[mrsmith]

Good solutions all.

I was looking through the FR archives and every March we're bombarded with "I'm shocked at high gas prices" threads when the summer reformulating starts.
I guess we always will be as long as drilling and nukes etc. are banned.

[backhoe]

Thanks for looking... in a perfect world, we'd build next-generation nuclear plants for most stationary power needs, drill onshore and offshore for gas & oil, and maybe even use clean coal technology for some types of plants.

We have an uphill struggle, however. Dern the Greens! Full Steam Astern...

[TopQuark]

I guess we always will be as long as drilling and nukes etc. are banned.

Oh, long after that as well. All intertemporal decisions have been priced into the forward contrats traded on futures markets --- even in the present set of constraints such as drilling restrictions. None of the posters is even addressing the presence of futures: it's all about the past and present, and the sky-is-falling present is so much worse than the sunny-sky past.

Even if you remove drilling restrictions, people who today refuse to learn economics and institutions of capitalism will continue to do so.