To hold the line on global warming, our survival depends on us leaving the bulk of the remaining fossil fuel reserves in the ground. The country with the largest reserves, not the largest current sales, will fight the hardest to be allowed to extract and sell what they have left. Saudi Arabia has by far the largest reserve supply with more than ten times the reserves of the United States. The Saudis have exploited less than half of their original supply whereas we here in the US have less than 4 percent of our original oil still in the ground.

Most people are not aware that the Saudis overall defense spending ranks third behind the US and China, and ahead of Russia. Population wise, their country ranks 41st in the world with a smaller population than that of Canada.

The Saudis spend more per-capita on their military than any other country. They spend three times more for each of their citizens than the next highest ranking country and four times more per-capita than we do in the US.

Anyone who thinks that we are not headed for a donnybrook over this issue is a hopeless optimist. Given their huge historic oil production over the last hundred years, the Saudis and their neighborhood are sitting not only on the world's greatest oil reserve, but also on more accumulated wealth than any previous dynasty in history. The only country with close to this large a reserve is Canada.

Some of this oil wealth will certainly be dedicated to ensure a steady flow of oil into the world market regardless of other factors, including global warming. After all, the Saudis will not likely show much sympathy if the rest of the world begins to resemble a desert - their favorite ecosystem.

One expert who predicted this crisis is not pushing us to cut back on mining and burning carbon energy. Rather he suggests we instead prepare to hunker down inside of our cities and prepare to survive the coming blast furnace. Given that it has taken hundreds of millions of years for the earth to stash this carbon underground, we may be stuck inside for a very long time.