You should bet on ethanol. If the US doesn't do it, others will and you will have to pay them to use the patents.
The US will never see a change in the Middle East until it gets away from oil. Never. Why?..
Well, why did the US revolution happen? Taxation without representation. Right now there are no taxes in Saudi Arabia. None. Not sales tax, not income tax. Why? Because they pump all of the government revenues out of the ground. They don't tax their people b/c they don't have to. The people in Saudi aren't particularly interested in any form of democracy b/c they don't pay taxes. Get away from oil, and political reform in the Middle East and Gulf will have to follow.
And your statement about it affecting GDP is straight out of the mouths of corrupt oil corporations who have fed Islamic regimes for decades. If anything moving away from oil will boost growth by providing jobs in parts of the US where they are most needed, and will stop us subsiding and paying the Saudis enough money so they can fund loonies to blow up US hotels, embassies, and trade centers around the world.
In 2004, for example, the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration analyzed a carbon-cutting plan advanced by Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, (http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/analysispaper/sacsa/pdf/s139amend_analysis.pdf)
which aimed to stabilize greenhouse emissions. The energy administration estimated that reaching this target would cause U.S. GDP to be 0.4 percent less than it would otherwise have been in 2028. Since GDP was projected to grow by 90 percent between the time of the study and that year, this meant that the nation could address climate change and still experience growth of 89.6 percent over the period.
In 2001 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calculated that stabilizing carbon emissions at an acceptable level -- defined as slightly higher than today's -- would cause world GDP to be 4 percent lower than it would otherwise have been in 2050. Again, that is a modest cost -- roughly one year of decent growth for the world economy.
>You should bet on ethanol.<
And just what do you think fuels the tractors that are used to grow and harvest corn?
The production of ethanol uses more energy than it produces.