Don't worry, be profitable.

• Author: Lovins, Amory B.
• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the editor

Editor's note: World Watch's Peak Oil Forum (January/February 2006) generated the strongest reaction from readers since we published "A Challenge to Conservationists" in late 2004. As with that article, passions ran high, as you'll see from the sample of letters printed on the following pages. Many correspondents objected strongly to Vaclav Smil's views, so we have grouped them at the end and included his response.

Worldwatch has performed an important service with its Peak Oil Forum, as with its splendid Renewables 2005: Global Status Report. Yet two key meta-observations about peak oil are missing.

First, nobody can know who's right. The reserves data are a mess, many are sketchy or secret, and 94 percent of reserves belong to governments, which have every incentive to lie about what they have.

Second, it doesn't matter who's right, because we should do the same things anyway just to save money, no matter whether oil is scarce or abundant. For example, Winning the Oil Endgame (free at www.oilendgame.com) provides an independent, peer-reviewed, detailed, transparent, and uncontested roadmap for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit. This Pentagon-cosponsored study shows that half of U.S...