Shell Ditches Wind, Solar, and Hydro 883
thefickler writes "Shell has decided to end its investment in wind, solar and hydro projects because the company does not believe they are financially sound investments. Instead Shell is going to focus on carbon sequestration technologies and biofuels. Not surprisingly, and perhaps unfairly, bloggers have been quick to savage the company: 'Between Shell's decisions to stop its clean energy investments and to increase its debt load to pay for dividends, the company is solidifying an image of corporate greed over corporate responsibility.' Is Shell short sighted, or is it just a company trying to make its way in an uncertain world?"
Thats ok (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean can you say 'conflict of interests'?
Leave it to the little guys that are better (specialized/core business) at it anyway.
And at least now we truly know where they stand.
Re:Neither. They're responsible (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't get me wrong I'm not a crackpot who thinks you can power the world with solar/wind, but I do think oil companies need a bit of government coercion to invest in research.
Re:Neither. They're responsible (Score:3, Interesting)
if they invest in solar/wind and managed to improve efficiency enough to reduce demand for oil then they lose money
Before someone comments that they'd be selling panels/turbines instead of oil; remember oil is a commodity, panels/turbines are a technology. They would much rather deal with selling energy rather than selling energy generators.
Some of you need to get over it (Score:5, Interesting)
Likewise, there are MANY other companies doing hydro and wind. Their pulling out will do nothing to harm them. IOW, they will continue.
That brings up the issue of bio-fuels. Far too many of you are thinking in terms of ethanol via corn, sugar cane, etc. That is a red herring (just like hydrogen production is). Skip that garbage and instead focus on converting crap (literally) to gas; ALGAE. There are several companies that are scaling up right now; Solix and Sapphire. Sapphire is doing gas production directly and they currently have it at less than 100/bl oil equivelence. BOTH of these companies need the price of oil to go up to around 80-85/bl and we are approaching that. These companies will likely get money from US and scale quickly. US MAY be a gas exporter within 4 years because of bio-fuels, combined with American cars moving towards electrical powering.
Even now, I look at the dependency that EU has on Russia for Natural Gas, and how Russia has used it. Shell can help break that. Ppl just need to think big and long term.
With that said, I am amazed that Shell, is walking away from things like hydro, and even wind. Foolish on their part. BUT, it still works out.
Only if you ignore the rest of the world (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem here is that there is no profit in the alternative energy business, at least not on the scale Shell operates on. One day that will change, but there is still too much oil in the world for that to happen yet.
Another issue at play is the tragedy of the commons [wikipedia.org]. The free market model relies on every transaction reflecting the true value of the good changing hands. Thats the idea behind a subsidy; one party is selling a good or service to another party, but the public as a whole also benefits from the service, so the public helps pay for it.
Thats also the idea behind the failed-as-implemented idea of carbon credits. When I buy a gallon of gasoline and burn it, I just paid a company to pump the oil out of the ground, refine it, ship it to me, etc. I even paid taxes for the roads I drive on. But I went and blew all those toxic fumes into the atmosphere, a public resource, without paying for that resource.
The only viable solution to this is to impose a tax on every gallon of gasoline equivalent to the cost of removing a gasoline-gallon's worth of exhaust from the atmosphere. By forcing consumers to pay the true cost of gasoline we will allow the free market system to eventually correct the situation and make renewable energy a viable business model that much sooner. Of course some subsidies won't hurt either, but you can't just subsidize "good" without penalizing "bad".
I understand this. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wind and solar are a load of shit. They require huge upfront costs, have low reliability, and are hard to transport. Bio fuels, esp. cellulose, TDP, and algaculture are efficient, require low or lower upfront cost and can use existing infrastructure owned by the company.
PGE, Marlborough New Zeland, and some companies in Texas are working with algae. What is algae but the product of billions of years of technical development to be the most efficient solar power device on the planet. It is self replicating and can turn our shit into oil. It can also be used for carbon sequestration (if you burn the oil on site you can vent the exhust through the growing algea to speed up production and capture CO2.) Algae in a best case scenario can create 20,000 gallons of bio fuel per acre of land vs. 18 gallon per acre by corn. It doesn't use up the soil resources, it doesn't need chemical fertilizers created with fossil fuels, and it can per pumped around in pipelines that we already own. When combined with TDP you don't even need to worry about having the most efficient producer of oil or getting contaminated with other strains or bacteria. You can just run the system on whatever green goo grows and then render it down into shorter carbon chains. If another better strain that is more efficient comes along later just inoculate with that one. Don't fucking wait for perfection, just get going.
