Clark Stooksbury is feelin' disgraced:
Jim Manzi (responding to an excellent post from Patrick Deneen) assures us that we have nothing to worry about on the energy front.
Crude oil production will reach a maximum at some point in the future. I don’t know when that will happen, and the record of those who have tried to forecast this not been very good over the past 70 years or so. When that happens, the price will probably rise. We will develop technological alternatives and find substitute fuels. It’s not time to start burying Krugerrands in the backyard. (emphasis added)
So we will know when oil has peaked because prices will rise. Too bad he didn’t tell President Bush – it could have spared us the ugly sight of seeing the leader of the free world debasing himself by begging our Saudi Masters to turn up the pumps.
Let's be clear that the only reason why Bush's request was begging was that Bush is pathetic and nobody needs to listen to him anymore, even our bosom Saudi buddies. Any President with an ounce of clout and gravitas could have discovered a way, by hook or by crook, to get even a symbolic increase in oil production with at least his public honor intact. Not George.
I guess I should weigh in in some way on the debate between my Scene colleague and respected Professor -- and do so of course in the interestingly idiosyncratic way we have all come to expect from bloggers. If I had to make a guess, sovereign state control over oil resources -- call it 'oil nationalism' -- will be a much bigger factor going forward whether we're under peak oil conditions or not. And if we are, oil-rich states and states with oil-rich allies will probably be able to transition much more easily to a non-oil-based energy infrastructure, while oil-poor states without oil-rich allies will suffer. Pretty much exactly what's happened with the distributional justice of natural resources since the Dawn of Man.
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