Check out the July 13 edition of Rolling Stone, where Al Gore concludes that the real energy issue is not whether we will “run out” of fossil fuels.  Rather, the question is whether we will burn so much of the existing supply to make the entire planet uninhabitable before rethinking our energy policy:

The fact that oil is beginning to get more expensive more quickly will contribute to the realization of how dysfunctional our current pattern is. Take the tar sands of western Canada. For every barrel of oil they extract there, they have to use enough natural gas to heat a family’s home for four days. And they have to tear up four tons of landscape, all for one barrel of oil. It is truly nuts. But you know, junkies find veins in their toes. It seems reasonable, to them, because they’ve lost sight of the rest of their lives . . .

Right now we are borrowing huge amounts of money from China to buy huge amounts of oil from the most unstable region of the world, and to bring it here and burn it in ways that destroy the habitability of the planet. That is nuts! We have to change every aspect of that.

Gore also comments on the the series of huge blunders this administration has made in Iraq:

If you had written this in a novel before it all played out, you’d get the proverbial rejection slip — nobody would believe it.