This writer has been following the oil/energy resource issue since the 1970s and has published and edited on this website for a number of years. She is a recognized expert in the energy field and widely quoted in energy publications. (For example, see this.) She is honest, objective, and well-informed on the subject. Her only limitation, as I see it, is that she only looks at the issue within the context of a capitalist system. She, like her colleagues, received extensive capitalist indoctrination from an American university which sees the system as fixed, or as the center of the universe much like the Catholic church that up until the 17th century insisted that the Earth was the center of the universe.
In this piece, she is highly critical of a recent overly optimistic report sponsored by the Department of Energy of the US government which like all important institutions is under the control of the ruling capitalist class and reflects their head-in-the-sand thinking.
The new report sets priories based on a distorted view of the future. One issue is that it is trying to set priorities based on an overly optimistic view of energy supply presented in the EIA's International Energy Outlook 2011 (IEO 2011). Another issue is that it overlooks the way the US and world economy can be expected to change as a result of lower oil and natural gas supply. A third issue is that its view of climate change mitigations is based on a view of fossil fuel supply that is far greater than is likely to be the case.
