Posts Tagged by oil addiction
National Security, Environmental Damage, Lung Disease, and Peak Oil
| January 26, 2012 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
Readers may be interested in the conversation Glenn Doty and I are having on electric vehicles, as comments to my piece: Lateral Power, Distributed Generation, and the Third Industrial Revolution. Here’s another question for Glenn (and anyone else who would like to join in) on the subject.
Glenn: You make some terrific points here, and you have my promise that I’ll try to continue to merit your respect.
Going back to this deal about gasoline, aren’t you at all concerned about the fact that we’re apparently running out of it? Everyone I can find (except the spokespeople for the American Petroleum Institute) seem to concur. As Matt Simmons told me shortly before he passed away, “National security, environmental damage, and lung disease are all reasons that we SHOULD do something about our oil addiction. Peak oil, on the other hand, is the reason that we MUST.”
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The Validity of Electric Transportation
| December 1, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
I’d like to call readers’ attention to this discussion of the validity of electric transportation. In fact, the discussion began earlier in this piece on bashing electric vehicles. There are a lot of interesting ideas here that challenge the way the EV community generally sees the issue.
I would like to add one more variable into the equation: distributed generation. I bring this up partially because I know people who spec’d the solar arrays they put on their roofs specifically to charge their EVs, and partially because distributed solar (not to mention distributed wind/geo/hydro), has a real shot to change the energy paradigm in the not-too-distant future. Read More
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The Movie “Fuel” — Terrific Flick on the Oil Industry
| October 23, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Fossil Fuels |
To my shame, it was just now that I watched the movie “Fuel”; here’s a link to the film on YouTube.
I only wish I had the talent to make media so wonderfully accessible, so beautifully immediate in its impact.
Are there inaccuracies and oversimplifications? A few, regrettably. But they got almost all of it right – especially the core message: at the root of our oil addiction are the most powerful people on Earth, who have essentially bought the U.S. government in their quest to ensure their cruel monopoly remains in place.
My hat’s off to Josh Tickell and his team.
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2GreenEnergy Report – Foreign Oil and National Security
| February 4, 2011 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
Here’s another episode of the 2GreenEnergy Video Report. Here, host George Alger interviews me on the implications of the US addiction to foreign oil on our national security.
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James Woolsey: "End Oil Addiction Now"
| April 15, 2010 | Posted by Kathy-Heshelow under Fossil Fuels |
James Woolsey wrote an interesting opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal this morning. Mr. Woolsey is a former director of the CIA, has served in four administrations, is a foreign policy expert and Rhodes Scholar. He is also dedicated to renewable energy and energy security – in short, moving away from dependence on fossil fuels. Woolsey is a venture partner with VantagePoint, chairs the Strategic Advisory Group of Paladin Capital Group and is Counsel at Goodwin Proctor specializing in alternative energy and security. There are numerous posts on this blog on Woolsey – so readers have no shortage of material on the man.
In the opinion piece, “How to End America’s Addition to Oil,” Woolsey plants the seed of urgency by reminding us that oil is now solidly above $80 per barrel, moving consistently higher over the last five quarters. “If oil reaches $125 a barrel again…then approximately half the wealth in the world…will be controlled by OPEC nations,” he says. He has been sounding the alarm for years, as have others, about the issues of oil dependence.
Read More
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Bermuda — Going Green
| January 10, 2010 | Posted by Craig Shields under Electric Vehicles |
A few months ago I wrote a post about my consulting company’s relationship with the island nation of Bermuda, in which I mentioned how proud I am to be a part of an entire country’s movement away from fossil fuels. A quick update:
This week, I’m on my way to Bermuda for a series of meetings with governmental agencies and private sector sponsors, each of which will be integral to making this whole thing happen. And as I just happened to see this morning, this will be occuring in the context of a great number of governmental stimuli affecting this region of the world.
It seems that virtually no one approves of the exact tack the Obama Administration is taking. Progressives are disappointed with his pandering to entrenched interests and failing to take a hard line on things like healthcare reform, the war(s), and regulation of the big banks and Wall Street; conservatives, true to form, reject him as a socialist. But let me tell you this: in terms of confronting the environmental nightmares that lie ahead of us if nothing is done to wean us from our oil addiction, far more has happened in the last few months than happened in the previous three decades.
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Interview with James Woolsey
| December 10, 2009 | Posted by Craig Shields under Renewables - Politics |
The trajectory for completing my book on renewables just received a major shot in the arm this morning as James Woolsey, one of the most vocal and credible proponents of alternative energy, agreed to an interview for my chapter on oil independence and national security. Mr. Woolsey’s role as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 1993 to 1995 was one of his four Presidential appointments across two Republican and two Democratic administrations. In my mind, he is the best-qualified person on the planet to speak to these issues.
Over the past few years, I’ve availed myself of a great deal of Mr. Woolsey’s writing and speaking, so I can anticipate what I think he’ll probably say on these issues – the manifold threats to US interests that oil addiction represents: the funding of enemy states, possible terrorists strikes, embargoes, and other potential disruptions in supply, the economic duress created by our borrowing $2 billion per day, etc. I also expect to hear about the remedies – many of which I’ve tried to cover in this blog over the past many months: alternative fueled vehicles (especially electric transportation) and renewable energy.
The current “debate” about global warming underscores the importance of having people like James Woolsey present in our world – people who cut through the political gamesmanship that is so common in public discourse, dispense with opinion and rhetoric, and focus on hard-hitting, well-researched facts. I eagerly anticipate the conversation.