Thinking you can produce a cost efficient solar system that completes with a primary biological producer shows a painful level of hubris. Want nano-tech power? Wow mother nature already does that.
Geothermal is where we are headed (Score:5, Interesting)
There is more free, clean energy in hot rocks 3-5km below the surface than all coal, oil and nuclear fuel combined. It cost nothing to extract other than the initial capital investment, and produces no harmful by-products other than the electricity that you an I take for granted in this modern age.
A bit more research money toward the economic construction of geothermal plants would see us free of fossil and nuclear fuel for the foreseeable future, and that is many, many generations of our species.
Re:It's fusion or bust (Score:4, Interesting)
That's just plain idiotic nonsense.
Solar power can EASILY... TRIVIALLY, provide all the power we could ever want, very inexpensively, covering a tiny amount of land area, and could be in-place very soon. There just hasn't been nearly ANY investment in it, because coal and natural gas continues to provide a quicker return on the investment.
In fact, I suggest everyone look to west. In California, electric utilities are required to produce a large minority of their power from renewable energy, without loopholes. The ramping up to this rule has been over a decade in coming, and all attempts to overturn it have failed. Neither the people nor the politicians are blinking, this time around, unlike CARB with the electric vehicle mandate in the '90s.
California is either going to be getting ~ 10% of their electricity from solar in the next ten years, at grid prices, or the lights across the state will go out, and stay out. The grand experiment is in place, and the stage is set. It's simply time to sink or swim. This will either prove that power companies can make solar power increasingly profitable, at grid rates (once they have no way to get out of it) or else the 7th largest economy in the world is going to stop, for lack of energy.
Re:Neither. They're responsible (Score:4, Interesting)
The other consideration here is that it's not the oil executives job to weigh energy cost and the damage to the environment; that's a moral choice that has to be made by society as a whole, via government. Do you really want oil companies to start taking moral stands? What if an oil company executive decides that homosexuality is a sin, and stops selling petrol to gays? Is that really the kind of world you want to live in?
Re:Neither. They're responsible (Score:4, Interesting)
That's a bit like saying bottled drinking-water companies would be all-over home water delivery and filtration, if it were remotely feasible...
Even if there are signs that the oil industry is slowly dying, an entrenched field, where you've got no competition is MUCH more profitable than jumping into new markets which ANYONE can compete in on an equal footing.
Re:Neither. They're responsible (Score:2, Interesting)
You said:
If they really are thinking in the long term perhaps they should get started on a corporate army while they are at it. I wonder what they will base the bonuses on in that department? Body counts?
And then there is reality:
What is a human life worth to a foreign oil company in Nigeria? Apparently just $143.00, the amount Agip originally offered each of the families of the murdered men to compensate for their loss.
- Ref: a href ="http://acas.prairienet.org/alerts/nigeria/blood&oil.htm">http://acas.prairienet.org/alerts/nigeria/blood&oil.htm
Re:It's fusion or bust (Score:3, Interesting)
You're forgetting that the oil industries receive MASSIVE subsidies from the government. Not necessarily in outright funds, but in other ways. For example, look at how much we spend on the military to protect the oil company's interests in the Middle East.
When we invade Iraq to "stabilize the region" (code for "keep surrounding countries producing oil"), look at how much it costs. Even without including the Iraq war, look at the cost of keeping the "regular" military bases in the region.
If you add up all of the money that is spent on protecting oil interests in the Middle East, you'll find that for the cost of about 5-10 years worth of oil protection, we could have bought wind, solar, geo, and/or hydro to entirely replace our need for oil.
Besides... let's look at the economy. Everybody is worried about it. Instead of paying truly obscene amounts of money to those in power in the Middle East for oil, giving that money to American companies to produce energy in our own country would be such a massive boost to the economy that it would make the government's bailouts pale in comparison.
Re:It's fusion or bust (Score:3, Interesting)
You cant, and thats the problem with generation systems where you don't control the minute to minute generating capacity yourself. Wind and solar also cannot handle the increase in peak production required during certain events.
