Bartlett is undeterred.
He refers frequently to reports commissioned by the federal government that predict dire consequences for failing to prepare for the moment when petroleum production begins to decline - a scenario known as peak oil.
The Government Accountability Office warned last year that a quick decline "would require sharp reductions in oil consumption, and the competition for increasingly scarce energy would drive up prices, possibly to unprecedented levels, causing severe economic damage. While these consequences would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be especially vulnerable."
Bartlett believes that moment may now be arriving.
"You will never know that oil has peaked until you look back at it," he says. "This plateau [in global production] we've been on now for three years may in fact not be peaking. It may be a little plateau; there may be a pickup.
"I don't think there will be."
Bartlett is counseling "aggressive conservation," coupled with government-backed investment in renewable energy - a program he describes as requiring "the total commitment of World War II, the technology focus of putting a man on the moon and the urgency of the Manhattan Project."
The emphasis has put him out of step with many fellow Republicans. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner calls Bartlett "a tireless advocate for responsible energy policies."
But during the current debate, Boehner and other party leaders have focused not on using less or investing in alternatives, but on developing domestic oil production by opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the Outer Continental Shelf to drilling.
"I'm not really in sync with either side," Bartlett says. "Most of the Republicans, I can't get in their head, of course, but from what they say, I gather that they believe that the problem will go away if we drill and that we wouldn't even have the problem now if the Congress had done what they wanted to do 10 years ago and started drilling."
While his party talks about a multifaceted approach to energy, Bartlett says, members are paying only "passing lip service" to what he calls "the most urgent first step": conservation.
"I don't think the average Republican believes that there's any such thing as peak oil," he says.
