This isn’t about the Internet, but it is about a scale-free network: oil production. The big problem with oil isn’t that it’s currently expensive, or that current sources are running short. The problem isn’t even that the U.S. gets most of its oil from the middle east: it doesn’t; the U.S. imports only a fraction of its oil, and only a fraction of that comes from the middle east. (One of the main interests of the U.S. in the middle east and other oil producing areas is to police them so that no other country decides it must develop the capability to do so.) The problem is that too much oil comes from too few suppilers, starting with Saudi Arabia and working down.

So why consider running out of oil a problem? Why not consider it an opportunity? An opportunity to shift to other and more distributed energy sources, thus removing the need to militarize the Middle-East.

Here’s a detailed proposal to do just that, funded partly by Pentagon money, and written by people who have been making practical improvements in energy efficiency for companies large and small for many years: Winning the Oil Endgame, Rocky Mountain Institute; 309 pages; $40.

Amory Lovins proposes doing it not by abandoning suburbia, rather by using profit and market to drive efficiency and shifts in energy production and delivery.

The Economist said about the book:

“Given that America consumes a quarter of the world’s oil but has barely 3% of its proven reserves, it will never be energy-independent until the day it stops using oil altogether.

“How to get there? Amory Lovins has some sharp and sensible ideas. In “Winning the Oil Endgame”, a new book funded partly by America’s Defence Department, this sparky guru sketches out the mix of market-based policies that he thinks will lead to a good life after oil.

“First, he argues, America must double the efficiency of its use of oil, through such advances as lighter vehicles. Then, he argues for a big increase in the use of advanced “biofuels”, made from home-grown crops, that can replace petrol. Finally, he shows how the country can greatly increase efficiency in its use of natural gas, so freeing up a lot of gas to make hydrogen. That matters, for hydrogen fuel can be used to power cars that have clean “fuel cells” instead of dirty petrol engines. It would end the century-long reign of the internal-combustion engine fuelled by petrol, ushering in the hydrogen age.

“And because hydrogen can be made by anybody, anywhere, from windmills or nuclear power or natural gas, there will never be a supplier cartel like OPEC—nor suspicions of “blood for hydrogen”. What then will the conspiracy theorists do?”

In the near term there will no doubt be military actions. In the long run, apparently even the Pentagon thinks we can solve the real problem.

-jsq