Mitt Romney seeks Peak Oil expert's advice

Thanks to utah peaknik for letting me post on the Utah Peak Oil blog.

I thought this would be interesting to Utahns:

Mitt Romney meets Peak Oil Expert


Simmons responded by expressing his concern that this issue was being ignored. One of the few candidates who have approached Simmons is former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, whom Simmons personally met with to discuss the issue. Simmons also mentioned that the former mayor of New York City, Rudolph Giuliani, and New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson have also expressed concern over the issue.

Matthew Simmons grew up in Kaysville and graduated from the U before earning his MBA at Harvard.

Here we go again...

Gas prices have been steadily rising over the past month, and the blame game is back.

"Those darn oil companies are price gouging!"

"There's plenty of oil but those darn environmentalists won't let us get it out of the ground!"

"We should be able to run our cars on something else but it's not in the politicians' best interest to have alternative energy sources."

Nope.

It's simpler than that. Aggregate global oil production is climaxing and the growth in supply is being outpaced by the growth in demand.

If you think it's ugly now, just wait a few years and you'll be longing for the days when you could buy gasoline at $2.75 a gallon.

In Technology We Trust

I heard of a survey recently conducted which found that 87% of Americans believe in God or in some higher power.

It's a pretty high percentage, but I'm willing to bet that something like 95% of Americans believe that we'll find a way to run our millions of automobiles forever.

Maybe on ethanol, or hydrogen, or pond scum, or restaurant grease, or water, or processed garbage, or sawdust, or cow pies...

Or maybe we can run all of our cars on the hype over so-called alternative energy sources that the American public believes will rescue us from any fossil fuel shortages.

Here we are...

I'll admit, I've been feeling a lot of anxiety lately.

It's only April and the lowest grade of gasoline is already in the $2.60ish range. Just think how much higher it could get come Labor Day.

Maybe I'm viewing things too simplistically, but think of it this way:

As the price of oil rises (because the growth in demand is outpacing any growth in production), the price of everything rises, including transportation fuel, food, and countless petroleum-based products. As things become more expensive, people have less money to save and invest. This hurts U.S. companies who also have to pay more for supplies just like everyone else. More companies struggle to survive and more fail. This means higher unemployment, so there are fewer people who can afford to pay the higher prices for everything.

And it goes on and on...

How sad

In the historic neighborhood of one Davis County city stood a little white house. The property was about a third of an acre, and a garden took up a great deal of the southern part of the lot. Mature sycamore trees stood in front of the home.

But recently the trees were cut down and the house was razed. Now a significantly larger home is being built on the lot. I'm betting that it will be as ugly as most of the vinyl siding/pink brick/stucco monstrosities that are today's standard. And it will probably require more natural gas for heating and electricity for lighting and appliances.

(Okay, it's entirely possible that the old house was poorly insulated and had old, energy inefficient appliances and light bulbs, but all of those things could have been changed to make the house consume much less energy than the new one will)

In it's previous state, the property had an aesthetically pleasing, somewhat rural charm about it. And someone with the know-how could have practiced some self-sufficiency by growing his or her own food in the large garden.

But it's gone now, and the trashing of our landscape continues.