Energy and Politics

Thomas Sowell has a good article today at Townhall/GOPUSA/Human Events. He discusses the oil crisis:

"One of the dictionary definitions of a crisis is 'the point in the course of a serious disease at which a decisive change occurs, leading either to recovery or to death.'"

He then asks whether what we are facing is, in fact, an actual crisis. I would argue that if it has not yet reacehd that point, the current situation with oil is approaching an actual crisis. On the one hand, we can drill for more oil in Alaska (and perhaps even offshore, when the time comes that that decision has to be made). And doing this will certainly help, for a time. But eventually, the world oil reserves will reach a point where the supply cannot meet the demand, and when this happens, we need to have a backup system in place.
Unfortunately, political wrangling and finaggling, has eliminated or hampered most of our best options. Nuclear power is an excellent option, yet we are decommisioning nuclear reactors perhaps more often than commisioning new ones; environmentalists have a screaming fit every time a coal plant or hydro-electric dam is proposed; and the elitists such as Ted Kennedy (D-'Assachussetts)have opposed the construction of windmills for wind power in their neighborhoods.
Other possibilities include bio-electic power and solar power, both of which are extremely inefficient. One promising possibility is fusion, but the budget for research in this field has always been woefully short, and NIF, one of the two most promising fusion projects may have its budget cut before completion. Considering that the infrastructure is now in place and also considering that it can be used for nuclear stockpile stewardship without breaking any international treaties, this is very foolish; the House budget will fund it, the Senate budget won't. The other major project, ITER, has only now had a site selected for construction and will cost $billions (NIF has costed a total of ~ $3.5billion so far). And of course there are the oft-toted fuel cells, which are promising but still far from being ready for implementation (between remaining research and infrastructure changes). Finally, it is possible to manufacture oil synthetically, but at a much greater price than the current one.
What we have with oil right now is more of an artificial crisis than a real one: it has been largely created by politicians (on both sides) and by environmental extremists (read: psycopaths). However, an artificial crisis can be just as disastrous as a real one if a workable solution isn't found and implemented.