It should come as no surprise that in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill disaster, there has been a renewed push by environmental activists to embrace renewable energy options.

In a recent blog post, Richard Heinberg, senior fellow-in-residence at the Post Carbon Institute, discusses the root of the problem: America’s addiction to oil. Heinberg argues that without access to cheap oil, “our industrial food system – from tractor to supermarket – shifts from feast to famine mode; our entire transportation system sputters to a halt. We even depend on oil to fuel the trains, ships, and trucks that haul the coal that supplies half our electricity. We make our computers from oil-derived plastics. Without oil, our whole societal ball of yarn begins to unravel.”

Indeed, a recent post on Renewableenergy.com notes that although initial reactions to the [mehr...]