Oh yeah, good times... that was sarcasm, people!

People often buy into this myth that we will be able to plug our cars in and that will fix our energy crisis. Do the math - the energy potential in a barrel of oil versus a barrel of coal is substantial. One barrel can be refined into far more gasoline that carries a heat capacity that's strong enough to explode and drive our engine. Coal doesn't have this explosive punch found with oil. The density of oil is much higher. To produce the same amount of energy that is needed to run our cars, we will have to vastly increase the use of our coal reserves. Yes these reserves are large, but the bottlenecking issue of building new plants ("clean" ones that won't pump massive amounts of S02, Mercury and CO2 into the air) is a major issue. No one wants a new plant in their back yard. These plants take a while to get a license and for them to become sustainable. Other issues include the bottleneck of transportation of this coal. Our railway services are already having a difficult time taking the coal from Wyoming/Montana/West Virg. to the coal plants around the country.

Other's banter about the wonders of nuclear power. I can conceide that nuclear power has worked from some nations, like France and Japan. However, their nuclear plants are pretty well subsidized by their state. The expense of electricity production with all the added safeguards, the necessary concrete, the nuclear engineers, regular engineers, physicists, the refinement of uranium from the coal beds that we find it in etc. makes the cost of nuclear power pretty expensive. If we mass produce the plants (this will take 20 years to even begin looking feasible for mass production) they will only manage to meet current increases in demand for electricity. With about 70% of our oil consumption being used by vehicles - if we all begin to transition to electricity the strain on this source will be immense! The New York Blackout in 1998 (?) is an example of how shotty our current power infrastructure is. Even if we add the plants, our load carrying capacity is pretty awful right now. The cost of this electricity will skyrocket and will most likely be more expensive than the gas prices you are paying for right now.

Renewables - these are a good clean alternative, but are currently expensive to build and there are issues with their ability to produce a base load capacity to meet constant and peak demand (during hot or cold weather periods).

Elecricity --> Fuel cars conclusion - Look this day will eventually come. There are so many hurdles technological, economical, and structural issues that must be overcome before it's even possible for this nation to rely on this strategy. We are talking about a massive transition on a scale that this country has never really dealt with before. We've had small scale upgrades and new technology being introduced (like more efficient cars, the railways, or new highway systems), but we have never had a project that reaches the scale of altering the over 100 million or so cars that we currently have on the road. The American (and foreign citizens) public need to be prepared for a heavy transition period that will not be easy, swift, or cheap. Costs will stay high and will continue to rise. We should all begin our preperation to live in a world where a dollar, yen, donar etc. will not be able to buy as much as it would have when cheap energy was around. It's just math - if our world can produce things quickly and cheaply with easy to reach oil that was just seeping out of the ground 40 years ago, our world will have a difficult time producing the same amount of goods when that oil is harder to find and more expensive. Energy is the foundation of economies. If you get less out of the same amount of work, your currency and the goods that you produce will be reduced.

DRILL 4 OIL in ANWR AND OFFSHORE! This claim misses the point - drilling for offshore oil is not going to return us to a world of cheap oil. Oil was seeping out of the ground in Texas when it was discovered. It was easy to capture and then refine for gasoline. The cost of taking oil out of the ground on ocean platforms is much more expensive. The projects themselves do not guarantee that they'll find very much oil. It's more of a guessing game then drilling for oil in ANWR right now. Regardless - the speed at which we can find new oil reserves off the coast versus the speed of large oil finds in the early 1900's will not be nearly the same. Demand for this oil will continue to rise at a rapid pace that it will overshadow any netgains these oilrigs will be able to produce. Add into your calculation the failure rate of the rigs in finding large quantities of oil, and you will begin to understand that this Bush argument is just a red herring.

ANWR - Even if we drilling in ANWR tomorrow and automagically began to pump the oil to the US through the current pipeline you will not see much of a difference at the pump.

MSNBC:
"But even in the best case, the price impact - decades from now - would amount to about 1 percent of current market prices. If work started today, production would peak in 2027 - when increased production would have the biggest impact on prices. According to Department of Energy projections, that impact would cut the prices of light sweet crude (in 2006 dollars) by 41 cents per barrel in 2026 for the low estimate, 75 cents per barrel in 2025 for the mean oil resource case, and $1.44 per barrel in 2027 for the high estimate."

The era of cheap oil is dead.