the Hirsch Report
by Eli
another quicky here. richard heinberg came to visit bloomington this past wednesday and give a wonderful talk on peak oil at the buskirk chumley theater. during the presentation he showed quite a few slides with graphs and data and all kinds of other crazy crap as a visual aid, but one of his references intrigued me more than any other. it had to do with a recent government issued report that asked two questions: 1) is the peak oil phenomenon a real threat to our way of life? and 2) if so, how serious of a threat is it? heinberg only briefly mentioned this report, but he did include this excerpt from the Executive Summary:
The peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social, and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.
after you read that, remind yourself that this is government report, and it was published this february. pretty spooky isn’t it? so, after reading that small excerpt i decided to do a google search and download it. i haven’t read it yet, but i wanted to include it here for you all to download as well. enjoy.
