James Surowiecki Quotes

The problem with cap-and-trade and programs such as carbon capture and storage is that they all assume that business as usual can continue. The financial meltdown and peak oil has pretty much demonstrated that business as usual's not going to work.

We will run out of air long before we run out of oil.

The substitute of oil for coal is impossible because oil does not exist in this world in sufficient quantities.

Low-cost, high-grade coal, oil and natural gas - the backbone of the Industrial Revolution - will be a distant memory by 2050. Much higher-cost remnants will still be available, but they will not be able to drive our growth, our population and, most critically, our food supply as before.

The country remains dependent on oil. But as we are now learning, oil is becoming increasingly scarce.

The earth is warming at an alarming rate, we are running out of fossil fuels, and it is long past time for us to take action to correct these problems.

The American people know something is wrong as far as energy is concerned. They don't think they are being told the truth.

A dramatic decrease in oil availability is not at all far-fetched.

The doomsayers of the 1970s were wrong about how quickly the world would run out of oil, but not about the dangers that hydrocarbon consumption posed to the global environment, especially with respect to climate change.

We need to face it, as a nation we have a reliance on petroleum.

Look, natural gas, just like oil, is going to eventually go away. It's not renewable.

The question of energy is an important one. The big issue is how to get it, how not to destroy the environment, and how to survive as a species. It's a big deal.

We have to rethink our whole energy approach, which is hard to do because we're so dependent on oil, not just for fuel but also plastic. If plastic vanished, there would be total chaos. We have to think quite carefully about using oil and its derivatives, because it's not going to be around forever.

I have to have faith that we're going to succeed in transforming where we get our energy from. The big worry is whether or not we're going to do it before it's too late. And I think nobody knows the answer to that.

As much as with increased exploration new gas reserves can be found, what must be obvious to all is that our oil and gas reserves are not renewable and they are diminishing, and to protect the generations to come, we must engage in nothing short of a radical shift in the diversification of the economy.

Why would even I say we can't stop drilling in the Gulf? Because we have no alternatives. Whether or not we drill in the Gulf, or in Alaska, we will continue to wring the last out of anyplace else.

Just as fossil fuels from conventional sources are finite and are becoming depleted, those from difficult sources will also run out. If we put all our energy and resources into continued fossil fuel extraction, we will have lost an opportunity to have invested in renewable energy.

Here in the United States, we have between 250 and 300 years of a coal supply. That is more than the amount of recoverable oil contained in the entire world.

Pricey oil makes clear that wealth really is energy in various forms.

Not all the coal that is dug warms the world.

Fossil fuels, including oil, are running out and supplies are getting harder to find. If we do nothing, prices will continue to rise and our reliance on oil will come to an abrupt and tumultuous end, causing global economic and social turmoil.

Liberals in Congress have spent the past three decades pandering to environmental extremists. The policies they have put in place are in large part responsible for the energy crunch we are seeing today. We have not built a refinery in this country for 30 years.

Just as the stone age did not end for lack of stones, the oil age will not end because of a scarcity of oil.

The world’s demand for energy will never stop.

If you had no new technology, and you powered society as we do today - mostly by fossil fuels - you'd have only two choices: Doom yourself to horrific climate change by burning all that carbon and releasing all that CO2. Or power down society, reducing total energy usage around the planet.