At 01:19 PM 4/5/2007, you wrote:

But what's this "peak oil" crowd everybody keeps talking about? Seems like the oil companies never stop hitting a new gusher.

All the new gushers (some really aren't that new) pale in comparison in volume to the fields they used to discover in the 1960s. It's all hype. The big Gulf of Mexico find awhile back, if completed pumped, would fuel the world for maybe a month....

Oil companies want to believe they don't live in a finite world, but they do.

And petroleum is by NO MEANS the only resource in decline. But it's the one that fuels most of the world's societies right now.

Think of it as what it is - 300,000,000 years of solar energy stored up that we've used about half of in 150 years.

It's the most dense energy (that's energy return on energy investment) gift we may ever know.

Even if there were unlimited land and the degradation of the soils weren't issues (which they are), with the really low EROEI of biofuels, something like 80% of the population would need to involved in the business of producing those fuels. Wouldn't leave much room for the other ideas of "progress" you mentioned.

I'm gonna get a "you can't post to this list" from the owner of the transpo group. If anyone can add me, just so I can be part of this discussion, that'd be nice. Energy and transpo are inextricable.

I just wrote and asked to be added for the duration, too.