I'd like to alert you to the writings of Geonomist GRMorton on why he believes that the Peak Oil has likely passed. "We have now passed the most significant time in human history. For the past million years, every day in the future humanity had more energy than they had yesterday. But from here on out, we will have less energy every day in the future.

This will have implications for crop yields (1% of the world's energy supply goes to making fertilizer; N. Korea is starving to death because they can't get fertilizer), interest in your bank account (how can banks make money when every day in the future the businesses they loan money to have less energy with which to ship their products to market?), the structure of American and European cities, the ability to travel the world, the ability to ship food to distant places."

I believe him. I think it is a travesty that we only seem to care about short term solutions that keep the oil/gas prices lower temporarily. What we need to do in the US is phase in over the coming years a tax on oil/gas at EU-levels, coupled with income transfers to offset the impact and to make the tax politically feasible. This will delay the worse impact of the Peak Oil problem and give us more time to develop, in cooperation with the rest of the world, good long-term alternatives. It will also give us an important policy lever to use against oil-producing countries with human rights problems and may be a peaceful way to prevent more oil-motivated wars.

This needs to become a serious issue in the coming elections.

dlw