Hollow victory

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett’s been proselytizing about peak oil from the House floor to the White House for years. He told us that America was in trouble by producing so much less oil than we consume. He warned of dependence on foreign oil and urged a national commitment to a smart energy policy

In 2005, borrowing from Richard Nixon, Bartlett said “America needs a national energy policy and a program on a scale of the Manhattan Project … to prevent or mitigate the consequences of global peak oil. Doing nothing or doing too little too late will lead to a global economic and geopolitical tsunami with potentially devastating ramifications.”

Let that bit of news sink in for a bit.

Bartlett was so singularly focused, he declined to talk about transportation at last year’s transportation summit spearheaded by Commissioner Charles Jenkins and Alderman Paul Smith. Instead, he offered to talk about peak oil. His wanted to put the traffic woes into a larger perspective.

Confronted with congestion on Frederick’s roads and an increasingly irate constituency, local leaders were less than impressed with talk about the impending fuel crisis.

It’s one of government’s most debilitating aspects: Too many fires to put out, too little time to think ahead to cast eyes into the future and plan accordingly.

Frederick News-Post