2 posts tagged “oil”

The movie of the night was Syriana. And I decided to read the screenplay to see what the movie missed. The movie opens with a scene in which men struggle to get on a bus to go to the oil field, as we discover, so that they can someday earn enough money to be with their families. “As soon as we can we will get a real house and bring you  mother here,” Wassid’s father says. The CIA agent, Bob is asked in the first scene we see him how his son is. He says “Great. He’s great” but he really has no idea as we find out later. His son despises the life he must lead as the kid of a two CIA agents and Bob is disconnected from him. Stan, the consultant friend of Bob advises him to get out of government work and go into consulting. “I got two kids and college and we are redoing our kitchen.” He says.  Bennet, the black  lawyer investigating the merger of two oil companies is advised to play along with the powers that be if he wants a house in “the Vineyard”. “The Tengiz [oil field] is the Holy Grail. You get into that stream and nobody in your family is ever going to have to clean the toilet again,” he is told. The character Bryan is clearly a devoted family man but he is lured away from that family in the course of the movie, by his idealism and by promises of money. Bryan hits “Ignore Call” when his wife calls towards the end. He is obviously got dollar signs in his eyes. Only at the end of the movie does Bryan return, like  a prodigal son to his son and to his wife. Speaking of the advantages of dying and going to heaven, the suicide bomber is told by his friend “We'll get to intervene in the affairs of the family members.  We'll be able to help them with whatever they need.  You will be able to get your mother here.” Bennet has no wife and no kids but an alcoholic father who was never able to make it because he was black apparently. Even the creepo bad guy, Danny Dalton “has a wife and children” Bennet notes in the movie sympathetically. In one of the scenes that didn’t make it into the movie, there is a shot of Dalton and his family at church.

“This is the third in our four-week series on Luke 252.  And Jesus continue to grow in wisdom and stature and in the love of God and those who knew him.  The task is not getting more of God but letting God get more of us.  High above the pulpit, dead center of the auditorium is a giant American flag waving under the cross.” From the script

I am not sure why they cut this scene from the movie. It seems to me that it is the central point of the screenplay.

Clearly, the problem with all these people is how money seems to be regarded as an essential part of creating a family. Family is important. A Home in which to have a family is important. Keeping a family together is important. Affording a place for that family is important. As important as family is to the royal family on the Middle East. And thus does everyone get corrupted. Thus does everyone excuse the behavior that looses them all their families. Danny’s response to the news that he will be indicted for bribing foreign officials is positively Machiavellian.

Corruption charges. corruption? Corruption ain’t nothing more than government intrusion into market efficiencies in the form of regulation. That’s Mi1ton Friedman. He got a goddamn Nobel prize. We have laws against it precisely so we can get away with it. corruption is our protection. Corruption is what keeps us safe and warm. Corruption is why you and I are here in the white-hot center of things instead of fighting each other for scraps of meat out there in the streets. Corruption... is how we win.

I can’t help but think of George Plunkitt’s defense of “honest graft” in 1905:

“Everybody is talkin' these days about Tammany men growin' rich on graft, but nobody thinks of drawin' the distinction between honest graft and dishonest graft. There's all the difference in the world between the two. Yes, many of our men have grown rich in politics. I have myself. I've made a big fortune out of the game, and I'm gettin' richer every day, but I've not gone in for dishonest graft--blackmailin' gamblers, saloon‑keepers, disorderly people, etc.--and neither has any of the men who have made big fortunes in politics.

There's an honest graft, and I'm an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin': "I seen my opportunities and I took 'em."

MY mind goes the scene in The Smartest Guys in the Room where you overhear Enron traders intentionally manipulating power company output so as to better screw consumers with price gouging.

Question for Comment: Is everyone doing all this for their families? Has the world become a place where in order to do their duty to their family, providers feel like they must cheat, lie, bribe, backstab, rat out, betray, use, abandon, or kill? Are these the “family values” of the modern world?

I watched the documentary, Crude Awakening tonight: http://www.crudeawakening.org/

And while not really an "awakening" per say (I have been teaching global energy geopolitics in Contemporary World Issues for years now), the movie did get more than one eye open. With cover art depicting a gas pump as a noose, its to be expected I guess. It was the sort of thing that gets a person to thinking about where they live, what house they live in, what energy resources are in their neighborhood, what car they drive, what education their kids are getting, and what the future of college history teaching will be. I wonder if we will start seeing student exchange trips to Amish country in the near future?

It also got me to thinking about some of the Hebrew prophets (like Jeremiah) who were so persecuted and derided for predicting doom on Jerusalem in the face of a rising Babylonian empire. Men like Jeremiah saw the whole thing coming . . . but saw good things beyond as well. They saw the causes of all international and economic futures in theological terms and they made political and economic predictions in theological terms but the essential message was one of doom, then hope.

       How awful that day will be!
       None will be like it.
       It will be a time of trouble for Jacob,
       but he will be saved out of it. 
        Jeremiah 30

 One is reminded of Hindu notions of the creator god manifestation (Brahma), the  preserver god manifestation (Vishnu), and destroyer god manifestation (Shiva) all inevitably interacting with each other. I guess the benefit in believing in the power of chaos and destruction lies in the ability to believe in a counter-power of creativity and rejuvination. Whether one looks in Hindu terms, Judeo-Christian theological terms or just humanistic terms, that which has the power to create a mess like the one we are in, should have the power to create the solution.

There is a certain irony to the fact that in the same year that the North and South were beginning to kill each other over slave labor, oil was being found in Titusville Pennsylvania, a solution that would make slave labor economically obsolete. One could almost argue that had oil been struck in Titusville a decade earlier, and the significance of that oil perceived at that time, the Civil War would never have been fought.

The question is, what hope is there for the post-carbon world? Who is writing something besides "Doom on You. The end is near" books on the subject?

Question for Comment: Is this what a high school environmental science teacher has to look like these days? What is the proper mixture of "We can solve this problem" and "We're toast" to strike? Is there a eucatastrophe embedded into the catastrophe?