Good Reads for Executives

"...unless science can perform the miracle of synthesizing automobile fuel from some energy source as yet unknown or unless trolley wires power electric automobiles on all streets and highways, it will be wise to face up to the possibility of the ultimate disappearance of automobiles, trucks, buses and tractors."

"Our civilization rests upon a technological base which requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels. What assurance do we then have that our energy needs will continue to be supplied by fossil fuels: The answer is - in the long run - none."

Those are the timely yet prescient observations of Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover, U.S. Navy, delivered on Tuesday, May 14, 1957. Rickover served under thirteen presidents, was considered irascible by many, and retired in 1982 at the age of 82. In the text of his speech below you will read an uncanny analysis of what is going to happen to whom and by when as the world depletes its supply of fossil fuels.

Energy Resources and our Future, Admiral Rickover in a presentation before the Annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association

"...The Long Emergency is going to produce a lot of economic losers - a whole new group I call the formerly middle class."

"...no combination of alternative fuels or systems for using them will allow us to continue running America the way we have been, or even a substantial fraction of it. We are not going to run WalMart, Walt Disney World, Monsant, and the interstate highway system on any combination of solar or wind energy, hydrogen, nuclear, ethanol, tar sands, oil shale, methane hydrates, thermal depolymerization, zero-point energy, used French-fry oil, or anything else you can name."

Fast forward fifty years to the recent author of The Long Emergency, James Howard Kunstler, who seems as if he could be the progeny of Mr. Rickover. Their analysis is parallel in so many places that it is surreal. The underlying tone is that realism needs to be the basis for how we move ahead, which will require an unprecedented paradigm shift, if we are to survive the end of fossil fuel transition.

James Kunstler's Presentation to the Commonwealth Club of California as presented in Global Public Media

The first two links share an analytical synergy and the third is just one more example that the jury is in. The "Energy Watch Group" is comprised of independent scientists and experts who explore global energy supply. The founder is a member of the German parliament by the name of Hans-Josef Fell. Their March report concludes that coal will peak by 2025. While the first two speeches warn against asking the question, "How much longer can we keep living our business as usual lives?" the authors tell us that reserves are exaggerated, U.S. coal (the largest reserves are here) peaked five years ago, and global data is weak but appears biased toward the high end. "Coal Resources and Future Production," Dr. Werner Zittel and Jorg Schindler

Perhaps all of this is summed up best by Admiral Rickover in his 1957 speech:
"For it is an unpleasant fact that...fossil fuel reserves...are likely to run out at some time between the years 2000 and 2050....Oil and natural gas will disappear first, coal last. There will be coal left in the earth, of course. But it will be so difficult to mine that energy costs would rise to economically intolerable heights, so that it would then become necessary either to discover new energy sources or to lower standards of living drastically."

"Good Reads For Executives" will be a regular newsletter feature. The intent is to provide provocative information that offers a context broader than sound bites for understanding how fleets and the alternative fuels industry fit into the bigger picture. Comments and report/article/book suggestions are more than welcome at ktaylor@afvi.org