Regarding hydrocarbon energy, this adminstration with Bush as its " front man " has chosen a course of attacking other countries like Afganistan and Iraq, for the real purpose of setting up permanent military bases, to position itself to try and control the vast energy reserves of these regions. If, we as a country, really had easily available alternatives to our increasingly drastic energy predicament, then why do you think this corrupt administration, would choose to go to all the trouble of the military campaigns they are engaged in, half way around the world. If alternative energy sources that could be available to the US are truely in a position to compensate for our lost supplies of hydrocarbons, is there then not money to be made by the " profit driven " huge corporations of our time, in the development and business of alternative energy sources? I think it is truely telling, that the only apparent choice our current so called " leaders " are choosing, immoral as it is, is to attack other countries to control, and take thier supplies of hydrocarbon energy. Watch and see if enthanol, Canadian tar sands, oil shales, nuclear, solar, wind power, wave power, hydrogen, etc, etc, actually span the gap of what we will soon be losing of hydrocarbon energy that runs our world, and our vast and complex economies.