Carlos A. Rossi

As a Diplomat’s son from Venezuela I grew up inside the Beltway in Washington DC and became an Economist with the objective of learning why it is that some countries are poor and others are rich. My research in both the USA and Britain, were I did my under and postgraduate studies respectively, focused in resource rich/poor Latin America at one end of the spectrum, and resource poor/rich East Asia at the other and my most important publications in this initial phase of my career was a model of the export success of South Korea in a technical paper; and a book on the post WW II failure of Latin Americas development strategies entitled The Fall and Rise of Latin America, published in Venezuela in 2000.

As the millennium rolled on my interest and job shifted dramatically towards oil. That finite non renewable miraculous energy giver on which the world’s industrial and modern civilization absolutely depend on. After literally years of researching this topic from the wealth of information that I gained access to, given my almost seven year stint as the Chief Economic Advisor to the institutional representative of all privately owned international oil corporations in Venezuela, I became convinced that sooner than later world oil demand would outstrip available supply capacity with no substitutes at hand. Knowing well that this event was unprecedented in the entire history of mankind, not to mention the potentially devastating consequences for the entire economics of production, transport, finance and agriculture—a real life changing event for the worst—I became, to put it mildly, extremely concerned and increasingly so when I discovered, to my horror, that energy scientists are the only ones aware of this problem, but not economists, because they have never been trained on energy issues at all which precludes them from fully understanding energy’s all encompassing implications in manufacturing and money creation.

So I wrote my second book on the Epilogue of Oil and published it in Venezuela in 2007 and my third book on the Completion of the Oil Era: The Economic Impact and published that in 2010 in English through a prestigious New York Publishing company. Since oil depletion is a demand problem as much as it is a supply concern, I thought that it was imperative to get economists on board by informing them of this predicament in order to enlist their help while, simultaneously, offering temporary solutions that reduce oil demand and increase the availability of non conventional oil supply (through world coordinated monetary policy and investment strategies) with the sole objective of buying the necessary time for the scientists to build up alternative sources and uses of energy that are non-fossil, renewable, affordable, safe, efficient and environmentally friendly.

I am convinced that scientists can get this done from a combination of a wide variety of sources—which I discuss in my books--and that economists/politicians must buy them that time. I believe my last book offers the tools to achieve this with minimal economic repercussions. The Catch---economists must swallow their pride in two ways: First and foremost, they must change a big chunk of their thinking because energy really matters as it is the precondition of world production and sound money (I even rewrote the oldest and most important equation of economics in energy terms); and Two, economists must learn to take their cue from the energy scientists until the alternative energy sources are created and put in place.