237 comments on An Open Letter to Our Next President about Energy Policy
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
237 comments on An Open Letter to Our Next President about Energy Policy
Comments can no longer be added to this story.
| Show without comments | PDF version
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Support The Oil Drum
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Campfire
TOD:Europe
- Peak Gold, Easier to Model than Peak Oil? - Part I
- Carbon Capture and Storage
- Oilwatch Monthly November 2009
TOD:Canada
- In this house, we obey the laws of thermodynamics!
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
TOD:Australia/NZ
- International Energy Agency calls 'Peak' on OECD Oil Demand
- Australian Senate: Peak Oil motion defeated 31:6
- The Bullroarer - Friday 20th November 2009
TOD:Net Energy
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- Early Warning
- The Energy Blog
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- Health After Oil
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Calculated Risk
- The Crash Course
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
Peak Oil Primers
Beware email scams!
Beware email scams claiming to be from this site. We do not have any job openings. If anyone contacts you about a job at The Oil Drum, do not reply to them, and definitely do not give them any personal information or send them money. Read more here.
“We have only two modes—complacency and panic.”
—James R. Schlesinger, the first energy secretary, in 1977, on the country's approach to energy
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Nate Hagens, Gail the Actuary, Prof. Goose
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Heading Out, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Sam Foucher, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Campfire: Glenn, Jason Bradford
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Emeritus: Stuart Staniford
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.










GAIA Host Collective
I think the truth is somewhere inbetween. They understand somewhat, but other voices are telling them: nothing to worry about BAU. A quote (I can't remember whose -so my apologies in advance) that it appropriate is:
"Don't expect a man to understand something on which his job requires that he doesn't". And the political application process is such that they can't afford to understand PO.
A small suggestion on bullet (2): It would be better, not to compute the expected revenues from the gas tax and set this amount into law. Much better would be to earmark the revenues to the people. That way the amount adjusts with the revenue, and corrective political action is not required when assumptions are proven wrong. It is all too easy to game a revenue neutral proposal such as your, by say overestimating revenue -and turning it into a tax cut.
Agreed. I don't think there's some big conspiracy where they all know about peak oil, but won't talk about it in public. OTOH, at least some politicians clearly do understand the problem. Republican Roscoe Barlett, for example. He may give his peak oil speeches to the cleaning staff, but they're on the record. Democrat Bill Clinton has given talks about peak oil, and Al Gore has mentioned it, too.
I think they know about it. Some of them, anyway. After all, most of them are old enough to remember the '70s energy crises. But they think we'll innovate our way out of it, as we always have in the past.
Like Tom Whipple said...politicians have so much on their plates already. Unless you can give them a solid and imminent date ("the gas stations will go dry July 3, 2008"), it won't be a priority for them.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton Sinclair