You're one of those compromising, mediator types, aren't you? You don't have to apologize for everything, especially not for acting on your own nature. Relax a little, and be more confident with your own opinions.
Hell, if you grow a thick enough skin and can stand getting batted around a bit, you're welcome to jump right into these arguments as much as you want. It complicates things to argue on multiple fronts, but it's also more exciting... though if you don't feel like it, I understand. Most people wouldn't jump between a tiger and a bear.
Bang on there, Ramsus. It's a habit I've developed to compensate for how I used to act: I used to be quite the asshole, to put it mildly. I would always lash out towards people through sheer emotional immaturity and then act as the victim when they responded in kind, only fostering more of my foolish behavior. I've been overcompensating for such behavior now, but it is far preferable to how I used to be.
Anyway, to follow your advice...
We've got a huge situation on our hands, people, and it's called Peak Oil. As stated by Lord J, gasoline prices are artificially low, as are crude oil prices. That spike we had recently? That was a sign of the real price. Expect the price of a barrel of crude oil to leap to at least $150 dollars by the end of year, and for it to just continue going up.
Peak Oil is an easily understood phenomenon once the specifics are laid out. It has nothing to do with running out of oil, so much as it has to do with demand outstripping supply. Imagine a bell curve--this curve shows the supply of oil. Now imagine a diagonal line starting at the left side of the bell curve and proceeding steadily upwards. This is the demand. Now, what happens when that line goes above the curve?
Oil is an inelastic good, and for those of you who do not remember from high school economics what this means, it means it's not a good that can be easily sacrificed like, say, TVs. It's a good that is necessary regardless of price and as such demand rarely changes all that much with the price.
But how is so important, you ask? After all, it's just what we use to drive our cars with, right? Think again. First off, even if it just was the personal transportation that oil was used for, it is quite the enormous amount--easily millions of barrels per day. Oil is used in production of many goods, such as those very cars that are being driven--often the amount of oil used is equal to the amount it will consume across its entire lifetime. Plastics are also manufactured with oil...consider how many plastic items you have in your house right now? I've got two in front of me: a green cereal bowl and my trusty water bottle I take everywhere, though most probably the LCD monitor also used plastic.
Oil is also used heavily in the production of food as well as the transportation of food. All of our current methods of farming--especially the fertilizers--rely on oil. We transport our food over thousands of miles of road with huge trucks, a woefully inefficient method but one we've never sought to change.
Oil--and other fossil fuels--also form the backbone of our energy infrastructure. Take out all of the fossil fuel power plants and you're left with enough power for, say, maybe the state of Colorado, and that's about it.
Our way of life cannot go on. We rely too much on free energy, on the ability to simply waste at will, and so on. Consider the ridiculous amounts of energy, water, and fuel consumed by the city of Las Vegas in even one night! It is simply ludicrous. We will not be able to maintain it, quite simply. We must alter our way of life, and we must do it NOW.
First, we've got to quit relying on cars. You may mock this as the "back to bicycle era" method but quite honestly you're not going to have a choice and such a method is not as compromising as you might think.
Second, we need better mass transit: consider the size of the United States and the way it is set up. It's perfect for mass amounts of rail track everywhere. Trains are wonderful for so many things--once brought up to date with fuel economy standards, as is easy to do, they will be the most efficient method of shipping goods and of transporting people across this country.
Oh, and forget the planes. You're not going to have easy air travel anymore. Sorry, but that's just how it is.
We also need to replace our energy production plants with the next best thing when it comes to cheap energy, and that is nuclear fission. Get over it, hippies, it's a lot safer than you think and if you want to keep smoking those bongs in your home you're going to need energy for that home and that energy source will have to be nuclear fission. Nothing else is practical at the moment.
If we can break down our reliance on vehicles we will buy enough time to alter the rest of our infrastructure. Since personal transportation accounts for approximately 70% of our oil usage we can and we will be able to change the rest of what we do, such as farming, industrial production, and the like, but we need to do it now. We have very little time to act...in a way, it's like that scene so often shown in movies or T.V. shows of people in a car that is precariously perched on a cliffside, about to fall. We can escape, but only if we let that car fall. If we do so in time, we will be able to give ourselves the time to research the methods we need...but if we don't, we won't have that necessary time.
But, no matter what happens, make no mistake: the United States will not remain a superpower for much longer. Get over it, uber-nationlists...your precious superiority over the rest of the world will not be maintained for much longer.
Is this sad? Yes. Is it something we don't want to here? For fuck's sake, absolutely yes...I know I hate hearing it. But is it reality? Yes, and we must face it. Our nation refuses to face reality on so many subjects...religion...global climate change...the rights of homosexuals...but if we don't face reality on this situation, we are, to put it mildly, screwed.
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