WOOLSEYS IN SHEEPS CLOTHING

© Copyright 2005, From The Wilderness Publications, www.fromthewilderness.com. All Rights Reserved. This story may NOT be posted on any Internet web site without express written permission. Contact admin@copvcia.com. May be circulated, distributed or transmitted for non-profit purposes only.

March 7, 2006 1500 PST (FTW) – ASHLAND - Recently, former CIA Director James Woolsey spoke to an enthusiastic crowd of tree huggers, liberals, lefties and Peak Oilists in Eugene, Oregon. According to the following story, they loved him, but there is real danger here. I know a lot about Jim Woolsey. I have interviewed him in person. He is no friend to liberals, progressives, lefties, tree huggers or Peak Oilists. He is no friend of conservatives or libertarians who are aware of Peak Oil and resource depletion either. He is no friend of sustainability or of the earth. In fact, James Woolsey is a friend of corporations and major banks. Aside from the unworkable solutions listed in the following story from Eugene’s Register Guard, (“biofuels, such as soy-based diesel or ethanol made from agricultural products like prairie grass”) Woolsey’s biofuels solutions are of direct and immediate benefit to agribiz giants like Archer Daniels Midland and Monsanto, not to mention major banking institutions. You can bet your bottom dollar (maybe one of your last) that behind these comfy-cozy, liberal-lefty, feel good, green solutions are going to come huge corporate windfalls for major corporations. What’s worse, and what must be grasped by so-called green activists and Peak Oilists, is that even non-edible plant waste must be returned to the soil and mulched. That is the only way carbon and other nutrients get returned to the soil.

As FTW noted in the most frightening article we have ever published, Eating Fossil Fuels, America’s topsoil has become little more than a worn-out sponge onto which we pour chemicals to grow food. A recent study from the University of California observed, “Even if net fossil energy ratio were 1.2 for the corn ethanol cycle, the entire U.S. corn crop would replace only 4% of our motor gasoline use. Something else must be proposed.”[i] Woolsey doesn’t talk about net energy, which is the key to understanding sustainability. And for our era (and for the generations following old guys like me), sustainability is the only issue of major importance.

As the LA Times reported last month “There's growing concern in the Midwest that the 95 ethanol plants are increasingly poaching corn meant for the dinner table or livestock feed.”[ii] This “poaching” is occurring even before all the new ethanol production that’s being proposed begins, and while the American and global populations are still growing. You do the math.

James Woolsey is also a big fan of a process called thermal depolymerization. We have written about thermal depolymerization in FTW and in Crossing the Rubicon. In that process, anything from scrap plastic to human beings (alive or dead) can be thrown into one end of a machine (using an unspecified amount of electrical and chemical inputs) and out the other end comes high-grade oil.

Great… Soylent Oil. Here’s a quote from a 2003 Discover Magazine article on thermal depolymerization:

“Unlike other solid-to-liquid-fuel processes such as cornstarch into ethanol, this one will accept almost any carbon-based feedstock. If a 175-pound man fell into one end, he would come out the other end as 38 pounds of oil, 7 pounds of gas, and 7 pounds of minerals, as well as 123 pounds of sterilized water.”[iii]

Thermal depolymerization just scares the bejeesus out of me. I am not the first and I won’t be the last to think of the dying-off of human population that is coming with Peak Oil and wonder how well the elites have planned to make money on the way up and the way down. I can hear someone thinking now: “Let’s see. If we can average 30 pounds of oil out of each person, and suppose we kill two billion due to starvation, disease, etc., and let’s say we have a major epidemic of Bird Flu and declare an emergency where all the bodies require special treatment, we could get the bodies, make the oil, and tell the world that this new oil came from new discoveries or our great technological advances. We’d have it made!”

It may sound far-fetched to you but in 1941 and 1942 the Third Reich was debating on the best ways to kill off every Jew in Europe (as well as every other enemy of the Reich). Their biggest logistical challenges were transportation, means of death, and disposal of the bodies. Do you realize that in the above scenario, if victims of a pandemic (possibly bioengineered) voluntarily came to FEMA hospitals using their own energy, all three problems would be solved.

