$100 Barrels of Oil… Coming soon

There’s a decent article in today’s NY Times about the current oil conditions and the rising global demand…the article only focused on what is happening…not what the remedy may be…so I’ll wait for another time to debate the possibilities…

Its only a matter of time…days, really.  Oil closed at $95 barrel yesterday.  Will the $100 threshold come and go or is there a pyschological implication that will make the economy flip out?  Time will tell.  The only thing that I know for sure is that the world is too dependent on fossil fuels.  Everyone knows that.  It wasn’t too long ago that oil went over $50 and then $55 – and people were shocked – gas prices shot up – heating costs rose, etc.  Maybe people are used to seeing the shock and won’t care much about the $100.  Who knows…

I see a couple issues with our dependency on oil.  For one, oil is dirty and polluting.  Two, its a finite resource that we predominantly get from the ever-volatile Middle East or we ruin our planet drilling for new oil.  One big reason that oil prices are going up is that the rest of the world is catching up to the U.S. in becoming industrialized.  More and more people in India and China are getting cars.  More companies are building huge manufacturing plants – often with no regard to the environment what-so-ever. 

More than any other country, China represents the scope of that challenge. As it turned into a global economic behemoth over the last decade, China also became a major energy user. – NY Times

So what is the answer?  Of course I have ideas on that and I’ll go into them more in detail in the future.  Wind, solar, PHEVs, etc.