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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ron who wrote (4515)	8/2/2006 1:39:06 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24246

Plans begin in Maryland for looming peak oil crisis By James Fisher Staff Writer SALISBURY -- Gas prices around $3 a gallon are making drivers grouchy. If prices rose to $4 a gallon, drivers would probably howl, maybe tossing out an incumbent politician or two in their anger. Now imagine the implications of $10 or $20 gallons of gas ... in the next 10 years. That scenario -- seemingly unlikely -- is being seriously mulled by people who think the world's natural oil supply is about to become harder than ever to convert into gasoline, oil and other petrochemicals on which the world economy depends. Devotees of this theory, called "peak oil," are turning to local governments and community groups to start preparing for a world in which gasoline costs are triple or quadruple what they are now. A small group of Lower Shore residents are interested in having Salisbury's or Wicomico County's governing councils take up the issue in symbolic resolutions, pointing toward Bloomington, Ind., as an example, where the Town Council passed a resolution this month holding that "the city of Bloomington must prepare for the inevitability of oil peak" and "supports the adoption of a global depletion protocol that will reduce petroleum use, conserving what remains." The movement also has a booster in Maryland Congressman Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Republican from the 6th Congressional District, who spent about an hour this February discussing the problems a dwindling world oil supply will impose on American consumers and the world from the floor of Congress. He described a time "when the age of oil is finished and there is no more oil that can be gotten without paying more for the oil than you get out of it. ... What will life be like then?" He was joined by another Republican Maryland congressman, the Eastern Shore's Wayne Gilchrest, and several colleagues in establishing a peak oil caucus. It's heady stuff for chemical engineers, much less the average American, but Wicomico County retiree Shelton Lankford says he's trying to wrap his head around the problem and prod people into preparing for a post-oil world. "If the experts I listen to can be believed, it's one of the biggest calamities to hit the human race," Lankford said Wednesday in an interview at his home. On a wall behind him, a tautly designed poster shows a graph of world oil production, ramping up to a peak at around 2007 and then sliding back down. "It's going to be a bumpy ride down this slope," Lankford said. "We have built our suburban lifestyle around cheap oil, and at some point our lifestyle doesn't work anymore." He expects that, when the effects of dwindling oil production really hit home, people will drive much less and have much less driven to them, instead relying on nearby people and businesses to produce much of what they consume. For that reason, Lankford says, small family farms and energy production facilities, like the biodiesel plant just built in Worcester County, will be needed. Dipping a toe into the school of thought about peak oil feels a lot like learning about the Y2K predictions of the late 1990s, or, ironically, reading the scientifically dubious literature about creationism. Those who believe in it tend to cite the same small but prolific stable of experts and use the same vocabulary, talking about ultimate recovery, crash programs and Hubbert & Gauss models. In addition, some peak oil theorists have followed the thinking into corners that lay far from mainstream American politics. Mike Ruppert, a peak oil theorist whom Lankford approvingly cites, devotes considerable space on his Web site to explaining a theory that holds Vice President Dick Cheney and the U.S. Secret Service responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, because they would give the U.S. a pretext to use military force to solve peak oil problems. That theory is directly at odds with the findings of the official Sept. 11 Commission, which reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed hundreds of government officials in preparing a Sept. 11 narrative that directly places blame for the attacks on Islamic terrorists and documents the U.S. government's sincere but unsuccessful effort to prevent such an attack. "It's not necessary to believe that to study peak oil," Lankford said of Ruppert's theory, although he said he personally finds much of the argument compelling. In any case, Lankford said, he and some interested Salisbury University professors hope to start a local peak oil discussion group -- and perhaps convince local cities or counties to pass resolutions supporting the effort. "I'd like for them to realize the problem and then look for solutions locally," Lankford said. "I want more minds on the problem than mine." jfisher@dmg.gannett.com Originally published July 30, 2006 delmarvanow.com