To all:

I stumbled on the following page on my travels across the web:

http://www.uwsp.edu/geo/courses/geog...hrinknete.htm?

Shrinking Net Energy from Fossil Fuels

In the past, energy-intensive practices generally were successful in
solving at least temporarily the problems to which they were applied.
But yesterday's solution has become today's problem. Without cheap,
safe, and abundant energy, most of the proposed technological
solutions to the problems of growth evaporate.

Resource scarcity, together with factors inherent in corporate
capitalism, will increase energy prices; and increased environmental
stress, associated with high energy use, has reduced both
environmental tolerance and the amount of work that Nature does for
"free" (Odum and Odum, 1976). An example of the latter is the
reduction (by the early 1970s) of forest productivity in New England
by 10 percent, because of acid rain resulting from combustion of vast
amounts of sulfurous fuels upwind from the region (Woodwell, 1974).
Thus, energy-intensive "solutions" become more costly both
economically and environmentally.

Now, early in 2001, crude oil prices range between about $26 and $35
per barrel. Prices have tripled in less than two years. (Record-low
oil prices in 1998-99 were a temporary aberration, due primarily to an
economic slump in Asia, which reduced petroleum consumption there, and
hence world demand).