Soaring global demand for energy and rapid depletion of resources need to be addressed by a long-term government-led project similar to the World War II-era effort to develop an atomic bomb, University of Southern California scientist Anupam Madhukar said at the annual National Energy Symposium on Thursday.

"A sense of urgency is needed like the Manhattan Project or sending a man to the moon," Madhukar said.

But the scientists spoke of the difficulty of a paradigm shift in the way the United States addresses its energy needs to fend off an energy crisis on the order of the 1970s, scientists and politicians at the symposium said.

They agreed that it would take 50 years to shift energy consumption policies in a more sustainable direction, pointing at how, for most of the 1800s, the United States relied on wood for its energy needs.

After forests were depleted, it took half a century for the country to make the shift to coal, and it will take just as long to shed what President George W. Bush has called "our addiction to oil," according to scientists.

"There has never been a year in history when we have used less energy than the year before, and it would be optimistic to think that we could reverse that trend," said Nathan Lewis, professor of chemistry at the California Institute of Technology.

The United States consumes one-fourth of the world's energy. China, India, Germany, Japan and Bangladesh have a combined population of 2.9 billion, and together consume less energy than the United States, with a population of 290 million.

Scientists said that to keep up with demand, the country must diversify its energy portfolio by developing technologies in natural gas, biofuel and nuclear, wind and solar power.

Madhukar stressed the urgent need for a concerted state-led effort at diversification.

"Clearly, all possible sources must be pushed to their limits," he said, emphasizing the need for expansion of solar energy in the country's mix.

"Solar energy is independent of geopolitical barriers, and if we are to begin to meet the energy needs of the future, we will have to look towards the sun," he said.

The high dependence on oil, as Bush pointed out, has left the country vulnerable to sharp shifts in energy prices and supplies. Currently, the United States imports about 65 percent of its oil.

Henry Lee, director of the environmental and natural resources program at Harvard University, said the United States is not running out of crude oil; obtaining it is just getting more expensive.

"We never ran out of whale oil, either," he said of the fuel that was popular in the early 19th century, until demand and scarcity sent prices soaring and users turned to alternatives.

Only one-third of the Earth's oil reserves have been consumed to date, Lee estimates. "The oil is just harder to get, too, and will cost more and more to extract," he said.

"If the price of oil stayed at 70 dollars a barrel, we would see tremendous investment in alternative fuels in this country," said Lee. "But few people believe the price of oil will stay this high."

Some scientists believe the United States cannot afford to wait 50 years for a substantive change in energy practices.

With former US vice president Al Gore's global warming film "An Inconvenient Truth" and the upcoming film "Who Killed the Electric Car" both generating considerable buzz over climate change and alternative fuels, a sense of urgency may be imminent.

Solar power is a key focus of alternative energy research. Scientists estimate that more energy from the sun hits the Earth every day than all of the energy generated from fossil fuels in a year.

But scientists and engineers have not yet figured out how to efficiently store solar energy.

Analysts agreed at the energy symposium that any tangible change in energy policy will require firm governmental leadership. But some believe that conservation is also driven by localized responsibility.

"Just look at this room," said Debbie Cook, a city council member from Huntington Beach, just south of Los Angeles.

"There's a gas fire in the fireplace in the middle of June and a tremendous amount of unnecessary lights hanging from the ceiling."

"Energy is the engine of growth for civilization," said Lewis. "It is the currency of the world." Scientists just believe the United States is squandering this currency.

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