Re:That which is subsidized prospers (Score:3, Interesting)
While I agree that subsidies are bad, I don't understand how you then proceed to say that the 80 billion subsidies for alternative energies are 'good'.
How can stealing MORE resources from the US economy be better than simply ending all subsidies to whatever technology, ceasing government intervention in the energy market, actually using property rights laws to allow for the pollution externals to be correctly priced and internalized, and let the market, i.e. we the people, sort out which work better.
I sincerely don't think that trying to 'over-subsidize' Green energy over Oil is a sensible solution.
Re:I understand this. (Score:2, Interesting)
You obviously haven't learned that facts like this don't matter to the greenies. They prefer to show their ignorance of basic science by accusing you of raping the land.
They're the same people who essentially killed the most promising form of green energy production known to man, nuclear, simply because they preferred to believe that f&%£ing traitor Jane Fonda in "The China Syndrome", instead of the scientifically provable facts.
The fight against ignoramuses is a never ending struggle; keep up the good work.
Re:Corporate culture (Score:3, Interesting)
World oil production has peaked already (Score:3, Interesting)
Non OPEC production has certainly peaked, the only question really is Saudi and it looks like their production peaked in 2005 as well. So oil is going to keep running up against demand, hitting 150 dollars plus per barrel. Producing bio-oil is likely to be very profitable in the short to medium term.
Of course businesses can't really function at 150 per barrel so you get this massive demand destruction and a following recession. Think of it like a hammer knocking oil dependent economies back down just as soon as it gets going.
Oil versus Electricity Infrastructure (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, they are an oil company in the business of producing and refining crude oil, for a profit. That's what their entire infrastructure is built around. Thousands of miles of pipe, thousands of service stations, thousands of by-products and oil-derivatives, sea and land tanker fleets, claims to reserves, geological surveys, exploration, oil derricks, off-shore platforms, thousands of scientists, geeks, tradesmen, and explorers, and so on. None of which correlate well to Wind, Solar, or Hydro. Yes, you can use oil products to generate electricity, but Shell wants to deliver the fuel, not run the power plant.
Now that the price of crude oil has settled back to where the market dictates, instead of speculators, Shell is making far less money (along with every company/country in that sector). This isn't much more than a belt tightening and cutting projects that are not contributing to the core business.
Again, they're an oil company trying to profit. The world doesn't run on good intentions, well wishes, and fairy dust. It does run on money and oil though.
I think the other technologies show lots of promise, especially solar, but let someone who specializes in it do it. I am a realist and understand that its going to take a combination of everything to get us to whatever is next.
Re:Corporate culture (Score:5, Interesting)
Shell is an oil company. Hands down.
Now, this is where I have a problem with the vast majority of the posts on this article, including yours. Everyone is quick to make Shell out as the big bad oil company and for being shortsighted. I certainly take your comment, "future express way" and "dead end street" to mean exactly that.
Why?
I don't believe in Hydro, Wind, or Solar either. Not on a large scale. I think those technologies are perfect supplements. Point source implementations on single houses and small communities. It will just never scale to the point it can provide power for industry or transportation.
Hydro, Wind, and Solar are also being researched and developed by a heck of a lot of people. New technologies and patents are being developed at a rapid pace. There is a LOT of competition here.
Once again, Shell is an Oil Company.
They are sticking to what they know best. That is drilling and fuel. Carbon sequestration technologies are sorely needed. We have to put it somewhere. Why not a company that has a lot of experience drilling and fraccing? Sounds like a perfect match to me.
Biofuels are the other area that Shell has decided to concentrate on. Every time I pass one of their gas stations (note I said pass) they are always more than the competition. They have patented technology for fuel. These are people that have expertise in creating fuel. Why not have them work on new biofuels? Seems reasonable to me.
I am practical person and just as much a pro environment as anybody else. Let's just take a deep breath and be reasonable about it. I see no reason to make Shell out as the enemy here simply because they want to concentrate solely on two areas of environmental technology.
What they are doing is helping. So why all the hate from all the posters?
Re:No, no, no (Score:3, Interesting)
Fusion is very promising, if only because it has no proliferation worries, but other than that all of the advantages that count are already available in fission reactors.
I think you are a bit over-optimistic about fission.
