IF YOU'VE noticed
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
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 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.
Thomas Fingar, a top U.S. intelligence analyst, argues that intensifying competition for essential resources--oil, water, and food--will produce heightened security risks for our country. He expects the United States to gradually lose pre-eminence as other economies catch up. U.S. international leadership won't come automatically,
An innovative energy policy could help assure America a continuing leadership position. But our current situation obviously can't serve any nation as an example of energy independence initiative.
What's desperately needed is electrical power that's inexhaustible, relatively cheap, non-polluting and able to run electric vehicles of the future. Controlled hydrogen fusion may be an answer, but making it--or any other untried solution--commercially feasible will take an enormous commitment of funds and human resources.
Realizing this, some have proposed a new American Manhattan Project to develop a fresh energy source that will eliminate our country's addiction to imported oil and protect national security. But there's another, better model we can adopt.
CERN, the European nuclear research organization, has just activated its visionary experiment to discover the fundamental structure
If the U.S. issued a call to the world's nations to join us in a similar, groundbreaking search to find and develop a creative energy solution, it would spread the staggering cost (probably in the hundreds of billions), speed up the process, and increase the likelihood of a scientific and engineering breakthrough. Every country dependent on imported oil would be drawn to participate by the enormous benefits.
Unlimited, clean electrical power would eliminate a root cause of international conflict, strengthen partner nations' economies and security, and drastically reduce global warming. And this farsighted enterprise would also demonstrate that the United States hasn't lost its touch for world leadership.
Paul Metzger, formerly on the staff of the Federal Reserve Board, is president of the Fredericksburg-area AARP. His column will appear on the first and third Fridays of every month. You can reach him at pmmva7@ gmail.com.