Fish awakens

Over on the pub a discussion broke out because my wife recently bought a Prius. Some people thought that planning for increases in energy costs was akin to asking for prices to rise. I posted this in response

I've been an advocate of an "apollo" like program to end the US dependence on imported oil since about 1974. 

We cannot drill our way out of this, but not drilling doesn't help even more. In the meantime I don't believe that the attitude of 1 of us, or even 50 million of us will impact the price at the pump for the foreseeable future. We are held hostage to a legacy of bickering and indecision reaching back to the first Arab oil embargo in 1973-74. Every President and every congress since then has failed us in a most fundamental way. We should have realized then that it was only a matter of time before this would undermine our country. 

I honestly believe that we need a leader who can stand up and make this stick:

"Part of what makes the US both free and successful is the fact that we have millions of cars. Personal transportation is one of our greatest success stories. Instead of insisting that Americans change the way they live, limiting our freedom, our choice and destroying our standard of living, our very culture, we should instead embrace this fundamental fact and address the real issue, that being our dependence on energy imports. The fix for this is twofold; 1. we drill every greasy spot in sight in order to increase supply which will reduce prices (short term fix) and 2. we invest in converting ourselves to a hydrogen economy (the long term solution). That investment will be expensive but in the end the US will once again be the innovator of the world by being first. That investment will pay us back many times over just as the Apollo program has."

In the meantime reality rears it's ugly head, gas will hit 5 or 6 dollars a gallon this year and it's a damn good bet that it won't go down much. Smart people plan for reality, I'm also installing a new highly efficient furnace this spring and doing a fair amount of work to the house intended to cut my heating and cooling costs because those are going to skyrocket along with gas and every other thing we purchase.