The Peak Oil Crisis: Parsing Obama’s Remarks

…The contrasts between the old and new administrations are striking. The environmental credentials of the President-elect’s selections are so strong that the League of Conservation Voters immediately dubbed them “the green dream team.” In introducing his appointees, President-elect Obama outlined his views on the environment and energy and in effect charged his team with their energy and environmental goals for the next four years.

In his first paragraph of his remarks, the President-elect got right to his key point; “the future of our economy and national security is inextricably linked to one challenge: energy.” He then said “All of us know the problems rooted in our addiction to foreign oil – it constrains our economy, shifts wealth to hostile regimes, and leaves us dependent on unstable regions. These urgent dangers are eclipsed only by the long-term threat of climate change, which – unless we act – will lead to drought and famine abroad, devastating weather patterns and terrible storms on our shores, and the disappearance of our coastline at home.”


These are words that the peak oil and environmental communities have been waiting for many years to hear. Not only did the President-elect finger the vast quantities of imported oil that keeps American running, he said it is urgent we do something. The juxtaposition of need to reduce imported energy with the longer term, but potentially more serious, threat of climate change shows that the new administration understands both the relative urgency and long-term importance of these key issues.

For now, it is asking too much for the next President to declare that peak oil has arrived and that switching to alternative forms of energy is no longer just a nice thing to do, but is vital if the nation, along with the rest of the world, does not want to regress into the 19th century. Instead, Mr. Obama used a more circuitous formulation; “yet our dependence on foreign oil has only grown, even as the world’s resources are disappearing.” Getting the words “oil” and “disappearing resources” into the same line is a perfectly acceptable way to acknowledge peak oil — at least for now.

Falls Church News-Press