Saturday, June 16, 2007

The Impending Intrusion of Reality


Much to my amazement "Peak Oil" is now being seriously described in the MSM notably Business Week. In this article Eugene Linden describes what he calls a "mortal threat to the U.S. economy:

" Peak oil refers to the point at which world oil production plateaus before beginning to decline as depletion of the world's remaining reserves offsets ever-increased drilling. Some experts argue that we're already there, and that we won't exceed by much the daily production high of 84.5 million barrels first reached in 2005. If so, global production will bump along near these levels for years before beginning an inexorable decline.

What would that mean? Alternatives are still a decade away from meeting incremental demand for oil. With nothing to fill the gap, global economic growth would slow, stop, and then reverse; international tensions would soar as nations seek access to diminishing supplies, enriching autocratic rulers in unstable oil states; and, unless other sources of energy could be ramped up with extreme haste, the world could plunge into a new Dark Age. Even as faltering economies burned less oil, carbon loading of the atmosphere might accelerate as countries turn to vastly dirtier coal."

Did you hear any of the presidential candidates discuss any of this during the media circus debates for either party? Did Wolff Blitzer touch on this? Cold, dark, and immobile is where we are likely to find ourselves sooner than we think.

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