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Mr. Rosso has been Chairman of World Economic Forum USA Inc. since April 2006. Mr. Rosso served as Chairman of CNH Global N.V. from November 1999 until his retirement in[…]

It’s time for the U.S. to get serious about alternative energy.

Question: Can the world handle a global oil shock?

Jean Pierre Rosso: Well, I don’t know whether having the price are above the $110 versus 20 not long ago [inaudible] already a shock, what I realized what I observes is that we live with it and so it is sort of baffling in many ways but it is the way it is. So I don’t think we have a we have an oil short pact, we already have it and we are surviving it, I don’t think we, the last older shot that we had been in 70s. And I think the overall system now is  much more sophisticated than it was  30 years ago in  many respects but  also in terms of production, distribution of oil.,so I don’t see a  repeat of  what happend in the 70s now. Personal opinion of course   but I think the awareness that first of all I personally seeing oil is not already have been depleted, and that is one point, that doesn’t mean that we should not pursue aggressively all other forms of energies and to me the major reason to doing this, good reason is of course to upset potential risk of not having oil, but the major reason is to carbon emissions, the major reason is to protect the planet. So and obviously the alternative energies will not replace oil, but they will contribute to a better balance or energy sources so the only way to deal with the energy requirements of the world which will ever increase and unless we find a way to migrate into some other planets, will be to use all, all forms of the energies, oil and obviously nuclear and all the other alternative energy we need all of them it is not matter of choosing one we need all of them.

Question: Is oil managed rationally?

Jean Pierre Rosso: Yeah, because it is a market, it is a commodity market and then we have producers and buyers and well.  It is I don’t know about may be my answer is not correct because in fact, they don’t have a choice but we don’t have a choice we have to buy oil, so in a way we don’t have alternatives to go to, so it is not a true market in a way. The more I think about it, thinking loud now. It is not a true market because we are going to buy oil, until we are, because we are dependent here is the word, we are really dependent on oil, so if you depending in something I don’t think you can call it a free market.

Question: How is the petrol dollar shaping the new world?

Jean Pierre Rosso: I mean certainly  one observation you can make is that the funds are accumulated by the oil producers, which are called now sovereign  funds. Because they are state funds, have gone  tremendously with the ever increasing consumption of oil, demand for oil and the price of the dollart, the weakness of the dollar  I mean which had contributed to the  rise of the price of oil., So this  some of those  countries are sitting on huge funds now  that they are deploying. so upto now with , I think some very good level of discipline in terms of  looking on investments that are appropriate investments. Some people think that may be they will probably this power in to with the political motive and I don’t think so but I think that certainly in New York they are more concerned about this, and we limit probably we will limit those investment to some maximum level, but up to now the evidence is that, they are trying to invest there money smartly, as they should and I think that is good because when investment goes across borders like this, the best thing for the world going forward, one of the some of the best things as far as trade and across borders and investment across borders, because the more of this we do, the more tied we are together . So when China is heavily invested in US or vice versa then they are ties that are established here, that people have a hard time considering breaking up because they would, they loose-loose situation. So this is I think this is a positive thing. I think the US should invest massively in alternative energies including nuclear, I think US should reduce in dependence on oil, and you can argue of both course about drilling more, particularly in Alaska where pores and corns there but I think what the US should do is, in some I have said this is to embark into a massive plan to develop all resources of energies.

Date Recorded: 03/19/2008

Image courtesy of Shutterstock


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