Coastal Sense offers oil reality check

This post was written by John Bennett

December 10, 2007

On his Coastal Sense blog, Clint Murphy links to a front page story from yesterday’s New York Times that reports nations that are currently exporting oil will soon be importing it. Among them is Mexico, the No. 2 exporter of oil to the United States.

“It is a very serious threat that a lot of major exporters that we count on today for international oil supply are no longer going to be net exporters any more in 5 to 10 years,” said Amy Myers Jaffe, an oil analyst at Rice University.

Murphy offers five “quick” thoughts on the situation, all of which deserve consideration. I was particularly struck, though, by the conclusion of his post:

“Change is on the horizon, it is up to us to decide if we are going to act now or wait and react later.”

Or as Jim Kunstler would say, we can begin “making other arrangements,” or have those arrangements made for us on terms that will likely be much less desirable.

It’s popular to make fun of folks who are passionate about transportational bicycling, mass transit and other causes, especially when gasoline prices retreat below $3 a gallon. However, I suggest that people are now voluntarily reducing their petroleum consumption are, at least in a very small way, attempting to take control the situation. They are, as Murphy suggests, acting instead of reacting. Sometimes teased for being idealists, I think they are can be more accurately described as realists.

Posted in Conservation, Energy, Transportation