Biobased Industry Outlook Conference
August 29-30, 2005
Iowa State University - Ames, IA
Paul Roberts
Paul Roberts is the author of the critically acclaimed, The End of Oil: On the Edge of a Perilous New World. A journalist since 1983, Roberts contributes regularly to Harper's Magazine and The Los Angeles Times, and has covered the timber industry, the auto industry, and the evolving world of energy. He has also written for The New Republic, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, and Outside magazine, and was a finalist for the National Magazine Award (1999). He was recently named a finalist for the 2005 New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism.
A longtime observer of both business and environmental issues, Roberts writes and lectures frequently on the complex interplay of economics, technology, and the natural world. He appears regularly on national and international television and radio news shows.
Roberts concludes The End of Oil with recommendations for U.S. energy policy. Here are his three major proposals:1) The government should move immediately and aggressively to boost natural gas supplies.
2) The government should implement a "carbon penalty," not in the form of a carbon tax, but rather a carbon trading system, a cap-and-trade regime.
3) Finally, the government needs to launch an all-out drive to reduce Americans' high consumption of oil and energy.
