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Just yesterday, June 11, we read on the great New York Times (login required, by the way...) that the one and only big monster that's causing great havoc in the environment is - hard to guess, uh? - China:

Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the
thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks.

[...]

China released about 22.5 million tons of sulfur in 2004, more than twice the amount released in the United States

Ah, naughty Chinese! How can you dare to emit these many Greenhouse Gases - surpassing even the reductions that Kyoto Protocol seeks! (ok, the U.S. didn't sign it, but this is a detail)

Luckily enough, for those who seek, there's always enough information to put data and analysis in the right context. Reading the EIA International Emissions Data we discover a few interesting things (the latest data arrive at 2003, this June an update should come out):

• in 2003 the U.S. carbon dioxide emissions were 5,802.08 million metric tons
  
• in the same year China emissions were 3,540.97 (60% of U.S.'s), while India's ones were 1,024.83 (17%)
  
• the per capita emissions, always in 2003, were 19.95 metric tons in the U.S., 2.72 in China (13% of the average U.S. citizen) and 0.96 (0.04%) in India
  
• this means that if every Chinese had to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide of his American pal China would have a total of about 26,000 million metric tons in 2003 (five times U.S. emissions)
  
• these numbers were consistent in the 2 decades before: the yearly average per capita emissions in the period 1980-2003 were 20.02 in the U.S., 2.05 in China and 0.74 in India
  

What do we learn from these numbers and from the New York Times article?

- Mathew was right, it's much easier to see the speck out of your friend's eye that the plank in yours
- it is worse when also your friend has a plank in his eye
- in any case, since we are talking about things in body parts, I'd start worrying about the carbon dioxide in my lungs - more than the specks or planks in somebody else's eye.

And the top seller - in the media and at the gas station - has quickly become ethanol from corn: the "environmentalists" love it and the U.S. Administration backs it as the "green fuel of the future".

All is well and clean, then? Not really - as usual.

The biggest producer of ethanol (from corn) in the United States is Archer Daniels Midland, a corporation based in Illinois with over 25,000 employees and $36 billions of revenues in 2005 and $1 billion in profits.

Apart from the fact that, according the Cato Institute, "ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM's corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30", it's quite interesting to discover, from this CorpWatch article, that:

A single ADM corn processing plant in Clinton, Iowa generated nearly 20,000 tons of pollutants including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds in 2004, according to federal records. The EPA considers an ethanol plant as a "major source" of pollution if it produces more than 100 tons of any one pollutant per year, although it has recently proposed increasing that cap to 250 tons.

[...]

ADM is ranked as the tenth worst corporate air polluter, on the "Toxic 100" list of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts

So, adding this to the fact that "At least 43 percent of ADM's annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the U.S. government" (source: Wikipedia) we get a clear idea of what our "green future" will look like: Big Agribusiness will sell themselves as our saviors supplanting Big Oil, strongly helped by the Government (again, and again with our money) - but our air will not change (it will actually get worse and worse) nor the destination of our money (the company recently hired Patricia A. Woertz, an executive vice president of Chevron Corporation, as its chief executive officer) - nor the destiny of our planet.

Do we still want to call them BIOfuels? When will we learn that the only solution is to drive less (for example) - rather than just changing the fuel and keep listening to our media and politicians from the radios of our SUVs?

Valery Yazev, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Energy, Transport and Communications and president of the Russian Natural Gas Society, which was the organizer of Friday's conference in St. Petersburg, explained what Moscow would do if Gazprom's wishes were not met. [...] "The actions of officials provoke suppliers to retaliation, which may lead to the formation of an alliance of gas producers that will be more effective and influential than OPEC," Yazev said.

Gazprom's wishes basically to re-write the Energy Charter Treaty, a treaty signed in 1994 between the European Union and Russia with the main goal to incentive Western Europe money to develop the resources of countries that produce natural gas - and post-communist Russia was more than eager to sign such a deal and wait for European money to flow in.

With time, thou, Russians discovered that “signing the Energy Charter Treaty did not bring Russia the promising influx of Western investment, or moderation of the discriminatory credit conditions for Russian energy companies at Western banks or improvement in relations with the main transit countries” (quoting Yazev again).

At the same time they also realized how strong politically and economically they became thanks to their abundant (for the time being) gas: and therefore decided to keep on raising their voice (from the whisper it was after the fall of the Soviet Empire) and regain their former status of world superpower - this time not through military might (that's quite costly to maintain) but thanks to the simple fact that they hold the biggest reserves of a very precious resource (a resource that will get more and more precious as oil prices keep on rising, by the way).

Given also Russian ability to aggregate other gas-rich nations (Kazakhstan for example) around their almighty Gazprom, one is left to wonder: aren't we already looking at a semi-cartel?

