During a press conference last week Bush asked what he thought about economists’ predictions that we would see $4+ gas prices by early spring. He was surprised and said he had not heard that. This is frightening to say the least. The President of the United States, who started a war over oil that is estimated to cost us $5 trillion dollars before it is over, doesn’t know how much gas costs. I wonder if he knows what a burden this is for the average family- prices have tripled during his administration. And it’s not just gas. Heating oil and energy prices have skyrocketed.

Today oil passed the inflation-adjusted high reached during the Arab Oil Crisis of the late seventies and early eighties. World stock markets are in a tailspin. The House of Representatives have passed a bill ending $17 billion in handouts to oil companies (who made $146 billion in profits last year) and moving that money into alternative energy tax credits. These credits are critical to encouraging rapid development of sustainable energy alternatives that can help us end our oil addiction. Yet Republicans in the Senate are blocking this bill and the President is threatening a veto. This partisan block voting is destroying our economy in exchange for short term gain by an industry sector intimately associated with this Administration.

A team of US climate scientists using computer models has determined that there is no flexibility in how much greenhouse gas emissions we can continue to emit if we want to stop warming. The only viable goal is zero emissions. The value of this is that it gives us an unsullied goal, one that is easy to measure but very difficult to achieve. In fact I suspect the target we really have to shoot for is a negative emissions goal, one in which sequestration is an equally important part of the total number. This will be necessary to offset the growing demand for and use of energy worldwide by a rapidly growing global population. Those of us in the Western world have a responsibility to go beyond zero in our carbon emissions.

Apparently it’s not rocket science to do this but it would require a lot of power so they are proposing creating a nuclear-powered gasoline generation plant that would convert carbon dioxide into gas.

Just one more technology solution to throw into the mix. This one becomes viable when gas at the pump hits $4.60/gallon. The national average cost a year ago was $2.26, today its around $3.20 but oil closed above $100/barrel yesterday for the first time so that $4+ number could happen this year.

The economics of alternative energy sources get a lot more compelling as prices rise, just as do those of public transportation.

Could we finally stop the insanity over biofuels? They are nothing more than a gimmick created by the purveyors of corn seeds. Dirty, unstable, costly, increases the prices of thousands of other products and extremely dangerous from a carbon cost perspective. Great stuff.

Not.