I find it criminal to dismiss the instability in the Middle East in such a cavalier manner. I was so shocked by the treatment that I had to page up to find out when Mr. Henderson authored this and was stunned to see that it was post 9/11 rather than someone looking into the future unaware.

While the US primarily gets its oil from the US, Canada, and South America around 25% of our imports come from North Africa and the Middle East. This represents billions of dollars being funneled into nations and individuals that support terrorists either directly or indirectly with these funds.

Necessity is the mother of invention, but the father that must inseminate Mother Invention is money. In an effort to spur oil production and infrastructure the US has given tax breaks to oil companies almost since their inception. In 2009 alone oil companies received 14 billion dollars in tax breaks as well as sundry other incentives such as Congress waiving 65 billion in public royalties for access to oil and gas in Federal territory. This kind of investment might be justified if oil production was in its infancy but it already has massive infrastructure supporting it so we are giving corporate welfare on an epic scale to some of the richest companies on the planet.

There are several reasons we should be progressing towards independence from oil, the most important being that we will eventually run out. As Mr. Henderson points out, the US uses 20 million barrels of oil per day. The Top 10 oil users consume a total of 50 million barrels per day which is 18.25 billion barrels of oil per annum. Since oil requires millions of years to refresh current reserves are not being replenished at a sustainable rate. As such we are drinking a “shake” in gulps that is being refilled with an eye dropper so we need to find another source.

Baring environmental issues, a stopgap between oil and a truly renewable source of energy could be coal. The US has the largest coal deposits on the planet, representing approximately 27% of the world’s reserves. Russia is second with 17% and China is third with 12%. We are the “Middle East” of coal. Around 50% of the power in the US is generated by coal burning plants and 40% by petroleum. (This is why I find the environmental argument for electric powered cars so utterly ludicrous but that’s a different topic). Coal can be liquefied as well as turned into a gas and it can also be used in the production of ethanol. Unfortunately coal is no more renewable than oil.

Since I just raised the specter of ethanol let me address this as a fuel. Every time I read about ethanol, methanol, and other alcohol production it invariably discusses production using corn exclusively. This is ridiculous. Sugar cane is a much better terrestrial source of bio-matter for alcohol production than corn. With limited investment in bioengineering (less than the 14 billion we’re giving away to Big Oil every year) we could grow it in just about any climate corn currently grows in.

Some offer that the shift from food products to fuel production would cause the prices to rise at the market. This would be an excellent point if the US government didn’t pay growers to plow entire fields under the ground in an effort to keep prices high. In many cases farmers have great difficulty staying solvent and this is especially true in an age where cash crops like Tobacco have taken a hit due to social taboos. The growers in the State of California alone could easily feed everyone in the US and still have product to export. Everything north and east is gravy that is exported. Land for food is not an issue in the US.

However the land is not the only place we can grow alcohol producing crops. Giant Kelp can grow up to a yard a day. Instead of unsightly derricks bringing up oil we could build kelp farms that would grow on their own creating vast gardens for oceanic life as well as renewable energy. 75% of Earth is ocean.

Sewage and other waste material such as lawn clippings, moldy bread, etc. are an untapped source of energy in the form of various alcohols as well as waste gases such as Methane. Methane is 20 times more isolative than Carbon Dioxide so burning it off making energy is better than letting it escape into the atmosphere. There are already naturally occurring bacteria that break down bio-waste and turn it into gas and alcohol and we could bioengineer more efficient bugs that could do the job even better.

With all of this said I find it important to point out that these and other alternate energy sources such as nukes, vegetable oil, solar, wind, etc. do not need to replace oil – right now. All they have to do at this moment is provide competition in the free market so that oil prices do not continue to sky rocket and as oil becomes more and more scarce the infrastructure and technology will already exist to take up the slack.

70% of oil is used to power cars. We can either find a renewable way to fuel them or our grandchildren can go back to using horses like our grandparents did.