Well, he – and you – shouldn't be! Jeff Koopersmith thinks Iran may be just the beginning.
June 10, 2008 – Geneva (apj.us) – It is not often that the Bush crew lets slip enough information for anyone to put two and two together, but it dawned on me the other night in London that America might be in for an extended war – along with her NATO allies – over this “oil business.”
Here are a few facts that got me thinking:
- There is no way we can replace fossil fuels as our main energy source in time to stop climatic devastation. One need only look at pictures of the arctic circle ten years ago and today to see the shrinking window for action.
- It is doubtful that the industrialized world can afford to pay much more for oil – or even pay what it is costing today – and there is no end in sight to the increases spurred not only by demand but by futures trading among people without conscience.
- The Bush Administration is hell-bent on attacking Iran.
In my hotel, I was watching the preeminent interview show on television worldwide, “Hardtalk,” whose host, Steven Sackur, makes Bill O’Reilly look like a prissy prom queen. Sackur doesn’t fool around – and unlike O’Reilly, he has a razor sharp mind, asks well-thought-out and very tough questions, and doesn’t insult people just to insult them.
Sackur’s guest was Prof. Wallace Broecker, the world’s foremost expert on climate change.
The gist of the interview is that we are about 50 years or more away from replacing petroleum-based energy with anything – let alone the usual culprits – ethanol, hydrogen, or rank used cooking oil from Burger King.
Broecker, a extraordinary geo-chemist, cannot see a clear way to avoid the necessity for the world to continue using oil for the next five, maybe six decades. Neither can most experts, although my friends cloaked in green as I am do not believe this problem is not solvable.
It is – but over a long, long time – so long that many of our grandchildren will be in their sixties by the time we either “make the switch” from fossil fuels or learn to live with them.
I spent much of career in Washington working on ethanol legislation, and litigating against the then-Secretary of the Treasury regarding Bob Dole’s chicanery in trying to protect his best friend Dwayne Andreas (a political genius).
I was successful, and beat them in court, but I never believed that ethanol could or would replace petroleum.
I know the problems that face alcohol fuels: they are far greater than huge, and far beyond the use of food for fuel highlighted today.
That aside, Prof. Broecker, the grandfather of climate science, and Mr. Sackur had me thinking – thinking hard.
Dr. Broecker is actually almost panicky about our unbridled production of CO2. If we have no way to give up oil, and we have no way to drill for it, in time, what are we going to do?
By “we” I mean the entire industrialized world, not just the United States.
We now have 7 billion people on earth – and our food supply today can only last one month.
Do we need to know more?
Broecker believes that we must turn off the oil spigot soon to stop the continuous spew of CO2 into the atmosphere. Yet he also knows that this might be close to impossible. I think “there is no way in hell that we can do that” says Broecker.
He does think we can slow down and use as little as possible, but this will not solve the problem and we will be burning fossil fuel “for the next couple of hundred years.”
Thus, he believes that we have to capture the CO2 and bury it. He believes that we have to continue using fossil fuels – but stop the harm caused by this.
Simple?
No.