Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Top 10 Quotes from the 2011 ASPO-USA Peak Oil Conference


This past week I attended the 7th annual ASPO-USA Peak Oil conference in Washington DC.  All of the talks were very interesting, and I was happy to see that at least two members of our congress, Congressman Mike Honda (D-CA) and Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R - MD), are aware of the peak oil challenge we face.  For me, the best part of the weekend was the time I spent between talks discussing peak oil investing with a number of people who whose entire investing strategy revolves around peak oil.

I tend to take a lot of notes and when I hear interesting quotes, I write them down verbatim.  So here are the top 10 interesting quotes from my note pad:
  • # 10) "Place a peak oil filter on top of your investment strategy" -Jim Hansen of Ravenna Capital Management
  • # 9) "No politician wants to admit that we have grown more than this planet can sustain" - William Catton
  • # 8) "I make my decisions based on information, but I'm unusual" -Chris Martenson on the public narrative problem with peak oil
  • # 7) "I'm a mac guy" -Robert Hirsch, author of the famous Hirsch Report, during some technical difficulties
  • # 6) "If they had to run on their own production, it would fall apart"- Robert Rapier describing the EROEI problem of corn ethanol
  • # 5) "We're in a zero-sum world" -Jeff Rubin
  • # 4) "Soil is more important than oil"..."the date will come when we stop treating soil like dirt" -Wes Jackson
  • # 3) "I think the peak oil situation will come very quickly" -Charles Schlumberger, Lead Air Transport Specialist at The World Bank
  • # 2) "Since oil is a finite resource, the oil industry is a finite industry" -Andy Buckingham, an oil industry wildcatter
  • # 1) "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but rather the one most adaptable to change." - Angelina Galiteva quoting Charles Darwin