Friday, March 30, 2007

CNBC Acknowledges Peak Oil is a Huge Problem

I believe and hope that this GOA report will bring some credibility to the peak oil problem so that more people will stand up and take notice and act. I've been busy personally but I'm very sure the GOA report on peak oil and excerpts of it are floating around the blogworld like crazy by now. I particularly liked this article from CNBC:

As crude oil prices surge on rising political tensions with Iran, a new government report released Thursday said that the U.S. is unprepared to face an oil supply crisis and urged U.S. policymakers to develop a strategy in order to reduce potential risks related to an oil shock.

The report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office concluded that the U.S. has no plans in place to address "peak oil," the future point in history of maximum oil production, which would be followed by irreversible declines in oil fields around the world.

"While the consequences of a peak would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be particularly vulnerable," the GAO report said.

An expert told CNBC on Thursday that peak oil is the "the single biggest issue to threaten sustainable society" in the United States.


The rest of the story is here

2 comments:

PeakEngineer said...

While the GAO report brings many concerns of Peak Oil to the forefront, it is exasperatingly vague in analyzing the reports it references. To give credence to studies that project a peak after 2100 severely diminished the credibility of the GAO authors. I suspect that their lack of emphasis on urgency is the reason why few media outlets have run with the story.
-PeakEngineer
peakoildesign.com

peaknik said...

Hello PeakEngineer! I suspect you're correct in your observations. I am just hoping it will bring some attention but it will probably become the attention that leads to a less than expected urgency like you've said.
It's just hard to imagine that after hearing about it being discussed on Bloomberg by Matt Simmons, also on CNBC, and then through this report that it wouldn't gain some legs.