[extropy-chat] POLITICS: oil and strategies

[Damien Broderick]

At 05:42 PM 6/25/2004 -0700, The Avantguardian wrote:


>Take the top scientists from our universities,
>put them on a military base in some desert, and give
>them one year to come up with one or more alternative
>energy sources to oil. The challenge would be to make
>it so that the new fuel be easy to synthesize, store,
>and allow existing gasoline and diesel engines to
>operate on it with a minimum of upgrading.

Fuel is not all that oil is used for.

Plus: There's a lot of money and political clout in the existing oil 
industry. Some argue that cheap access to reliable supply is exactly what 
motivated the Iraq wars to begin with. Maybe so, maybe not, but the current 
interests aren't going to be happy about any govt program to make them 
irrelevant--unless they're granted a very large piece of the action. I'd 
like to hear some analysis from historically knowledgeable people here, 
such as Steve Davies.

Damien Broderick