The price of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel is rising at record paces with no end in sight.  We must begin now, and hope we aren't too late already, to develope and deploy alternatives to petroleum based fuel if the economy of the country, indeed our very way of life, are to be saved.  We will not save enough by increasing the mileage of cars -- we must wean ourselves from gasoline.  Corn based fuel is a joke.  It uses more petroleum to prepare the fields, plant, harvest, transport and convert corn into ethonol than we benefit from it.  Wind and solar power are somewhat reasonable sourses of electric power in some parts of the country, but they do little for our transportation needs.  Nuclear power is a wonderful source of electricity, but there are too many roadblocks from the NIMBY's to build many plants.  We need to have the vast majority of our electric needs powered by nuclear plants, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.  There is much research being done to extract hydrogen from sea water to power fuel cells that can run cars and even provide our homes with abundant electric power. 

We need a president who understands that to fix our energy problems in the future, we must start NOW.  We need programs to develope all the above energy sources and others that are on a scale of the 1960's programs to put men on the Moon.  The spinoffs from such research and development will rival if not eclipse the spinoffs from the space research when products from Velcro to personal computers entered our lives. 

I'm getting old and don't have kids.  By the time America turns into a third world country because we don't have affordable fuel sources for transportation and electrical generation, I'll be dead and gone.  I do feel sorry for the generations to come, howver.  Without adequet power, they will never know the America I have known and loved all my life.