The power is cheap and will scale: Many European countries get the majority of their power from it
I don't think it is cheap... at least if coal is your benchmark of cheap (which seems to be the benchmark renewables are subjected to). It is only cheap when it is a by-product of military nuclear proliferation (as in france). But pure-civilian nuclear energy is probably more expensive than, say, current wind technology (although perhaps more scalable).
We have plenty of nuclear fuel: There won't ever be a nuclear fuel crisis because before we've used the enrichable uranium ore, and then reprocessed and reused all of the nuclear waste in our breeder reactors, the sun will be dead. Think solar is renewable? Not as renewable as nuclear.
I may be wrong, but I don't think breeder reactors have been tested yet on a large scale. The current uranium-based nuclear economy has in fact an extremely limited supply of fuel. Don't have the citation, but I think I saw a report that put uranium supply for current plants to run out in some 35 year.
It's safe: If the only reason for not going for it is an accident 30 years ago when the technology was in its infancy that's great
Well.. chernobyl was the biggest accident, but there were quite a few smaller ones or near misses. The technology from 30 years ago is not so different from the current one, in the sense that chernobyl was a second generation reactor, which is what most of the installed base still is. But true, we now have a few 3rd generation, passive safety reactors already in operation that are supposed to be better.
That being said, I don't necessarily disagree with you that nuclear may be one path out of the shithole we are driving ourselves into.
Energy Return On Energy Input (Score:5, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EROEI [wikipedia.org]
Oil was 100:1
As the quality of the oil declines (e.g. to tar sands), so does the energy return (e.g. 5:1 or 3:1) and we have to spend more of our time simply trying to generate energy.
And if 30% of our time and energy are going into producing more energy... There isn't much time and energy available to do other things, like run a civilization.
Wind seems to average approximately 20:1 over the lifetime of a turbine.
What is interesting is that in the short term because of our sunk investment in oil, it is more profitable for companies to produce bio-oil at 8:1 EROEI than it is to produce wind turbines or solar panels.
Re:Corporate culture (Score:1, Interesting)
has to be the government, there is no profit in it ... and of course cheap 'free' energy(beyond initial capital outlay and maintenance).
I agree, but the problem with the government "taking care" of is that ten years after the taxpayer drops B$'s or T$'s on the research and infrastructure, it will finally be profitable. Our green energy superhighway would subsequently become privatized in short order, with unfair tolls excised. At least if current utilities are any example. Gotta love "energy cooperatives," about as much as "credit unions."
New large scale solar plant in Arizona (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.inhabitat.com/2008/02/25/world%E2%80%99s-largest-solar-power-plant-coming-to-arizona-in-2011/ [inhabitat.com]
The entire midwest is ideal for Solar. Death Valley? Thousands of acres sitting empty. Who'd want to live there? Solar...
Just because something hasn't been done doesn't mean that it can't be or shouldn't be.
Re:Corporate culture (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that most estimatives just use the "giving the current rate of expansion", without accounting for the rise in prices and consequent dimnishing consum. If you think it that way, there will be more a gradual transition, with the ones who can jumping to the newer energies, and those who can't spending every dime to run their oil-hungry business.
It looks to me that we're already in this era. After all, we are exploring lower quality oil, and (save the current down due to reccession) the prices are steadily rising.
That's all niceplatitudes, but: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Corporate culture (Score:3, Interesting)
Uhhh....
everything is a pollutant when it is present in concentrations such that the current local environment can not deal with them.
Like Humans!
Re:New large scale solar plant in Arizona (Score:5, Interesting)
Thousands of acres sitting empty. Who'd want to live there? Solar...
Or we could build a single nuclear power plant that doesn't need thousands of acres as a footprint and would generate more power to boot. Just saying.....
Re:New large scale solar plant in Arizona (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok, how about solar or wind? Great! BUT - it's going to be expensive up front and not very efficient on a nationwide scale for some time yet. I want my cheap power! * sigh *
Don't worry, the enviro-nazis will shoot those down too, once they realize the scale that we'll need to deploy either of those technologies on to sustain modern civilization. You really think that Greenpeace is going to lay down and let us cover thousands of acres of the Southwest with solar panels? Do you think the NIMBY crowd will stand for having to look at thousands of wind turbines and the transmission lines to get the power to someplace useful? Hell, wind turbines are already causing an uproar and they haven't even been deployed on a meaningful scale yet.
