James R. Schlesinger Quotes

[I predict] the electricity generated by water power is the only thing that is going to keep future generations from freezing. Now we use coal whenever we produce electric power by steam engine, but there will be a time when there'll be no more coal to use. That time is not in the very distant future. ... Oil is too insignificant in its available supply to come into much consideration.

A significant number of petroleum geologists believe that we will reach the global maximum of petroleum extraction within this decade or that we have already reached it. Peak Oil happened in 1970 in America, when over half of our oil that we gained from the soil was exhausted ... This is very disturbing, regardless of global warming.

Yet, most of the readily accessible reserves of oil formed over hundreds of millions of years will be consumed within a single generation, spanning the years from 1960 to 1995.

Although oil is a commodity, it's still not a commodity like coffee, which, thank God, we will have with us always. At some point the oil will run out.

There are many disturbing news. We believe that the production of conventional petroleum reached peak oil already in 2006. The oil fields in the North Sea and the US are collapsing ... time is running out.

I can at once refute the statement that the people of the West object to conservation of oil resources. They know that there is a limit to oil supplies and that the time will come when they and the Nation will need this oil much more than it is needed now. There are no half measures in conservation of oil.

The day the world runs out of oil is much farther in the future than green activists care to admit. That is clear from data compiled by Dr. Robert Bradley, Jr. at the Institute for Energy Research.

The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year - far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif.

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

We owe it to the flood victims of New Orleans to give them truthful answers as to why this event took place and to assure our citizens that tragedies like this will never happen again.

Any time they try to describe the tsunami to us, I am so touched by how high they look in the air, when they explain it with their hands-they go so high.

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

This was the most anticipated natural disaster in history.

The problem of oil, it might be tersely said, is that there is always too much or too little.

This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

When you have the worst disaster in American history, you've got to be attuned to expectations,.

I think we need to change that old saying, "I don't need a building to fall on me." Because two did and we still don't get it. I think we all stick our head in the sand as a deep human impulse.

Oil is dead, on its way to extinction.

Everything adds up to a major crisis. Humanity is faced with a global energy crisis ... The core of the crisis lies in the increasing shortage of oil.

Ten thousand people died, an entire town destroyed.

I have little compassion for people in trailer parks who refuse to move after getting tornado warnings. How hard is it for them to relocate? Their houses have wheels.

Geologists claim that although the world is running out of oil, there is still a 200-hundred-year supply of brake fluid.

Nuclear power, once regarded as petroleum's natural heir, has become less and less attractive as its numerous drawbacks come to light. Coal, the other fossil fuel, is ultimately as exhaustible as oil.

Oil production should peak out around the world in the early 1990s...That means in five years' time we may have chewed up most of the possibility of further expansion of oil production.

Now, in answer to the question would we use force in the Middle East. I don't know...I hope not. We have no plans to, it is conceivable, I guess. It would be almost as bad as the seven days in May. You conjure up a situation where there is another oil embargo, and the people in this country are not only inconvenienced and uncomfortable, but suffer.