I’ll give the guy credit for pointing out that the energy problem has not gone away just because the price of gasoline has dropped, that is something that needs to be pointed out repeatedly until our fellow Americans come to grips with a rather inconvenient truth. On the other hand, I have to fault him for some of the other things he said in that piece. “Alternative” fuels, particularly ethanol, are unlikely to be a good answer to our transport energy needs. Ethanol is a wonderfully effective mind-altering drug and rocket fuel. As a ground transport fuel it stinks. Bio-diesel is a better option, but will only be truly effective if we have some breakthroughs in the husbandry of lipid producing algae. Otherwise, bio-deisel will never be of much help the area of transport fuels.

Additionally, I do not believe US carmakers are succumbing to foreign competitors because they are building gas-hogs. This is not a redux of the 1970’s. It think what is eating Detroit’s lunch is that their vehicles are hideously overpriced. I never dreamed that I would see the day when a half-ton pickup would sell for $45K. The decline in sales by US auto-makers began well before this latest round of price hikes at the fuel pumps.

The guy sounds good and looks even better, but he relies too much on the brainless blah-blah spouted in various media outlets, none of which seem particular interested in acquiring and relaying actual facts anymore. I’ve learned that it is necessary to double-check, even triple-check everything the news people report now-a-days. I think we have had enough of that kind of leadership in the current administration.

If he were serious about solving these problems, at least in the area of transport fuels, he would be championing a law which obliges us to begin driving plug-in hybrid vehicles during the next five years, preferably plug-in hybrids that use diesel engines. It is well past the time that we should have sent the gasoline engine after Sinclair.

When I hear a politician explain to the American people that we do NOT generate energy and that we are living on a vast and ancient savings account given to us by nature, I will take that politician seriously. For now, all I see and hear among them is more-worser idiocy.