Peak oil is starting to rear its ugly head

[Sri Lumpa]

NJ5, not only should you be concerned by a possible stock market crash eating away your money but you should also be concerned by higher rates of inflation due to more expensive goods giving you paycheck cuts.

I am personally for doing all we can to switch to renewable energy sources for electricity and for replacing oil powered devices with hydrogen fuel cells powered devices (with, like somebody said, the hydrogen coming from electrolysis).

For this we need massive research money poured in both areas in the next couple decades, and when good enough solutions are here, massive infrastructure investments.

This is a problem that dwarfes run-of-the-mill terrorrism (the non run-of-the-mill exceptions being nuclear terrorism and biological terrorism) as its side effects could be starvations in poorer countries as food becomes too expensive and the accompanying riots and revolutions (like the lack of bread fueled the French revolution).

Also, greater dependency on renewable energies has the side benefit of helping your trade balance (unless you export oil), is better for the environment and is the most likely thing to really curb the current wave of middle eastern terrorism in the long term (say, 50 years after serious decreases in oil cunsumtions are seen, with an increase in the short term, which unfortunately will be a good deal our lifetime (unless you already are an old geezer ))

How would oil independency help curb middle eastern terrorism? In two ways:

_Less oil dependency means less need to meddle in the middle east and thus less occasions for them to get riled up with the west (think of it as an allergy, you can avoid a crysis by avoiding rubbing allergens on the wrong tissues, the problem is still extent but you can avoid its worst effects).

_Less money going in currently terrorist rich societies* means that less money will go in terrorists organisations in the long run. It might make things worse until they run out of money but they can't run an organisation like Al-Qaeda forever without new funds coming in (You can see it as a big company with huge losses year over year as it buys expensive weapons, relying on continuous outside investments; Osama's millions/billions while they go far cannot go on forever).

I view terrorism as a luxury as you cannot afford to do it if you are struggling to feed yourself as a society (unless it has short and middle terms goals of helping feed yourself but then it isn't terrorism anymore as it isn't killing just for the sake of killing).

Of course there would still be terrorism (and probably always will) but it probably would be more local (like Northern Ireland) or new causes. And jsut because we can never eradicate all form of it doesn't mean we shouldn't try (I can never get my house completely clean but it doesn't mean I shouldn't try).

* the massive majority of these societies might not be terrorist but they seem to be the current source for a lot of today's international terrorism.