Akkam’s Razor

While grocery shopping today, I passed the magazine aisle and saw the cover to this month’s Popular Mechanics, with the cover story “5 New Ideas to Power Our Future”. I didn’t bother to stop to read it, as I’m pretty sure what it was all about. Plenty of risky, exotic, currently inefficient, and expensive technologies, all hoping to be the panacea for our addiction for crude.

There’s plenty of reasons that get bandied about for this “new” fuel crisis, from Peak Oil, to increased demand from China and India, to the lack of new refinery construction in the United States. All are true in part, but nothing will really change until our behavior as consumers (of oil) changes. So, when and how will that happen? Will it be individual or societal changes?