EP Podcast Program Notes for December
Sometimes problems become great opportunities. Last week I'd had an interview lined up, on Peak Oil, that was to be the show for tomorrow. I did the interview but decided against using it. That, however, left me without anything scheduled and less than a week to find somebody. To make a long story short I overcompensated, finding four good guests, which not only takes care of tomorrow but all of December—and that's probably extra lucky because my guess is that as December gets closer to Christmas and New Year's it's going to be more difficult to book people. Now, four interviews in one week is really a lot, I think, so I hope you all appreciate them! Here's the schedule:
Tomorrow, Friday, is a conversation with a recently minted British Ph.D., Darren Naish. Darren is the author of the wonderful blog, Tetrapod Zoology. When I'd contacted him to ask about an interview that's really all I knew about him (that and that he is currently unemployed) but subsequently I found out he's got several academic books, several children's books, and many scientific articles under his belt; moreover, he's named a dinosaur and become well-known through popular appearances on BBC and other UK media. Which didn't actually surprise me all that much, given the quality of Darren's blog. We talk about the evolution of dogs, of humans, and assorted other things including Big Foot (he's keeping an open mind). This one is a lot of fun, something different, and I hope you have time to listen.
Friday the 15th is a conversation with Chuck Spinney. Chuck is one of an extremely small number of people who really understand the Pentagon budget. (His insider web site, popular among the uniformed services, is here.) He's also a thoughtful foreign and defense policy theorist. Just after Chuck retired a couple years ago Bill Moyers did a long interview with him, a tribute to this extraordinary whistleblower. Our conversation meanders—from Iraq, to Pentagon spending, to military psychology, to some fascinating (to me) war stories from the military bureaucracy. I think this one will edit down to about an hour and a quarter, but we only really got started and I very much hope to have Chuck back. And we'll have to make special arrangements for that, since Chuck lives most of the year with his wife, and their dog, on their sloop in the Mediterranean.
Friday the 22d is a conversation with Tom Whipple, who was a senior CIA analyst and now writes a column on Peak Oil for a small local paper, the Falls Church News-Press. Tom also publishes a daily energy newsletter for ASPO-USA. A very knowledgeable guy, full of common sense, Tom's on the techno-solution side of the issue, but doesn't minimize what we're up against. Another conversation I hope that many people will listen to.
And, finally, Friday the 29th is a return visit with Sam Smith, editor of the Progressive Review. This is more of a laid-back, shooting-the-breeze type conversation, apt, perhaps, for the season. I highly value Sam's take on things—I figure he's living proof that one can be consistently right about politics and policy without being anywhere near the mainstream. Sam, btw, is much more influential than you might imagine, with quite a few Washington insiders regularly reading his site.
So on to January and the one year anniversary of Electric Politics! If and as I get three or four shows lined up in advance again I'll post another schedule like this, otherwise I'll keep you current on the coming week or two in my exit remarks for individual shows.
Posted by George Kenney on December 7, 2006 11:23 AM 
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Comments
Thanks very much for the Tom Whipple interview. [I'm really curious who the other interviewee was whose interview you did but did not publish. We really need all the coverage on this issue we can get. Please re-consider broadcasting that interview.] One fuzzy part of the interview, though, was mention of nuclear power, since peak oil is really mostly a liquid fuels issue: we cannot run our vehicle fleet on nuclear power. Anyway, as Whipple said, the lead time for a nuclear plant is way too long for it to help get us past the constriction of the natural gas supply.
On another note, my observation is that the tendency among us who use lots of oil is to think about what we can do to bolster supplies of oil, rather than think about how we can cut demand.
Tom Whipple gave one good example, I thought, of a relatively easy and quick way for us to reduce our demand: set the national speed limit at 55 mph.
Here's another one: allow use of any given automobile or truck every other day only. Which vehicles would be allowed on any given day would depend on the last character of the license plate: even numbers on one day, then odd numbers the next day. For alphabetic-character plates ending in 'a', make that an odd day, 'b' an even day, 'c' and odd day, and so on. This would lead to much economizing, and save us a large quantity of oil, reduce our air pollution, etc. It's doable. But the political will may not come until gas hits $5 or $6 a gallon.
The other thing we need to think about is: what kind of world are we going to be leaving to our children and grandchildren? When are we going to stop foisting onto them problems we don't want to face? We can either face these issues now and do something about them before it's too late — if it's not already — or wait until our choices are much more limited. The suffering may be extreme.
Posted by: Stephen Bach | December 22, 2006 10:09 PM