Austin Scott: “I want to very, very briefly share, and I am sure there are some American people who are watching our discussion this…”

“I want to very, very briefly share, and I am sure there are some American people who are watching our discussion this evening, on just how serious a situation we are in. I talked about instability in the Middle East and our dependence upon oil. Clearly there are two known facts. Right now, 42 percent of all of the known oil reserves rest under the basin in the Middle East, in Iraq, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. That is nearly half of all of the available oil supplies that we know of in the Earth. And it is not renewable. It doesn't renew itself. Eventually at some point oil is going to run out. When I was at NATO, and we had a meeting over in Paris this past winter, our winter NATO meetings, a question was put to a noted economist, John Malone, and he made a profound statement. He said we didn't leave the stone age because we ran out of stone; nor will we leave the oil age because we have run out of oil. What he said was that civilization as we know it could very well run out before the oil runs out with the rapid rate we are going with the damage that oil-driven energy sources around the world are causing with the greenhouse effects.”