Ending Our Addiction to Oil - Reality Check

[COBRADOC]

Here’s a reality check on “Greening” our way out of our need for oil. So far, it’s the best analysis I’ve seen on the subject. Yes, it tends to get a little political, but the numbers are the real story.

http://www.newmediajournal.us/staff/kraft/2008/06302008.htm

[freesw]

What we have is not an oil addiction, or an ethanol addiction, but an "energy addiction."

Exactly.

The party's over. Back to the Stone Age. The horse and buggy age, at least. And it should be obvious that turning most of America into biofuel farms, or a space the size of Arizona into an Algae Fuel factory, is not a practical solution.

This is typical of the article's problem: presenting the choices as either-or, all-or-none. Switching to the alternative fuels mentioned to the degree realistically possible (and then trying a little bit harder than that, since otherwise little will actually be done) is one of the approaches that can help us out of our dilemma. But we also do have to conserve energy far better than currently. We do need a "Manhattan type project" for developing more fuel efficient means of accomplishing what we need energy to do. But we also have absolutely got to change the way we view frivolous energy consumption. It's time to move past that, into an era of conscious energy use, where we think about how we organize our lives in terms of reducing energy use where and when possible.

And yes, tire guages are a part of that.