The following is a letter I wrote that appeared in the Grand Forks Herald on August 15, 2008. The title given was, "Lower oil prices are no longer an option".

The August 12 Herald carried an editorial about a supposed tradeoff between lower gasoline prices and reduced dependence on foreign oil ("Energy policy has a question at its core," Page A4). In reality, there is no tradeoff. No matter what we do, gasoline prices will keep going up. The world is running out of oil, global demand for oil is increasing, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. The resources in Alaska, North Dakota and offshore seem large, but in fact the amount of oil in those places is just a fraction of global demand. And developing those resources takes a decade, so they certainly won't help us any time soon.

On the other hand, there are many good ways to deal with high oil prices. They all involve using less oil.

The following is a letter I wrote that appeared in the Grand Forks Herald on April 27, 2008. The title given was, "World can't sustain continued growth".

Brett Narloch of the North Dakota Policy Council wrote, "Sustainable development is nothing more than socialism by another name." ("'Socialism by another name' at UND," Page A4, April 22). Narloch is wrong. I don't know the group he mentions at UND; it doesn't matter. What matters is this: when you have increasing demand for resources that are running out and can't reasonably be replaced, you're setting yourself up for disaster. That's a simple fact.

Sustainable development says to develop along lines that work with this fact. For instance, continued growth is not sustainable. You run out of things such as oil, farmland, water and clean air. Unsustainable development is ... unsustainable. That means it won't work later, even if it does now. Let's face development with our heads on straight so we don't get surprised at where we end up.