At that point in time we will enter the first true sellers market in the history of the oil industry. It will be a sellers market that begins the long decline of oil as our fuel of choice for transportation. Declining oil resources do not have to provide the impetus for that change. There are technologies that could challenge the dominance of oil if our banking community could see them through the smog of burning fossil fuels. Hydrogen is one of them but it is going to take a substantial change in transportation infrastructure to implement it. Electric cars the size of golf carts could also help if we could get around the maze of regulations that limit them to the golf course and an occasional trip to the neighbor's house.

Our political leaders have permitted us to build a fossil fuel system that rigorously taxes every citizen for the use of fuel and electricity. There are several certainties in life, death, taxes, fuel expenses and the electricity bill. Every human on the planet uses energy to survive. Everywhere there are roads and vehicles they use oil based products to fuel them. The dominance of oil is complete in that regard. It is the one universal fact of energy use; transportation vehicles with few exceptions use oil. We could convert some of them to natural gas but that would eventually drive the price of natural gas out of sight. The balance of our energy uses and supplies is a delicate one and not easily altered without serious side effects.

I have read some of the books proposing that we convert to hydrogen for transportation. A few have merit. Jeremy Rifkin's book "The Hydrogen Economy" is one of the more recent and is available. I was a proponent of alcohol fuel back in the nineteen seventies. I worked on several biomass fuel projects and have always been interested in the process of converting to alternative energy sources. The only answer that currently excites me is wind conversion to electrical energy. How will that help with the process of providing an alternative for oil? It will not help much at first. Electricity is not going to replace liquid fuel directly any time soon. It can be used to reconfigure water and generate hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen could easily become a useful fuel in engines and later fuel cells. An orderly transition from oil to another source of energy is in the interests of everyone except the oil companies themselves. In order to have that orderly transition we need to start before oil production starts to decline. Otherwise the market will charge us massively for failing to foresee the foreseeable.

The truth is wind is already a cheaper source of electricity than every other source except coal and close to coal in cost. The basic principle under which that change could come about would be if we were to remove some of the artificial supports for the use of fossil fuels that are due to government policies. Transportation advantages and other tax credit deals that have been used over the years to keep the price of those fuels and electrical power artificially low should be altered. These policies were created as a positive basis for keeping fuel costs lower and profits higher. There is nothing wrong with those kinds of policies. They should now be used to give alternatives an advantage where we import more than ten to fifteen percent of any essential fuel. Unfortunately there are no powerful companies that will gain by lobbying for alternative sources of energy. The power of the oil, gas and electrical industries is huge and it has thus far prevailed.

We will need to change the things we teach children in school if we are to survive as a world power. One of the things that we need to stress is the interdependence of all nations on earth in regard to the environment. Another is the fact that the earth's supply of oil will be running low, probably before they reach the time of life I am at today. A third is that government is a tool of the people and to be used for their betterment. Government only becomes a threat when a police state develops, something our constitution was designed to prevent. The fourth is that the way things work can change and when they change abruptly it causes a lot of pain. It is always better to plan out those changes that you can see coming than to be forced to adjust without preparation.

It truly is up to our citizenship to help change this dependence on imported oil. It is not the use of war that will preserve our society but the use of all the resources at our command to make the world better. We are not going to keep the oil flowing cheaply after we hit the peak of production and it starts to decline. Not even with the greatest war machine the world has ever known. Conquest will not help solve that problem, nor will any treaty we can construct. International markets are important but so is our national economy. Prosperity will elude us for a long time if we fail to make the effort to change how we fuel our vehicles and move our goods.

We need desperately to participate in the coming revolution in energy production technology, but our bias for fossil fuels is getting in our way. The windmills used in this country are developed and produced in Europe. That is ridiculous but we refused to fund wind energy systems companies in this country for years. Now the dominant source for that technology is abroad even though we had a real lead in the nineteen seventies. We ought to be the world leader in solving the problems that will be created by the end of cheap oil, but our President and his Vice President are oilmen to the core. That certainly does not make them bad men but it may make them bad leaders for this time in our history. Think on that for a while, but don't take too long. Life and time go by fast. God bless and keep you safe, oilmen and all the rest, in these oil fueled times with real change yet to come.