To stay on top, we need energy plan

Economy runs on oil

Date published: 9/19/2008

IF YOU'VE noticed your standard of living slipping lately, that's because it's sliding on imported oil. Most nations, especially the U.S., the Europeans, Japan, China, and India--the largest consumers of oil--depend on steady streams of reasonably priced foreign oil to maintain their economies.

As developing nations' populations rise, along with their societies' aspirations, upward spiraling demand for oil is in the cards. OPEC imposed production limits, and rapacious oil speculators can also be expected to maintain inflationary pressure on the world's agriculture and industries. Resulting price increases will, as now, hit every wallet.

The recent drop in the cost of oil reflects widespread efforts to reduce gasoline use, combined with a slowdown in the world's major economies. In the long run, we shouldn't expect this to last.

Economic recovery in the United States and around the world has been forecast sometime in the next eighteen months. Despite renewed emphasis on conservation, inexorable population pressure will keep stoking the need for more oil. Its price--and the cost of just about everything else--will be forced higher.

If you can't hope to curb long-term demand, then you naturally try to boost supply. The result is a rising clamor for increased oil production, biofuels, drilling for new oil, developing shale-oil and tar sands and building more refineries. Additional nuclear power plants could help, but no one wants to live near one, and safe radioactive waste disposal is still problematic.

To reduce global warming, as well as oil dependence, there are also growing calls for expanded use of natural gas and wind, wave and solar power. World energy needs are snowballing so fast, however, that these are really stop-gap measures unable to replace fossil fuels.

We're looking at a future in which global warming appears destined to soar without extraordinary industrial changes that now seem unobtainable. China alone is projected to build one new, coal-fired power plant every week for the foreseeable future. The world's need for energy will be met from whatever source is handiest, clean or dirty.

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Date published: 9/19/2008