[Ace of Spades]

If we had kept our own programs going in the mid-80's, rather than gobble up that 60-cent gas, we'd probably be there by now too.

[econjack]

The problems pre-date the 1980's by decades. It began in the 1950's when oil was first discovered in the mid-east. (After all, oil is just rotten vegetation, so why look in a desert?) The US price for oil was $.40/bbl, but it was only $.10/bbl in the mid-east. The oil lobby approached Eisenhower and sold him the military view that we should not depend on the "politically unstable" mid-east and to prevent this, we should establish import quotas and tariffs on imported oil. Ike bought it, and the result was OPEC.

If we had been smart, even buying the military argument, we should have capped our wells, imported all the foreign oil we could at about half the domestic price, and sucked their fields dry. Had we taken the long run view then, now we'd be uncapping our fields and thumbing our noses at the tryants in the mid-east. Alas...the long run to a politician is his/her term of office...another gov't screw-up.

[tcrlaf]

If we had done REASONABLE THINGS(Nuke, Coal, Hydro-Electric) instead of wasting BILLIONS on pie-in-the-sky politicly-correct pipedreams like solar/wind, we wouldn't be in this boat, either........

We're HERE, NOW...
If we start TODAY, it's STILL going to take 10 years to dig out of this using technology we ALREADY have.....