I am not saying that this is what I believe is happening now, but I believe that it is possible. The probability of this dark scenario being correct is actually greater than the probability that the above solutions Woolsey pushes will actually help. Only one thing will help now, and that is a drastic reduction in human consumption and the cessation of growth, and that is not what Jim Woolsey’s selling.

Over my three decades of activism and writing I have been utterly amazed at how dumb the Left can be sometimes. (I’ve always expected the Right to be dumb, except at the top). Yet I must understand that at core levels (many of them in the subconscious), people all over the world are starting to get frightened by Peak Oil. I am.

Jim Woolsey playing Court Jester to tell people that there are easy answers and not to change their habits is, regrettably, going to continue to have similar receptions all over. This is the wrong time to let fear encourage us to grasp at straws or suspend good judgment. This is the wrong time to believe that “the cavalry” will come save us, before we have even entered the real battle or shed any blood.

It is a mistake to believe that the James Woolsey’s of this world are our friends. They never have been and they never will be. James Woolsey is the consummate career bureaucrat and front man. If my fellow Oregonians in Eugene truly loved him as much as this story says, then we all have much harder times ahead than we had calculated. More damage is done by applauding Woolsey from the Left than by all of our known enemies who stand and face us openly as such from the Right.

As the great Peter Dale Scott once observed, “Disinformation, in order to be effective, must be 90% accurate.”

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

You wouldn't have thought it possible: a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency drawing a standing ovation from a room full of left-leaning environmentalists right here in Eugene.

But that's exactly what happened at the University of Oregon's Public Interest Environmental Law Con- ference Saturday afternoon as R. James Woolsey - the nation's chief "spook" under President Bill Clinton from 1993-1995 - spoke passionately about the need to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil.

"There is a moral dimension to this," Woolsey said. "We should be good custodians of the Earth."

And if that means creating an unlikely alliance between national security hawks, American farmers, Christian evangelicals, liberal do-gooders and tree-hugging environmentalists, Woolsey said, that's just fine with him.

"All these groups are starting to come around on this set of issues," he said.

Woolsey said the solution to America's foreign oil addiction, as President Bush has termed it, needs to meet three standards: It has to be affordable; it has to be available soon; and it has to use the nation's existing infrastructure.

That cuts out, for example, the hydrogen-powered vehicles that Bush has called for, Woolsey said, because the infrastructure does not exist already to support delivering hydrogen fuel to cars around the country.

The best solution that fits all three criteria, he said, is to use biofuels, such as soy-based diesel or ethanol made from agricultural products like prairie grass, to power hybrid electric vehicles that could be recharged at night.

Woolsey cited the Toyota Prius gasoline-electric hybrid car as an example of a workable solution, assuming a larger battery capacity could be developed. With a six-fold increase in battery capacity, he said, the car could reach 125 miles per gallon for the average commuter, "the equivalent to 50-cents-per-gallon gasoline."

Woolsey dismissed mass transit as a realistic answer to America's foreign oil dependence. "Mass transit is something we could use more of," he said. "But let's face it: This is a big, spread-out country with a vehicle-based economy."

The conference, with scheduled sessions on "Seizure and Arrest Law for Activists" and "Surveillance, Infiltration and Harassment of Environmental Organizations," seemed an unlikely venue to welcome a former top CIA official.

But Woolsey charmed the crowd from the moment he took the podium. Ashland environmental activist Andy Kerr, who sits with Woolsey on the board of the North American Industrial Hemp Council, introduced Woolsey to the audience as a "severely establishment guy."

"Maybe be's been deputized by the establishment to watch us," Kerr quipped.

The crowd quickly warmed as Woolsey began his speech with a story - maybe even true - about the first time he flew on a vacation trip after taking over as director of Central Intelligence.

His security staff wouldn't let him fly under his own name, and Woolsey made the flight accompanied by an armed federal agent, who introduced himself to the aircraft crew before boarding.

But he didn't tell the crew exactly who Woolsey was.

After landing, a flight attendant complimented Woolsey's behavior. "I've been on these flights for 20 years," the attendant said. "And that's the best-behaved and politest prisoner we've ever had on board."