Sometimes I think the more extreme parts of the environmentalist movement won't be happy unless humanity decides to stop reproducing and dies off. And don't even get me started on the NIMBY/BANANA jackasses. I want good cell-phone service but I don't wanna look at cell phone towers. I want electricity but don't you dare place a transmission line where I might have to look at it.
Re:New large scale solar plant in Arizona (Score:3, Interesting)
What are our energy needs? How much of that can be provided by wind/solar? What is the environmental impact of massive solar and wind installations? What is the long-term cost of maintenance? What about expanding capacity? Energy storage?
Nothing is free. There are trade-offs for everything. I'm fairly convinced that wind/solar, where feasible, can replace a lot of energy needs and their trade-offs are, long term, less harmful. But it's not magic and shouldn't be sold as such.
I approach the issue from the standpoint of one planning a solar installation on a sailboat. When complete it would completely eliminate the need for an engine to recharge the battery. But even then it's not free. No pressurized water (other than gravity), no electric appliances more powerful than maybe a hand blender, and constant awareness of power usage. It's an acceptable trade-off for me, but it is a trade-off.
Re:Corporate culture (Score:1, Interesting)
Your totally wrong. I can cite Dupont's SOLAE corporation as an example. Using one of many bio-alternatives for their energy needs, SOLAE started using Recycled Landfill Gas (Methane) in place of Natural Gas. They've displaced trillons of barrels of natural gas use, reduced their overhead, and they've cleaned up the air in Memphis, TN in the process.
Hydro and Geothermal (mostly Cali) are two technologies that we've not put enough effort in.
Solar has a way to go, nanotubes pave the way to having electric lines we don't see running up into space to large solar arrays that DO harvest large amounts of power in a cost effective manner (this is at best 20 years from reality, on paper it looks quite sound).
Wind is our best bet and there is no excuses as to why it can't work, look at Norway or Holland or Germany. They seem to be just fine with massive wind farms, minimal upkeep, and good returns.
Keep making excuses to stick the oil filled needle into your arm.
Biofuels are the answer when used with crops that, oddly, are illegal in this country (hemp being the best bet given it grows in any climate and has absolutely NO human consumption values that the general public is aware of -- despite being a very good Omega3 suppliment).
I can put this these failed attempts of Shell and others into a far easier and better anology:
Jeep made a diesel Liberty, 5000LB towing power, 29MPG highway. 22MPG around town in 4x4 mode. They sold double the expected number in two years of production. The vehicle seemed a smashing success, except that they eliminated the in-tank fuel pump which results in a less-than-perfect fuel filter, which when clogged to any degree, allows the truck to stall out... at lights, or worse, after flooring it to pass a SEMI on the highway. The result? Only those who are brave enough to install the $132 Cummins lift pump they omitted from the design back into it drive these little economical SUVs. Oh, and the tramission wasn't a Dodge unit that could hadnle the 300FT/LB at 1800RPM either, these vehicles shreaded torque converts apart by 10,000 miles. Chryler's all knowing response? Recall them, replace the TC and DETUNE the motor to 260ft/lb, effectively robbing the customer of the specs that they paid for (and STILL publicize to date).
Yes, I think Shell is exceptionally short sighted in this. Perhaps they will find a way to turn Kudzu into biobutenol and beat BP at the "non-ethaol alternative biofuel that works in standard gas engines" but I doubt it.
Re:Corporate culture (Score:3, Interesting)
An interesting article, although my first impression was how they originally said the world population would grow so fast that by the 1970's or so we'd be out of food. This is on par with the peak oil argument, in that there is a genuine cause for concern but it's virtually impossible to pinpoint when and how bad the problem will be.
One point I certainly do agree with, though, is the water issue. This is why I'd really like to see further developments in algae based biofuels, which do not require fresh water (and also promise an order of magnitude more fuel per acre).
I'm not saying food production will never be an issue, but to say "Biofuel production is starving third world countries" is still a baseless argument to make.
=Smidge=
Re:Energy Return On Energy Input (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe one day there will be an entity that I trust to run a nuclear power plant safely and efficiently
You mean like all those entities currently running it that haven't had accidents? This guy [slashdot.org] said it better than I can.
