http://www.energybulletin.net/35992.htmlThe admiral's warning
by Dadid M. Shribman
Fifty years ago, he saw today's energy crisis coming, but we didn't listen. Are we listening now?This year marks the 50th anniversary of a number of important cultural markers -- the launch of Sputnik; the publication of "The Cat in the Hat," Dr. Seuss' landmark children's book; the introduction of the Edsel, a symbol of failure, soon after the Bel Air, which became an American icon; the school crisis in Little Rock, one of the biggest battles involving racial integration; and the release of the movie "Bridge on the River Kwai," which went on to win seven Academy Awards.
All that plus one other, hardly noted at the time, all but forgotten now: A half-century ago Rear Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear Navy, accepted an invitation to speak at the banquet of the Annual Scientific Assembly of the Minnesota State Medical Association in St. Paul. In that speech, before a gathering of physicians, Adm. Rickover raised the specter that easily accessible and economically reasonable supplies of fossil fuels would be in jeopardy ... just about now.
SNIP...
This was no mere rhetorical warning. At the heart of the Rickover thesis was the role that energy played in civilization, or perhaps said another way, in civilizing humankind. "What lifted man -- one of the weaker mammals -- above the animal world was that he could devise, with his brain, ways to increase the energy at his disposal, and use the leisure so gained to cultivate his mind and spirit," he argued. "Where man must rely solely on the energy of his own body, he can sustain only the most meager existence."
So Rickover set the predicate: Energy is more than fuel but is instead a requirement for our very humanity and our survival. He went on to argue that a reduction of per-capita energy consumption throughout history has led to a reversion to a more primitive lifestyle. (One of his examples: Once wood supplies were exhausted, the Mayan civilization was imperiled.) Then he delivered the warning we did not heed: "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."
READ THE REST AT THE ABOVE LINK