Peak Oil
I’m hoping that readers of my upcoming book on renewables will enjoy my conversation with Matt Simmons, arguably the loudest voice on the issue of peak oil. And, although the subject remains controversial, it’s probably a good deal less so today that it was last week, now that two extremely senior automotive industry executives have come out with statements that support it.
In particular, note the recent comments of GM’s Bob Lutz, global climate change skeptic, who is nonetheless a strong proponent of the Volt and the electrification of the automobile. Lutz argues that continued dependence on oil as demand inevitably increases will simply exacerbate boom and bust economic cycles. He notes that, in 20 years the China auto market will equal the rest of the world combined and adds, “At that point we have to have alternative drive systems, which to me have to be electric.”
And check out the remarks of Jim Lentz, President and COO of Toyota Motor Sales. He apparently stunned his interviewer during a recent Commonwealth Club event, in which he stated unequivocally that Toyota believes that peak oil will occur sometime in the later half of this decade.
Peak oil – just one of the many reasons for the rapid migration to renewable energy.
From what I hear peak oil is for real, and even if it was not, we will be better off with a system that employs electric cars, Why? Lots of reasons such as using Solar at home to charge them, elimination of huge oil shipping across the Oceans and possible spills, elimination of funding from oil revenues to possible bad guys, cutting pollution in the concentrated cities, did you know pollution from cars hangs at 12 feet or down mostly, right were you can breath it, electric cars would help cut Asthma and other respitory ailments. We will be better off without oil, we just need mass production of the green technologies, so we can afford them.
The USA hit Peak OIL in 1970, the world hit it in 2004 but it won’t be seen or proven in the world for another year or two since the delay is a year or two.
In the US we now import 45% of the OIL burned each day at a cost of $1 Billion a day. Imagine how many jobs that could provide if we used other technolgy like electric vehicles for transportation and algae for fertilizer and incenticide each day!
It appears that the analysts in the automotive industry have determined at last that they’ll be among the very first to get thrown under the proverbial economic bus when the reality hits that all the cheap oil is gone. They’ve therefore decided that it’s time to break ranks with their long-term allies in the fossil energy industry and begin to move into the inevitable future.
I’m always disgusted whenever I notice an oil truck or an oil refinery with our national flag emblazoned prominently for all to see. That visual claim to patriotism is as coldly calculated a falsehood as any I’ve yet seen.
The oil industry has long been cynically bribing our pocketed sock-puppet leadership to keep us from fully developing domestic renewables, and working instead to keep us all borrowing billions from China to pay for oil from dictators and puppet regimes in the Middle East – all so that we can keep merrily fouling our air, water and land with the toxic residue from all the dominant infrastructures and product streams the slippery bastards helped implement.
Meanwhile, China is already rapidly developing domestic renewables for the world market, and will shortly leave our sorry oil-bribed asses in the economic dust.
How to we stop the madness? Stop the bribery.
I neglected to claim the above “Anonymous” comment as my own before posting it.