Bold leadership needed to avert environmental disaster

… Meanwhile, Matthew Simmons, chairman of Simmons & Co. International in Houston, a close friend of President Bush and a towering figure in the world of petroleum exploration and development, said that the world has now reached peak oil. Modern industrial civilization has been built upon cheap, abundant, highly concentrated liquid petroleum. Once on the downhill slope of the peak oil bell curve, world petroleum production can be expected to decline 2 percent to 3 percent annually.

Try pushing your car the distance you can drive on one gallon of gasoline. Nothing is going to fully compensate for the coming energy shortfalls. Not hydrogen. Not biofuels. Not “technology.”


The human family should have begun preparing for peak oil 20 years ago. While our “leaders” talk about slightly increasing automobile fuel efficiency and using different light bulbs, we desperately need a dramatic, sweeping plan to use the remaining petroleum resources to rebuild the world’s transportation infrastructure.

The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)