Peak Oil will change our lives

Last week, I attended a conference on Peak Oil in Washington, D.C. With about 250 others, I heard that the world is probably reaching the top of petroleum production right now. This would mean a future of ever declining supplies and rising prices. It was scary. But there was also a strong message of hope.

Most speakers agreed that Peak Oil could be the biggest problem America faces today – bigger than terrorism, health-care reform or immigration. And because it could disrupt our peace and prosperity in ways most of us had never imagined, Peak Oil could even be bigger than global warming in the short term. And it will affect these other issues, too.

Yet, if it’s such a big problem, why don’t we hear about much about Peak Oil in the media? I’ll come back to this. But before that, I’d like to share three big things I learned about Peak Oil.

First, its absence from the 11 o’clock news doesn’t mean Peak Oil isn’t real.

Dozens of leading petroleum geologists as well others in the oil industry and in government have agreed that we are nearing the twilight of cheap oil. Chevron has launched a campaign to inform the public that oil is depleting. The U.S. Army is planning for permanent oil shortages. Even the U.S. Department of Energy put out a 91-page report on the subject in February 2005.

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