<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2900.2873" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>The article below was in the Washington Post
on Sunday. A major US daily, though not so 'establishment' as the NYT. But it's
a step forward. Has any Australian newspaper been as forthright?</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>-----------------------------------------------------------------<BR>Keith
Thomas<BR><A href="http://www.evfit.com">www.evfit.com</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>-----------------------------------------------------------------</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><B><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 18pt">For Sound Energy Policy, Don't Look to
Congress</SPAN></B><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></P>
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">By Warren Brown<BR>Sunday, May 7, 2006;
<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Original here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/05/AR2006050500974.html<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P>Congress thinks we're stupid. Maybe we are. We, most of us, refuse to accept
that we are living in a world of rapidly increasing demand for declining fossil
fuel resources.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>We believe more oil is to be found around the corner, in the next country,
beneath the ocean, under or in the next rock. Maybe it is.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>But people who have spent much of their professional lives looking at this
issue say it really does not matter that more oil is waiting to be found
somewhere. They believe there will never be enough of the stuff to fuel, feed,
clothe, house and move a constantly growing global population.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Those people include Vice President Cheney, White House energy adviser
Matthew Simmons and, believe it or not, President Bush.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>For some time now, Cheney and Simmons, an energy investment banker, have been
telling Bush that oil as we know it is about to go away. Their advice largely is
why the president in his State of the Union address in January warned that
America has become "addicted to oil." That is why the president, a scion of the
Texas oil patch, uncharacteristically chided his fellow Republicans in Congress
for offering yet another tax break for the nation's oil companies, this one
facilitating quick write-offs of the costs of resource
exploration.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>"Record oil prices and large cash flows also mean that Congress has got to
understand that these energy companies don't need unnecessary tax breaks like
the write-offs of certain geological and geophysical expenditures," the
president told the White House media corps.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>That does not mean Bush is no longer a bosom buddy of Big Oil. It does mean,
at least on this issue, that he is significantly smarter than
Congress.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>People enjoy poking fun at Bush, portraying him as something of an errant
fraternity boy. But this president is nobody's dummy. He fully understands the
concept of "peak oil," the high point of the bell curve at which 50 percent of
the provable reserves in any oil field have been recovered.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Oil is plentiful on the upside of the curve. It is less available,
substantially more difficult and enormously more expensive to retrieve on the
downside.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Experts contend that peak oil production in North America actually was
reached as far back as 1970, forcing the United States, for one, to rely more
heavily on foreign sources of crude, a decidedly dangerous and extremely costly
way of fueling our economy.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>One of those experts is Robert L. Hirsch, senior energy program adviser at
San Diego-based Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC), which conducts
a variety of scientific studies for governments and global
corporations.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Hirsch and his colleagues last March completed a study for the Department of
Energy. Maybe it was too difficult for Congress to read. Certainly the title was
forbidding: "Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk
Management."<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Had Congress read Hirsch's report, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) might not
have proffered the silly idea of giving Americans a $500 tax rebate to help
cover the cost of rising gasoline prices, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
(R-Tenn.) might not have come up with the equally goofy idea of giving Americans
a $100 gas rebate.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Both proposals, now thankfully dead, constituted the most wrongheaded kind of
political pandering, the kind that supports the notion that American consumers
have a God-given right to cheap gasoline in a world where hundreds of millions
of people already are paying considerably more for that fuel.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Congress was trying to play Robin Hood without portfolio, sticking a windfall
profit tax on companies such as Exxon Mobil Corp., which raked in $8.4 billion
in profits in the first quarter of 2006, and passing a part of the proceeds on
to grumbling citizens.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>I have no doubt that Exxon Mobil and the rest of oildom are engaging in a bit
of profiteering, taking advantage of a very real energy crisis. But the Stabenow
and Frist proposals, along with the advocates of increased federally mandated
corporate fuel economy without any increases whatsoever in gasoline taxes,
completely miss the point.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Hirsch and his colleagues put it clearly in their report to the Department of
Energy:<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>We eventually will not have enough oil to fuel our enormously wasteful
American way of life.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Global oil production is peaking.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>"Optimistic oil production forecasts deserve to be viewed with considerable
skepticism," the Hirsch report said. "World oil peaking represents a problem
like none other. The political, economic and social stakes are enormous," the
report said.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>In plain English, that means America's cheap-oil ride is over. Ill-thought
consumer tax rebates will not help. Ill-thought tax breaks for oil companies
that are bumping up prices now in anticipation of oil's future decline will not
help.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>We need more political wisdom and the guts to do the right
thing.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>That starts with political leaders telling the American people the truth, as
Bush did in his "addicted to oil" comments. It means mandated increased vehicle
fuel economy accompanied by increased taxes on gasoline, engine displacement and
vehicle size. It means getting over our social and racial biases, which still
keep certain people out of certain neighbourhoods, and coming up with a truly
efficient, democratic mass transportation system.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>"Waiting until world conventional oil production peaks before initiating
crash program mitigation leaves the world with a significant liquid fuel deficit
for two decades or longer," the Hirsch report said.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P>Wake up, Congress. Wake up, America. We are a part of that
world.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; TEXT-ALIGN: center" align=center><!-- start the copyright for the articles -->© 2006 The
Washington Post Company<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><o:p> </o:p></P><!-- end the copyright for the aricles --><!-- start the copyright for the secions --><!-- end the copyright for the secions --></DIV></BODY></HTML>