>Definitely a Bartlett fan and supporter. There should be many more politicians like him on this important Peak Oil issue. The Peak Oil Caucus, which Bardlett established, will someday be recognized for its valuable efforts and services, but unfortunately the country will by then be shocked at how long Peak Oil has been ignored.
More on the Peak Oil Caucus and its members:
PEAK OIL CAUCUS FORMED IN U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Md.) calls the cloakroom the minute the clock strikes 9 a.m. so he can be first in line to book time for an afternoon floor speech that will be aired on C-SPAN. Photo: AP
When Rep. Pete Hoekstra — the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee — calls down to the House Republican cloakroom looking to reserve time for a special-order floor speech, he inevitably finds that it’s already been taken.
“The people always tell me, ‘Roscoe’s already spoken for it,’” he says.
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett plans ahead.
A week before he intends to speak, the Maryland Republican calls the cloakroom the minute the clock strikes 9 a.m. so he can be first in line to book time for an afternoon floor speech that will be aired on C-SPAN.
“It’s easy to get time on getaway days because everyone gets away,” he says of Thursdays or Fridays, when Congress is closing down for the week.
By his own count, Bartlett has given 48 hourlong floor addresses since March 14, 2005 –– far more than anyone else, and almost all of them on peak oil, the notion that when oil production begins to decline, prices will skyrocket and bring the world economy to its knees.
With oil prices in the stratosphere, is it time to start listening to the House of Representatives’ Chicken Little?
“I don’t tune in, sorry,” Rep. Steve Buyer (R-Ind.) says, echoing the sentiments of a number of his colleagues. Last Thursday, not a single member of the House entered the chamber while Bartlett was speaking.
Fellow Maryland Republican Wayne Gilchrest says that when colleagues approach him on the House floor for help on an energy-related issue, he often suggests they talk to Bartlett. But “they don’t want to hear from Roscoe,” says Gilchrest, who is retiring after losing a primary challenge from the right.
Bartlett has heard it before.
“They don’t particularly like what I say, and so they ignore me,” he concedes — but he continues to say it anyway. “This ‘drill here, drill more, pay less’ is a great mantra, and it’s hurting the Democrats. But you need to finish that: ‘And screw your kids and your grandkids,’ because that’s what we’re doing.”
Bartlett is not one to hold back.
“Kenneth Deffeyes, who’s one of the lead experts, says that the least-bad outcome of peak oil, waiting as long as we have to face the problem, is a deep, worldwide recession that makes the ’30s look like good times,” says Bartlett. “He says if you don’t like that, try the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or famine, pestilence and death.”
Bartlett, 82, is in his 16th year in Congress and holds a comfortable seat in western Maryland, where he lives on a 144-acre farm. He leases out the farmland to soy, barley and corn growers. He practices a bit of what he preaches: A greenhouse on his roof uses passive solar power to heat the house.
He doesn’t believe that his party has a real interest in that type of alternative energy. “They’re giving lip service to it,” he says. “The only thing they emphasize is drilling.”
The speech that Bartlett has honed is remarkably persuasive, if a little academic, which is unsurprising given his background. A Ph.D. in physiology, he taught medical school for more than two decades. A reporter in the press gallery Thursday caught a z or two at around the 40th minute of Bartlett’s speech. But in the reporter’s defense, the gallery faces the speaker’s back, so the dozens of charts and graphs that Bartlett trots out to illustrate his point were not visible.
The charts tell a story that’s hard to ignore, at least assuming that the few folks listening stay awake long enough to hear it. The amount of fossil fuel resources in the world is finite. At some point, new discoveries will tail off and production will peak and then decline. As production declines and demand continues to grow, $4-a-gallon gas will look like a giveaway.
“I agree with Roscoe,” says Hoekstra. “Peak oil isn’t a concept. It’s a reality. It’s just a matter of when.” Hoekstra says he thinks the peak is several decades off, but Bartlett argues that even if it is, we still need to plan for it now.
Though he doesn’t speak to a packed house, Bartlett says colleagues often tell him they caught parts of his speech on TV. His viewers, he says, have included Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), who called him after one speech, and Reps. Dave Obey (D-Wis.) and Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.). In March 2007, Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) came down to the floor to thank Bartlett.
“I would like to say that the gentleman from Maryland is like Socrates up here lecturing to the members and to the country on this incredibly important issue,” he said, according to the congressional record. “And I would just like to take note that you do it day after day, and you are relentless.” For about 15 minutes, Markey stayed on the floor and engaged in a bipartisan back and forth with Bartlett.
“Every time I give a speech, members tell me they heard and say, ‘Boy, we have a problem, don’t we?’” Nothing happens, though, because of the “tyranny of the urgent. The urgent always pushes the important off the table.”
Bartlett backs up his talk with four reports paid for by the federal government on the consequences of peak oil. One of them, done by the Scientific Applications International Corp. in 2005, concludes that the “peaking of world oil production presents the U.S. and the world with an unprecedented risk management problem. As peaking is approached, liquid fuel prices and price volatility will increase dramatically, and, without timely mitigation, the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented. Viable mitigation options exist on both the supply and demand sides, but to have substantial impact, they must be initiated more than a decade in advance of peaking.”
But it’ll take a crisis, Bartlett says, for Congress to move. “My hope is there’ll be a wake-up call, a teachable moment where not only is gas $5 a gallon but there isn’t any at the pump,” he says.
Until then, he has little faith his colleagues will be ready when the sky falls. “Ignorance is a harsh word,” he says. “Maybe innocence is better. They just don’t know.”
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