdf As you are probably aware, the trilateral commission "was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, Europe (European Union countries), and North America (United States and Canada) to foster closer cooperation among these core democratic industrialized areas of the world with shared leadership responsibilities in the wider international system." by the Rockefeller Family and the like. It is most likely to have deep influence in most government policies in the world. Therefore, I think this is evidence that what you are describing as energy strangulation is indeed along the lines of bourgeois policies and is initiated by them. ... Best Regards, ... [END OF QUOTE] |
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Comment:The document pointed to here, which I had not seen before, indeed is of interest. It shows something about how those policies of the main ruling reactionaries in the world for making all energy scarce and expensive, which continue today and are going further and further, hitting the people in all countries very hard, were being planned and developed already some 30 years ago.It's a "report" by some so-called experts, discussed at the Trilateral Commission meeting in Washington, D.C., the USA, on 11-13 June, 1978. The report was entitled "Energy: Managing the Transition" (meaning, transition to higher energy prices). This commission no doubt indeed was one of the more influential organizations advocating the change of policies by the ruling imperialist bourgeoisie towards making all energy scarce and expensive, for arch-reactionary political reasons. Another such organization was the so-called Club of Rome, which in 1972 published the influential and infamous "The Limits to Growth". On the big turnabout by the main bourgeois forces around that time, in the direction of energy and industry strangulation, I've already written in detail in earlier Infos, for instance #292en of 14.09.2007, which contains a certain summary about this. The 1978 Trilateral Commission report further confirms that such things were being planned, by influential bourgeois forces. From that rather long-winded document I shall quote a few typical passages. Some main theses of the "report" were that "the resources of oil and natural gas would run out rather soon", that "consequently, the oil price should be raised considerably and constantly" and not least, that "the public must be informed that there was a serious energy crisis". No doubt those "experts" who prepared that "report" already then knew that the oil and natural gas resources in practice are limitless, as had been demonstrated in the formerly socialist Soviet Union from the early 1950s on (on this, see one of the articles at the website managed by J. F. Kenney), and of course also knew about the enormous potential of nuclear energy as an even cheaper energy source, in particular if developed further, with for instance breeder reactors coming into general use, which was then still a concrete possibility, with projects in that direction still going on in several countries. But the "report" pretended that these facts did not exist. It wanted people to be told, on the contrary, that "unfortunately, all energy from now on must necessarily be considerably more expensive than before". "Conservation" was to be "emphasized". The report had as one headline: ""The long-term problem - managing the transition to higher-cost energy", and said for instance: "We therefore urge heads of government and other leaders in the Trilateral area - and in particular the President of the United States - to mobilize public opinion to recognize the seriousness of the energy problem and to keep the public informed on a regular basis of the progress being made in finding solutions."Concerning the oil price, already manipulated considerably upwards by the US imperialists, above all, in the course of the first so-called oil crisis in 1973-74, the report absurdly maintained that they on the contrary "were still artificially low", saying: "The difficulty, however, is that new supplies of oil from the North Sea and Alaska's North Slope might prevent prices from rising much above current levels..."The Trilateral Commission "experts" in their "report" criticized the energy policy of the US administration of 1973-1976 but applauded the energy programme of April 1977 by the then new Carter administration, which went in the direction of further energy strangulation and was combined with a public propaganda campaign saying that "the quest for a solution to the energy problem" was "the moral equivalent of war". Such propaganda did get to be disseminated massively in other countries too, implying that "there were no effective and cheap energy sources" so that people in general "just had to accept" much increased unemployment and much increased costs of energy for private consumption. The "report" noted with obvious satisfaction that in the then recent years, "...the energy-rich [European] countries [meaning those said to be rich in oil and natural gas, having some North Sea production fields] were shifting the emphasis away from maximum acceleration of hydrocarbon exploration...",that for instance the UK, Norway and The Netherlands had begun to "emphasize conservation" and that "This emphasis was reinforced by concerns about the economic, social and environmental impact of large-scale energy production and exports. Norway set a production ceiling of 1.8 million barrels per day for oil and natural gas and postponed exploration north of the 62nd parallel (about 100 miles north of Bergen) where huge oil reserves are a distinct possibility."With the introduction of nuclear energy for electricity production in many countries in the 1960s, the electricity prices had decreased considerably in those countries. But already from the early 1970s on, the US imperialists and other reactionaries had effected a turnaround on this too, so that the nuclear power programmes were cut down considerably or even stopped altogether, this being combined with a massive media propaganda against that most modern energy source. The 1978 "report" maintained that this turnaround had been caused by "citizens' protests against nuclear power" in the countries in question. In reality, the reactionary media propaganda against nuclear energy never managed to "convince" more than a minority of people - it was the ruling politicians who cut the nuclear power construction down or stopped them. The "report" noted that several of the more highly-developed countries, including Japan, wanted to develop breeder reactors and therefore also reprocessing plants for nuclear fuel which are necessary for such reactors, and that the US government however was strongly against this, advancing as a pretext that with reprocessing plants, it was also possible to convert the plutonium created in nuclear power plants to weapons-grade such. On this, the "report" said: "The 1973 [oil] embargo confronted international institutions with a number of new problems that placed new demands on them:And, under the heading "Reassessment of the Nuclear Option": "The recent U.S. initiatives - designed to reduce the motivation as well as the technical ability of nations to acquire nuclear weapons - while useful in emphasizing the need for international consensus on the nonproliferation problem, have caused deep concern among some of the other Trilateral governments. The concern is that any limitations on the development of spent fuel reprocessing facilities or the breeder reactor will increase the already heavy dependence of the industrial world on OPEC oil." Thus this "report" applauded those even more extreme international anti-nuclear-energy actions which the US imperialists undertook from the time of their Carter administration and onwards, and was content to see the governments of some other countries bow to the US pressure on this question. This document, thus, is one which demonstrates and confirms that the ruling reactionary cliques' more and extreme policies today for strangulation of precisely the most modern energy sources, their "green" warfare against the people in all countries, were advocated and planned for by some of these forces already several decades ago. For details on these policies, on the motives behind them and on their development, I refer readers again to my Info #292en. |
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