THE UNITED STATES WILL BECOME ENERGY INDEPENDENT WHEN… Major technological innovations occur in extracting oil from unconventional sources. —Jerry Taylor • We decide to take full advantage of our natural gas resource. —Gary Lash • (And if) hydrogen fuel cells are perfected. —Terry Engelder • Cars sold in the U.S. are no longer shut to competing fuels like methanol. —Gal Luft • Gasoline is expensive enough or taxed enough to spur deep changes in energy use. —Valérie Marcel • We take the urgency of climate change seriously and slash our oil use and carbon emissions. —Frances Beinecke • We give serious options to consumers to use different and cleaner forms of energy and fuels, and to get out of their cars and walk, bike, or take transit. —Kate Gordon • Integration of the global economy is reversed and energy no longer plays an important role in supporting economic growth. —Gregory Nemet • Pigs fly. We are like the 500-pound man who, having lost 5 pounds, wants to know when he'll reach the same weight as Brad Pitt. —Michael Ross • Never. And would be a terrible idea. —David Victor • The sun ceases to shine. —John DeCicco
OPEC IS… Not nearly as powerful as most Americans -- at least those who were old enough to read newspapers in the 1970s -- tend to believe. —Michael Ross • In serious trouble due to the increasing discoveries of unconventional oil and natural gas supplies. —Kenneth Green • Facing major emerging challenges -- shale oil, Iraq, falling OECD demand -- whose impact it as yet only grasps dimly. —Robin Mills • Increasingly beset with divisions from their member governments. —Terry Karl • A cartel in name only. —Robert Pindyck • An easy scapegoat to blame for high oil prices. —Christopher Knittel • An ineffective cartel that rides the wave of prices up and down and is unable to protect the long-term interests of its members. —Edward Chow • Still a powerful cartel that largely sets world oil prices through production expansions and contractions. —Daniel J. Weiss • A cartel that owns 80 percent of the world's conventional oil reserves yet produces only a third of the world's supply. —Gal Luft • Not going to pump that much more oil. Well, maybe Iraq is. —Steven Kopits • In trouble over the long haul. —David Victor • Declining in influence. —John Graham • Quickly becoming extraneous. —Gary Lash • Doing what cartels have done throughout history: hoping their customers cannot break their addiction. —Jay Apt
THE ENERGY SOURCE THE WORLD SHOULD RELY MORE ON IS… Natural gas. —John Graham, Steven Kopits, Robin Mills, Donald Paul ("It's plentiful, it's versatile, and its use can be made quite clean."), Mark Thurber • Nuclear power. —Giacomo Luciani, Gal Luft, Jacques Percebois • Batteries. Energy storage is the holy grail in terms of enabling other big, important technologies and cleaning up the Earth. —Steve LeVine • Solar. —Reyer Gerlagh, Andrew Light, Daniel J. Weiss • First, conservation (which pays for itself many times over) and then renewables, which can power our lives without undermining our future. —Bill McKibben • Conservation. —Edward Chow • Efficiency (doing the same with less energy), not conservation (doing less). —Jay Apt • Efficiency. The most cost-effective energy strategy is reduced demand. —Daniel Esty • Markets. —Jerry Taylor • Ingenuity. What really matters is efforts on both supply and demand, and pretty much all progress on those fronts is coming from new ideas. —David Victor
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