We need to move toward alternative energy sources as quickly as possible, and the government meeds to help make it happen, not just sit on their asses and say it's a great idea but too far away. We give huge subsidies to oil companies in the form of favorable leases and tax breaks --- billions of dollars to industries that already make billions of dollars. And those billions do not get us any closer to the day when we will be secure in our energy resources and reponsible to our environment. We need to devote cash money to developing alternative like solar, wind and geothermal for electricity. And we need alternative transportation fuels. There are several suitable renewable transportation fuels that would not need a major re-enginering of our infrastructure. Many of these technologies involve converting solid and liquid waste into fuel --- so once developed, it solves two problems simultaneously, turnring a source of polution into a source of energy. If even half the money we already use to subisdize the oil industry were devoted to developing these alternatives, maybe we'd find a way forward.

I'm not happy about gas prices or heating fuel prices. No one is. However, the one bright side is that as prices go up, people begin to do the things that we should be doing already for sustainability reasons. The cost makes people start looking for the alternatives. The cheap gas is just plain running out as demand around the world rises for a resource that is getting scarcer and scarcer. We knew this day would come, just not so suddenly. It's time to face reality, adjust, and begin to move aggressivley toward the future. Usually Americans are pretty good about facing a crisis once it actually happens, so hopefully we can do that this time without too much pain or too much delay.