Our transportion fuel problem is not a "political problem" it is a defining moment in our history.
As someone who has actively traded energy stocks for a number of years and has monitored S & D data, reserve estimates, and kept current on information regarding associated technology advances I think I can bring a little reality to the discussion of energy which has blossomed on KOS lately.
First, lets try to accurately define the problem. Absent considerations of global warming, we don't have an "energy crisis", we have a "transportation fuel crisis". America has huge quantities of coal and natural gas which, along with nuclear energy can address our electrical needs far into the future. Electricity is the highest order of energy available and has steadily increased it's percentage of the power used for production and GDP over the last 50 years. This trend will, no doubt, continue.
Narrowly defining the problem helps tighten the focus on our possibilities and limitations. The limitations, as I see it, are as follows:
Oil production is likely plateauing but it is certainly becoming more expensive to find and recover.
There is, in spite of everyone's wish that it were so, no technological answer to this problem in the short or medium term and even on a long term basis technology will only be part of the answer. Neither electric or fuel cell vehicles are anywhere near advanced enough to realistically serve as anything more than a small part of our vehicle fleet for many years to come.
Economically we cannot continue to import such large quantities of transportation fuels from our trading partners without wrecking the dollar and our economy.
Given those limitations what are our possibilities:
Conservation will be very important. We will have to change our lifestyles more than most of us realize. Certainly we will become less mobile in the future. Widespread air travel by the middle class will likely be a thing of the past within a couple of years. Hybrid cars will become the mainstay of our fleet for a number of years to come.
T Boone Pickens ideas are certainly going to be implemented, whether any of us like it or not. Reducing our use of imported oil is so important economically, politically and strategically, we simply have no choice but to use natural gas as much as we can to reduce this drag on our economy going forward.
Building more nuclear plants and increased drilling of oil are also clearly going to be needed.
To summarize, we simply don't have the resources to be choosy about which solutions we implement and which we do not, we will need to use them all. All sources of fuel, along with conservation, will be needed in order to prevent severe economic and social dislocation in our country. These changes could occur relatively suddenly (the next two years) or, with luck we will be given the opportunity to face them more slowly (ten years), but they are coming. We are are on the cusp of what could be the biggest challenge our society has ever faced and we will need to be united in order to have any chance of successfully facing it.