The price of gas is shooting up again, and who knows how high it's going to get. Panic is starting to set in because, in one of history's most incredible displays of poor planning (or lack of planning), the American economy will fall apart unless there is plenty cheap oil. We burn an insane amount of this precious and dwindling resource: 10,000 gallons of oil per second (this is not a typo). We already burned off our cheap oil, and the only oil remaining is difficult to extract and therefore expensive. Our politicians refuse to say the phrase "peak oil," but that's what we are now facing. Obama's administration is now considering the following "solution": tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. That's because America has a huge amount of oil in its reserves--more than 727 million barrels of oil. That's enough oil to last us for [drum roll] about a month [sound of balloon deflating]. That's because we burn 21 millions barrels per day. Those who find solace in tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserves are either foolish or intentionally dishonest. We could embark on using less oil, but American politicians can't bear to even mention conservation or else they would face the torches and pitchforks of the populace. Conservation is a powerful tool to use--every barrel of oil that we don't burn is a barrel that we don't need to yank out of the ground from 5 miles under the Gulf of Mexico. With the amount of oil we could save through modest conservation, we could completely fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in about a month. But no politician dares to mention conservation because it amounts to telling Americans that there are limitations on their "freedom." Even though conservation will enhance our freedoms. You won't hear any politicians uttering the "C" word. Perhaps for this reason. Or these reasons. And though the conservatives have taken the lead on this dysfunctionality, "liberal" politicians are largely silent, and therefore complicit.

Conservative politicians insist that the United States is the Middle East of coal, and that we have no energy worries if we could only just get over our global warming worries. They often claim that the United States has enough coal to supply us for 250 years. They also insist, without any basis, that there is a way to burn coal cleanly, economically, and efficiently. There are many reasons to doubt these claims of conservatives, but let's assume that they are correct about all of them. Those who want to base our energy policy on coal have another huge problem. The November 18, 2010 issue of Nature available online only to subscribers) warns that recent forecasts suggest that coal reserves are running out much faster than most people believe. Therefore, "energy policies relying on cheap coal have no future." Authors Richard Heinberg and David Fridley indicate that "world energy policy is gripped by a fallacy--the idea that coal is destined to stay cheap for decades to come." They give two reasons for their urgent warning:

First, a spate of recent studies suggest that available, useful coal may be less abundant than has been assumed-indeed that the peak of world coal production may be only years away. One pessimistic study published in 2010 concluded that global energy derived from coal could peak as early as 2011. Second, global demand is growing rapidly, largely driven by China.… Since 2000 it has been surging at 3.8% per year… Economic shocks from rising coal prices will be felt by every sector of society.