A Manhattan Project for Alternative Fuels?

Independence from Oil? America Has the Way. We Just Need the Will. What We Don't Need is More Excuses

America and Oil Dependency: An Abusive Relationship We Can't Get Out Of?

Oil at $147 per barrel. Gasoline pushing $4.50 per gallon. Remember those days? It wasn't long ago - just this last July of 2008, gasoline prices were threatening to crush consumer spending budgets. A popular joke popping up around then went, "She asked me to take her to some place expensive. So I took her to the gasoline station."

But then the great tsunami of the subprime crash struck the shores of the US economy, inundating and utterly submerging the oil price crisis into obscurity. Between the massive exodus of index oil speculators dumping their shares, and the economic crash, oil prices were sent to the bottom of the sea to settle at, as of the writing of this article, under $40 per barrel.

Suddenly, all that talk about alternative energy quieted down. Two divergent realities are now emerging with respect to low oil prices and the economy: due to lower gasoline prices, SUV sales are projected to outsell car sales and hybrid vehicle sales in December of 2008; but because of the souring economy, Americans are driving less - 100 billion miles less, as of the November 2007-October 2008 period.

What this means for now is, Americans are using less gasoline because, for many, there isn't a job to drive to. Of course, many people are also moving away from rural areas to urban areas where they're closer to work, plus there are the occasional hyper-milers and a continual rise in the use of public transportation. But Americans are also buying gas guzzling SUVs because per mile, gasoline is cheaper.

What this means in the future is, when the economy recovers, Americans will be caught again in the midst of a firestorm of skyrocketing gasoline prices, driving their gas guzzling SUVs that, like in 2008, they found themselves desperately trying to sell off.

Why do we keep doing this to ourselves?