Matt Simmons is author of “Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy” and founder of Simmons and Company International, a Houston-based energy investment banking firm managing over $60 billion in assets, Simmons is also a former energy advisor to President Bush.

Simmons recently told a standing-room only audience at the Center for the Arts that Katrina may well be remembered as the start of “our great energy war,” and that “we’re almost at the verge of having real energy shortages.”

Outlining the worst case scenerio, Simmons remarked that; “We could be looking at $10-a-gallon gas this winter.”

Simmons’s Plan B begins with a reform of energy data, which would mandate that all key oil and gas producers compile field-by-field production reports on a timely basis. Such data would include the number of average wellheads, so that “for the first time analysts can do reliable supply forecasts.”

Simmons next calls for rebuilding and modernizing the globe’s aging energy infrastructure, lest it should decay and become unusable. “Supply on the ground won’t matter if it can’t get to where it needs to go,” he said. Thirdly, “We need an R&D program that hasn’t been tackled in 100 years to start inventing some new forms of energy that don’t exist today.”

Finally, Simmons advocated establishing a conservation plan to determine ways to do more with less. “We need to address the shipment of goods,” he said, “which is by far the single worst way we use energy. Public Enemy Number One is ironically not the SUV; it’s large trucks going long distances over our highways.” To increase efficiency and cost savings, railroads and freight cars are preferred transport modes.

You might say that a Green is a conservative who’s had a good hard look at the energy numbers.