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Our "black Monday" for oil
The record high price of crude that was hit this month reflects the new reality of global energy consumption -- and may presage dark times for America.
By Michael T. Klare [2008-03-17]

  • This should be easy

    If, as stated in the article, oil accounts for 40% of American energy use, and we import 2/3 of the oil we use, we need only reduce our energy use by 25% in order to be unaffected by the international oil "scarcity" to come. Considering the fact that, in order to avoid the most severe catastrophe in human history (that would be climate change), we need to reduce our energy use by 80-90% over the next fifteen to twenty years, this should be a good warm-up.

    As someone already wrote, if we cannot survive peak oil, we don't deserve to. However, we are going to need some sort of social safety net to be re-established or we will find poor people starved to death in their homes (or cardboard shanties) like they do in Japan. We can do better than that, but whether we do or not will depend on our ability to shed the years of fears of the Bushes.

    -- human power
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    Sunday, March 16, 2008 07:23 PM
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