Just to be clear...
... on who is causing this energy crisis. Three Dollar Gasoline: an Opportunity, Not a Crisis.
I found this and wanted to share it with you:
Democrats running for Congress are moving quickly to use the most recent surge in oil and gasoline prices to bash Republicans over energy policy.Oh really?
o This is the party that stopped the nation building nuclear plants.
o This is the party that toyed with carbon taxes.
o This is the party of Al Gore, now right in the middle of publicizing An Inconvenient Truth, “by far the most terrifying movie you will ever see.”
o This is the party that won’t let oil companies prospect for oil off the left and right coasts.
o This is the party whose activists prevented the US from building new petroleum refineries.
o This is the party that filibusters against drilling for oil in an arctic wilderness that just happens to be right next to a major oil pipeline with spare capacity.
And now Democrats are bashing Republicans over energy policy?
Ethanol is a bad additive, in the fact that it doesn't have enough joules per ounce as gasoline, so by adding it, we actually dilute the amount of energy in a gallon. This means more frequent trips to the pump, and more money shelled out.
Also, "non-polluting cars" like electric cars, make the same amount of pollution, it's just that the pollution occurs at the electric company rather than at the tailpipe. Hybrid cars cost more to purchase, and require expensive replacement of batteries when they go dead. This higher cost offsets any savings at the pump. You're creating the same amount of pollution, just in different ways.
If you want the price of energy to come down, let the oil companies explore our own natural resources. Our prices are going up because the speculators are driving it up because of the middle east. If we could produce more of our own oil, cheaper than we can get it from those robbers, then prices will go down and stay down. The trouble is we won't see it for 2-3 years after we say "go."