On August 27, 1859 Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania and ushered in the Age of Oil. The Age of Oil will not endure. Already just 150 years into it, we are seeing the endline but there is little question that oil has remade our world. That magical string of hydrocarbons allows us to live on this planet in numbers otherwise not possible. If not for oil, at least 40% of us would not be here. We literally eat oil for without we could not produce the quantity of food that enables our numbers of now near seven billion. Indeed, the major phenomenon of the modern era are wholly attributable to oil. The Green Revolution, globalization, the advent of plastics are all ultimately tied to our mastery of oil's magic. Our transportation infrastructure is largely based on a hydrocarbon economy. There is no question that solving our energy riddle is one of the paramount questions for the upcoming century.

Thus it is striking that the President last night in Williamsburg made the following comment:

This plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time. It doubles our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels in three years.

It's an interesting and perhaps odd phrase, the tyranny of oil, but those involved in the study of peak oil or in the transition towns movement that phrase has real meaning and it is music to our ears. It signifies that President is aware of the daunting challenge to wean a planet off a diminishing resource before our world literally slides off a cliff. For me personally as someone who was less than enthused with candidate Obama, that phrase along with his comment back in Toledo to Joe the Plumber about "share the wealth" are the most instructive and insightful into the President's thinking and core beliefs. If President Obama addresses the "tyranny of oil" and moves to address the growing income inequality in this country then he truly is the one that I have been awaiting.

There's more...

The above is a presentation from the Davos World Economic Forum summarizing four possible scenarios through 2020 for the global financial system. The four scenarios are Financial Regionalism, Re-engineered Western Centrism, Fragmented Protectionism, and Rebalanced Multilateralism. More on these below the fold.

There's more...