Harbingers unheeded

The most efficient short-term prescription for America’s dependence on foreign oil is breathtaking both in its simplicity and in the odds against its being adopted: Replace the diesel-guzzling large trucks that carry 70 percent of domestic freight with expanded rail and barge service.

Yet for all the political and economic uproar the demise of long-haul trucking would generate, such stringent conservation of transportation fuel would only postpone a potentially catastrophic oil shortage in the U.S. by three decades, says Matthew Simmons, an investment banker who specializes in the energy industry.
Even so, that time could be precious, he says, if it is used to invest tens of trillions of dollars in the development of an energy alternative to fossil fuels that can be available by the time the world runs out of them.

Truckers can rest easy. No movement seems yet to have risen up against them. But Mr. Simmons has inspired a bipartisan band of congressmen, led by Western Maryland Republican Roscoe G. Bartlett and New Mexico Democrat Tom Udall, who are trying to convince their colleagues that intensive research in energy alternatives is overdue.

Baltimore Sun