La Crosse Tribune: What happens when we run out of oil?

Monday, December 19, 2005

From an editorial by Richard Mial, opinion page editor, of the La Crosse Tribune:

What happens when we run out of oil? How do we run our economies, fuel our vehicles and heat our homes?

If you don’t believe such a thing ever will happen (or at least not in our lifetime), then consider this slightly less-grim question: What happens when we run out of easily affordable oil?

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a conference at the University of Maryland, sponsored by the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism. The topic was energy, and the speakers were industry representatives, analysts, authors, government representatives and lobbyists.

But for now, let’s consider the bleakest possible scenario — the possibility that the world’s oil supply might already have “peaked,” that we’re already on the downside of oil production, and oil will only become increasingly more difficult to find and extract. And more expensive. . . .