I've known about this problem for a while now. I think we've hit that peak a few years ago and passed it. We're definitely on the downside, otherwise we wouldn't be fighting the first of the oil wars. There are large oil reserves left untapped into, but the reason they're not tapped into is technology in some cases and environment issues in others. Most of these untapped into oil reserves are not going to help much in the long run. One of them will though. That's one in Siberia. The problem is that Siberia is a frozen swamp. You leave a vehicle in one spot for too long and the ground will warm up and the vehicle will sink into a swamp-like substance and be stuck. You turn off the vehicle and it may not start again due to the extreme cold. We currently don't have the technology to drill in that. Our drills aren't strong enough, and as soon as the top layer is warmed up, your whole drill setup sinks, and doesn't not necesserally end flat. But even if we could tap into this resource, it would only add on a few year, I'd guess around 5 years, of current oil use. Now we all know that current oil use will be far less than the oil use by the time that we are able to tap into that, if we ever are able to. That's due to the ever-increasing oil demand, especially with Asia emerging into the same oil-based society we live in. We need to start using other fuel sources, and we need to start using them now if we are to avoid a crisis.
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Originally Posted by Anomaly_
It is a little scary. One thing I've always been irate about is the lack of high-speed mass transit in the US. Where are the bullet trains in this country? I don't mean to be so naïve and say this will solve an energy crisis, but Amtrak being the most significant (human) interstate rail transporation is pathetic. The geography, governments, and lifestyles of the populations in Japan and Europe may accomodate the rail system more naturally, but at the very least, we should be more open to public spending in this area.
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It is scary. The probelms here is that there isn't a demand for those things because there are too many people ignoring the truth that we are running out of oil and actually DO NEED to spend the money on those things.
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Originally Posted by AngelicVampire
Slap a serious Gas tax on (something like the British system ~80%) then use the tax to start putting in the infrastructure for electric trains, solar facilities, wind power or whatever. The problem is America is based on the idea of cheap transport (gas) and large spread out areas. If you were charged more for petrol many people would move to more efficient vehicles and or public transpoet. The transport has to be easy to use/get to and run quickly though, 1 train every 4 hours is useless. With an additional tax you would also have money to invest in the future. It has to be done at some point, we might as well bite the bullet now and do it so that we don't have this problem.
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That's excatly what I think we should do. But it's a political world you're intering into, and nobody in the United States is going to vote for the canidate that wants to add that tax. And none of the congress members are intellegent enough to put aside their own political and power goals to do what's best for the people in voting in that tax, until after we're already in the comming oil crisis. But they're not completely blind to the problem. They have been giving tax breaks to automobile companies who do research and produce hybrid cars. It's not much, but it's a step in the right direction.
Luckily there's hydrogen and other fuel sources out there. Sure they cost a lot now, but once the research and developement is done on how to convert our current technology (planes, trains, and automobiles) to run on hydrogen, and it becomes more easily available, then the prices will drop rapidly.