Sustainable Triad: Peak oil: our gift to our children

Sustainable Triad: Peak oil: our gift to our children:
by Peter Kauber -- 9/16/2005
"I have been studying the "peak oil" controversy for approximately a year. As I progressed through the published work of authors whose credentials were beyond reproach, I became increasingly uneasy about our energy future. But until now, I continued to view peak oil as a controversy, not an inevitability. I have come to see that I can no longer "wait for things to play out."

The tipping point for me was a presentation made at Duke University on Tuesday (9/13/05) by Dr. Robert Hirsch, a scientist who has served at very high levels in multiple energy fields--oil and gas, nuclear, renewables. There was no hesitation on Dr. Hirsch's part regarding what we face. Unless we're extremely lucky, and peak oil is 20 or more years down the pike, we are going to experience a crash. What Dr. Hirsch had discovered, in the course of completing a research contract for the Department of Energy, is that there are no feasible approaches to avoiding huge liquid fuel shortfalls unless a mitigation strategy is undertaken, as a crash program, at least 20 years prior to the oil production peak. And most reputable predictors are saying that the peak will come well before 20 years from now."