Sustainablog has a note on the contents of a letter just sent to the President. It comes from some heavy-weight folk, and calls for "a major new initiative" to find alternate fuels and to improve the efficiency of oil use. it ends with a quote from Sun Tzu "The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy's not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him."

Historically when things go wrong it has to be someone else's fault. One wonders who the enemy will be that the White House sets up?

As the LA Times points out today, the Chinese aren't getting their oil cheap. It is costing $1.67 a gallon in Shanghai, with a civil servant making less than $500 a month. When I was last over there I was driven around in a faculty member's car (which he could afford since his wife worked in the Government, as I remember). But the question in the article is the price at which people start to cut back, whether here on in China. Having watched the excitement of Chinese grad students get their first car over here, somehow I don't think it is going to be an easy wean, either there or here. And while China is part of the cause of the problem, their rapid growth has been in part because we have bought so much from them.

Of course we could also put more emphasis on mass transport - but aren't there plans to kill Amtrack? Obviously the word is taking a while to get out, and aren't the cutters supposed to be on our side ?

I can see that picking the person to blame is going to be hard.

Technorati tags: peak oil, China