Wayne Gilchrest: “I am only going to speak for just a couple of minutes because the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) has a…”

“I am only going to speak for just a couple of minutes because the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) has a fascinating story to tell, one that richly deserves everybody's attention. But, just briefly, I want to thank the gentleman for yielding to me. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) will talk about energy, peak oil. As the demand increases enormously, the supply of the fossil fuel that we are using continues to decrease. We know that energy is power, and energy is what drives the Nation's economy. And we have assumed for a long time, for decades anyway, that energy supplies have a bottomless well. And that is correct. The energy source at the bottom of the well is bottomless. It is endless. But what is at the bottom of that well is not oil. It is not even natural gas. It is not coal. What lies at the bottom of the bottomless well is our intellect, our logic, our knowledge, our know-how. We used to the light our homes with whale oil. They did not stop lighting homes because we ran out of whales, thank goodness; but we transitioned to a number of other things. We used to use just wood all over the world, and thank goodness we transitioned from wood to coal because we were tearing our forests down, and there are a lot better uses for wood than to burn that wood. We transitioned for our transportation needs and many other needs from coal to oil, and oil is a lot cleaner and it is a lot more efficient.…”