I can see that suggesting one review their career choices on the basis of increasing oil prices is indeed a sensitive issue. How do you tell a person their dream is likely to turn into a nightmare?
In response to the two prior posts I say:
1. One essential trait of an airline pilot is to be "ahead of the aircraft". You must think way ahead of just here and now. Perhaps this should be applied to one's career choices...
2. Another essential trait of an airline pilot is "aggressive conservatism". Safety is everything. If the fact that your career choice is not "safe" is worn like a badge of honour, then perhaps you should choose the military so you can truly fly at the edge of the envelope...
It is one thing to look at the world through rose coloured glasses and expect a solution to simply appear. It is another thing entirely for that to eventuate. Everything in life follows a pattern of Cause and Effect.
New technologies won't simply appear because the world desperately needs them. Sadly, they only emerge when economically justifiable. Governments don't have the guts to legislate for wholesale environmental or technological change, because that would damage economies and affect jobs. As Peter Garrett has shown, even the most principled compromise. Tasmanian Pulp Mill, anyone?
What does this mean? It means oil prices have to be astronomically high for a long period of time before energy companies are prepared to invest the billions, or even trillions, to bring new technologies to market. They will not risk new investment if there is any danger of the oil price slipping back to sustainable levels, because that would mean people revert back to oil, effectively rendering investment in new technology wasted. So oil has to remain so high for so long, and reserves need to plummet to critically unsustainable levels, that the emergence of new technologies is the only rationally economical solution. Cause and Effect.
If you work for a large company, you will understand that NOTHING happens without a business case. So the companies will wait, and wait, and wait, until the new technology business case makes sense. This could be years. And after that, how long till the new technology steps up to the plate? Maybe decades. And in the interim oil prices will remain prohibitively high. The world commercial jet fleet numbers the tens of thousands. That's without considering military, turboprop and piston aircraft. After the new technology finally emerges, the changeover will take generations. In the meantime, the industry as we know it will die a death of a thousand cuts, taking your job an mine with it. It is not the lack of new technology that will kill us, rather the time lag before it emerges. Cause and Effect.
Only today the President of Venezuala Hugo Chavez raised the likelihood of $200 per barrel in the event of a US invasion of Iran. This could happen within 12 months. And when I sign on tonight and order another 30 tonnes of jet fuel, and I will wonder how many of tonight's passengers would actually be on the aircraft if that prediction comes true. And what would that do to my job? Cause and Effect.
United Airlines see the issue very clearly. The talk is of grounding 100 aircraft (
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/busine...zbriefs08.html). In the meantime, flying schools continue to dazzle you with the prospects of a high flying career. Perhaps while they're at it they should sell you a taxi licence. most of them run on LPG...
Boom then Bust.
Cause and Effect.