The oil man
Maryland’s most conservative congressman leading charge against fuel dependency
Alan Zibel, Baltimore Business Journal via MSNBC
…[Roscoe] Bartlett, who was elected to Congress in 1992, has been known in Maryland as a staunch social and fiscal conservative. But over the past year, he has been attracting national attention for his persistent advocacy of the theory that the world’s oil production is at or approaching its maximum capacity. In doing so, he is echoing concerns among liberal environmentalists and national security-minded conservatives that the nation’s reliance on foreign oil enriches hostile interests and puts the country’s security at risk.
…Bartlett doesn’t hew to common political stereotypes. He is a devout Seventh-Day Adventist who opposes high taxes, big government, gay marriage and abortion. Still, on energy issues, his profile looks more like a Sierra Club member: He and his wife, Ellen, own two Toyota Prius hybrids and a solar-powered vacation home in West Virginia.
…Bartlett, who is seeking an eighth term in Congress this year, and has no plans to retire anytime soon, has been an inventor, a research scientist, a teacher, businessman and a farmer. He has a Ph.D. in human physiology from the University of Maryland, College Park. As a senior member of the House Science Committee, he recently traveled to Antarctica to visit a U.S. scientific station.
The idea of sacrifice seems to come naturally to Bartlett, who was born in Kentucky and was raised in western Pennsylvania, where his father was a tenant farmer.
…Del. Joseph Bartlett, one of Bartlett’s 10 children, and a Republican who represents Frederick in the Maryland General Assembly, said his father has long been inclined toward conservation, turning off the light when people left the room and using a wood-burning stove in the winter.
(12 February 2006)
The peak oil information in the article should be familiar, but the biographical details on Bartlett are not well known.
Cancel that apocalypse — the oil crisis is over
Matthew Lynn, Bloomberg
Forget that order for a funny- looking electric car. Take the solar panels off the roof. Don’t worry about hoarding tinned food for the long economic slump that is about to engulf the world.
Why? Because the oil crisis we were all concerned about less than a year ago is quietly going away.
The laws of supply and demand are starting to restore market calm. They suggest that although oil isn’t about to get really cheap, talk of $100 a barrel can now be put to rest.
That will give an extra leg to economic growth and stop central bankers from fretting about inflation.
“The fundamentals are starting to quietly reassert themselves,” Simon Hayley, senior international economist at Capital Economics Ltd. in London, said in a telephone interview.
(13 February 2006)
Wishful thinking or capitalism does it again? Your choice. -BA
Commuters all at sea as governments lose the plot
Andrew Natoli, The Age (Australia)
THE history of the city could be described as one punctuated by technological innovation. The invention of gunpowder in the 14th century impacted our urban form through increased city-edge fortifications, with the building of moats and outposts establishing a more distinct separation between city and country.
But the emergence of an oil economy and the invention of the internal combustion engine blurred this distinction, creating a vast suburbia well beyond the reach of effective public transport infrastructure.
Perhaps less tangible than the threat of cannonballs or invaders at the city walls are the converging crises of peak oil prices and global warming. These events now comprise the greatest threat to our current concept of the city. Their confluence will, one way or another, bring about decisive action by governments on the urban transport problem.
Broader approaches to transport policy and planning are needed. The critical question is: what will be the new paradigm within which planners will create transport and urban design visions for our cities, and will it be one that consists of car tunnels, minimum car-parking standards and new, public transport-less suburbs? Or will it be one which acknowledges the reality of our environmental future?
(13 February 2006)
Long opinion piece.
The Iran crisis & global peak oil
Charles Whalen, EV World
…But my biggest worry in the meantime, and specifically this year, is that I think there’s a better than even chance that the US and/or Israel is/are going to launch an aerial bombing campaign with air strikes and cruise missiles on Iran’s nuclear facilities sometime this year. If (or rather *when*) that happens, we’re going to see oil at over $300 and gasoline over $10 at the pump.
…The top corporate leadership in this country is well aware of the perils of this current standoff and nuclear brinkmanship with Iran and can see this entire scenario unfolding and escalating out of control exactly as I have described above, which would be in no one’s interest as the entire world would suffer from a longtime — and possibly permanent and terminal (given the imminence of peak oil, which this would accelerate by a few years) — worldwide depression of unprecedented magnitude with tens of millions of people losing their jobs, corporations going bankrupt, entire economies failing, etc. So top corporate leaders are privately urging the White House to tone down the rhetoric and go slow on all of this so as not to overturn the global economic apple cart.
(12 February 2006)
Very pessimistic piece.