That, and the problem of waste that's hazardous for 10,000 years....
Well, A) There's reprocessing, B) How long is all that CO2 going to remain hazardous? Is nuclear waste going to melt the polar icecaps? Is nuclear waste going to decimate our grain growing regions? Is nuclear waste going to upset the global balance of power and led to starvation/warfare/misery on a huge scale?
Re:quick to savage the company... (Score:5, Interesting)
You're modded as funny, but I'm not sure if that was your intent or not.
Companies evolve and survive. Nokia has been around since the 1800's [nokia.com], long before anyone ever heard of a cell phone.
Actually (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Corporate culture (Score:5, Interesting)
You know, I live in Finland, which was first Sweden's and then Russia's colony until 1917, underwent a devastating civil war right after gaining independence, and was attacked by the Soviet Union twice in World War II, and had to resettle 400,000 people and pay $300,000,000 in war preparations. And yet, after all this, we're somehow overproducing relative to our needs, despite the fact that the country sits on the Arctic Circle rather than at the equator.
At some point blaming some long-ago event for your problems becomes ridiculous. African countries have been independent for decades now, and even the Cold War ended over a decade ago; if they remain hellholes incapable of feeding their own population, the blame now rests on said population.
"Our forefathers were oppressed so we must keep on killing our farmers or at least stealing their land." Victim complex at its finest. Besides, Africa seems to be the only former colony to be having this problem...
Re:Corporate culture (Score:1, Interesting)
You hit on the real reason in your post, even if you didn't realize it. The fact is that wind/solar power is not economically viable right now.
First note that *no* technology can be called "economically viable" without qualification under any and all conditions.
But, oddly enough, wind power has been economically viable for at least fifteen years (the industrial expansion of wind power worldwide kicked off in the 1990s), and so too is solar power in sunny high cost electricity markets. Tax incentives sweeten the deal for sure, and are playing an important role in accelerating the deployment, but they aren't essential to making the technologies economically viable in the appropriate situations.
What is especially interesting are the technologies that Shell claims to prefer - biofuels and carbon sequestration. Although sugar cane-ethanol has proven cost effective in Brazil, biofuels have yet to be proven economically viable under the conditions prevailing anywhere else, and carbon sequestration has so far not been demonstrated anywhere at all.
Two possible interpretations:
1. Shell is deciding it is an oil company, for better or worse, not an energy company and the claim that it is pursuing biofuels and carbon sequestration are simply white wash for bailing out of alternative energy entirely.
2. Shell has decided that it cannot compete in these two established industries (wind and solar) and thinks that it would be better to tackle the harder problems that so far have not proven their promise.
I leave it to you. Are they stay-at-homes ('we only want to do what we already do') or courageous pioneers?
oil shale. (Score:3, Interesting)
Then why is Shell spening large piles of cash on oil shale projects in the US? Oil shale is not economically viable right now.
Shell is the dumbest of the big oil companies. And as such, it will be the next one to disappear.
The 12 Families and What they want. (Score:2, Interesting)
It is no secret that the energy companies (owned by approximately 12 families around the world with secret majority proxy stakes) have locked up complete control of all energy on this planet.
They are now going to control our food production.
How are they going to do that?
Not happy to topple whole banking systems on a mere whim, Shell and other puppets of these families now are turning to the worlds food supply to control and eliminate unwanted populations on this planet, control the value of currencies traded in fuel and ultimately control ANYTHING that is plugged into the wall or you put in your mouth.
The first step in this process is to use the enourmous profits from the oil industries to buy out industrialized farming so that more of it can be converted to extremely inefficient methods of producing more energy (such as using corn for methanol etc.).
After they acquire enough industrial companies, they will also acquire THE PATENTS FOR THE SEEDS.
Imagine that?
Not only do you control the food production, it becomes an IP PROBLEM JUST TO PRODUCE FUEL.
If you think the problem with GAS and OIL is bad, imagine a world with PATENTED FUEL & FOOD PRODUCTION.
What do you think the prices will be like for a simple bowl of corn oil?
This has all been planned for decades now, and it is finally comming to fruition.
Only a few more years to go and countries won't matter because a few people will control all of the currencies on the planet, the food and the energy.
-Hack