Stop dithering.

• Author: Williams, Jim
• Position: Letter to the editor

World Watch has done a disservice to all of us with its report on the coming peak in oil production. First, you fail to note that worldwide per capita production peaked in 1979. We have been living with the dangerous consequences of a declining oil supply for decades. The point of absolute peak production is relatively unimportant and will not even be noticed until years after it occurs. By describing an ongoing crisis in terms of an event that will occur in the indefinite future, you encourage armchair environmentalists to daydream comfortably about it without feeling any personal sense of obligation or urgency to act.

We should expect no major catastrophe to make us act differently than we do now, and here is what now looks like:

* A billion people lack the energy means even to drink safe water because they are priced out of the market.

* The U.S. government is obliged to fight wars over oil in countries like Iraq because our consumer behavior gives it no alternative.

* The United States and China are in frantic competition to secure future oil deliveries at almost any environmental and human cost, as evidenced by China's arrangement with the Sudan to buy oil in return for blocking UN action on the genocide in Darfur, and increasing U.S. military involvement in nearly every oil producing country around the world.

* These two great powers are now openly planning for war with each other.

* There are renewed calls for mining shale oil in Colorado, a grossly inefficient and environmentally destructive process whose yield will hardly make a dent in our energy needs.

* Homeowners are turning to coal for heat to escape the rising costs of oil and natural gas, in spite of its much greater contributions to air pollution and global warming.

We choose and will continue to choose sources of energy that cause loss of life and damage to the environment rather than sustainable ones. We make decisions totally on the basis of short-term costs and disregard completely any suffering that falls on others. Happy plans to locate undiscovered oilfields or alternative chemical sources of energy fail to include environmental and human costs that will exceed even the damage we are doing now. Is this not a crisis of the present?

Second, you know well that conservation efforts are, by any environmental measure, far more helpful than projected new sources of energy, cost relatively little, and bring immediate results, yet you have chosen to excuse concerned citizens...