The growing imperative of energy independence
PEAK OIL
America 'unnecessarily at risk' by looming fall-off in petroleum
http://www.pennlive.com/editorials/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1175555418198000.xml&coll=1
Hat tip: Lisa Lyons Wright, Press Secretary for Representative Roscoe Bartlett
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Excerpts:
The nation has been put "unnecessarily at risk," according to the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office.
The reason: failure of federal agencies to have a "coordinated or well-defined strategy either to reduce uncertainty about the timing of a peak [in oil production] or to mitigate its consequences."
Peak oil is the point at which the production of "conventional" oil reaches the highest level it will ever achieve. After that, it will decline at a fairly rapid rate.
...peak oil poses enormous consequences for our way of life, which is heavily dependent on petroleum to move people and goods.
There is little public awareness of the phenomenon of peak oil and the gravity of its consequences... The endless calls by politicians for "energy independence" are perhaps the most striking example of how little this issue is understood by the people in charge.
...Everyone in the industry knows that the
... For a variety of reasons, alternative fuels may not be sufficiently available to make up for any drop in petroleum.
...That's why the push for conservation and pumped up investment in alternative energy is so urgent.
U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., one of the few individuals in Congress who has been sounding the alarm on peak oil, called the GAO report "a clarion call for leadership at the highest level of our country to avert an energy crisis unlike any the world has ever before experienced and one that we know could happen at any time."
But is anyone listening?
Read the entire editorial here.
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