Another Tipping Point

President Bush acknowledges Peak Oil in a Ron Suskind NYT article. Suskind was the co-author of the Paul O'Neill book exposing Bush's economic thinking.

(During a Republican donor luncheon) After his remarks, Bush opened it up for questions, and someone asked what he's going to do about energy policy with worldwide oil reserves predicted to peak.

Bush said: ''I'm going to push nuclear energy, drilling in Alaska and clean coal. Some nuclear-fusion technologies are interesting.'' He mentions energy from ''processing corn.''

''I'm going to bring all this up in the debate, and I'm going to push it,'' he said, and then tried out a line. ''Do you realize that ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] is the size of South Carolina, and where we want to drill is the size of the Columbia airport?''

So maybe it wasn't a real acknowledgement, but at least Bush didn't act haughty toward the donor asking the question and claim that he was exaggerating the problem.