And what will happen when Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela (respectively the second, eighth and ninth nations with the largest proved reserves of gas in the world) will be asked if they want to join the Organization of Gas Exporting Countries? Will they say: "Oh no, we love Western countries (our main consumers) and we would never do any move that could hurt their economies"? Probably not.

So, here we go: with oil probably peaking right now and the gas market ready for a new cartel "Western hegemony" looks quite toasted.

Let's prepare for a cold winter.

And there's nothing wrong, in principle, in this attitude: it's our inner nature to get used to things - usually pleasant things - and so this is a pattern that we adopted to have a better life on our planet.

But principles are usually quite far from reality - and more so in this case: as most (all?) of our "habits" are leading us toward the destruction of our society, environment and, eventually, ourselves.

We got used to eat vegetables and fruits from exotic countries and year-round - and this lead to intensive farming, habitat destruction and soil degradation.
We got used to have warm houses in the winter and cool living rooms in the summer - and this lead, among the other things, to colder and colder winters and hotter and hotter summers.
We got used to reach distant places in a snap - and this lead to the consumption of 21 billions of barrels of oil per day in the U.S. alone.

Finally, we got used to an incredibly cheap and efficient source of energy - and this lead to our falling civilization, built on the crazy and unsustainable idea of infinite growth.

When will gasoline prices force American drivers to change their habits? Probably never - as we must admit that we are all ready and willing to see our world filled with blood, provided our tanks are and always be filled with fuel.

Just think about it, when you'll decide the destination of your next trip.

What we would like to focus on, at present time, is the way good old "friends" (kept apace by fear or direct military intervention) are now turning against their Master - and in the most provocative, unexpected and probably deadly way.

First of all, it is quite clear how Venezuela is pursuing a strong leftist and populist politics against the U.S., quickly moving away from the dreadful "Washington Consensus" that created so many tragedies in Latin American in the last decades. From Reuters we read that:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is moving to boost royalties and taxes paid to the government and give state oil company PDVSA a majority stake in the deals as part of a sweeping "re-nationalization" of the energy sector.
[...]
In addition to the mandatory majority stake for PDVSA, the changes increase the income tax on the projects from 34 percent to 50 percent, boost royalty payments to 33.3 percent from 16.6 percent, as well as levying a new 0.1 percent export tax.

In this "running away" from Washington (toward China, mainly, but this is another story), Chavez is taking other South American countries with hime: for example, shortly after Venezuela re-nationalization of oil - exactly on May, 1st - Bolivia followed pretty much the same path:

President Evo Morales ordered the military to occupy Bolivia's natural gas fields on Monday after nationalizing the industry and threatening to expel foreign companies that do not recognize state control.
[...]
"This is just the start ... tomorrow or the day after it will be mining, then the forestry sector, and eventually all the natural resources for which our ancestors fought," Morales told a jubilant crowd in La Paz's main plaza.

while just a week ago Ecuador made its own move against foreign energy producers:

Ecuador revoked Occidental's contract on Monday after accusing the company, in a long-run legal dispute, of violating its operating contract. Occidental says it has complied with its obligations and still hopes to settle.
[...]
President Alfredo Palacio has been under pressure from Indian groups in the oil rich Amazon to expel Occidental, who accuse the firm of exploiting natural resources with no benefit for Ecuadoreans. Occidental, Ecuador's largest investor, had also become a lightening rod for criticism of U.S. "imperialism".

All these facts combined give a pretty clear view of the current situation of the Empire and its former and closer "friends", who have long been its source of cheap labor, energy and money.

The strongest blow to America's hegemony, thou, came from what was once considered Bush's new, strongest friend: Vladimir Putin. From today's RIA Novosti we read that:

The RTS, Russia's leading stock market, will begin trading ruble-denominated futures for the domestic price of oil and oil products from 2007, RTS Vice President Roman Goryunov said Friday.

The U.S. started a war (in Iraq) because they didn't want anybody in the world to trade oil in a currency different from the dollar (remember that Saddam decided to start trading its oil in Euros a few weeks before the U.S. invasion) - and now one of the few military super-powers decide to use rubles for its energy futures? And what are we going to do with all the dollars currently held worldwide by governments - dollars that actually are needed to sustain U.S. unsustainable trade deficit? Sell them to buy RUBLES and send American economy down the toilet?!? (well, the answer is, probably ... yes)

What is happening? A quick answer could be that high oil prices gave oil producing countries so much money that they now feel strong enough to kick Washington puppets and controllers out of their way - thus showing that their true and deep friendship with American was neither true nor deep.

But all these moves have a much stronger significance than just a return of nationalistic desires: for the first time, in our point of view, the Great Empire has found boundaries to its expansion - and when an Empire cannot grow anymore it is deemed to implode.

In any case, we need to watch closely all these "cracks" in the Empire: it's very important to be prepared to all sort of outcomes - as the Empire Building is taller than ever, and it will make a huge noise when it will come tumbling down.