I hear a lot of discussion about the reasons congress doesn't "do something about high gas prices". I find this amusing on many levels - what in the world do they think congress can do about the price of gasoline? The high prices aren't the result of some decree declaring high gasoline prices to be the law of the land. They're a result of steadily increasing demand against an oil supply that's looking more and more like it's flattening out. Speculators are starting to think we may have hit Peak Oil already.

Peak Oil is basically the idea that at some point the world will max out its ability to produce oil, while demand will continue to increase, forcing oil into an ever-increasing spiral of price inflation. Even Dick Cheney and some old school bastions of the oil industry believe it's coming, so who am I to argue? Oh, they don't usually use the term "Peak Oil", because it has political connotations and associations that link it to wild-eyed anti-status-quo evolutionaries like me, but they mean the same thing - that demand has outstripped production in a permanent sense. The result? Someone, or someones, will be slowly strangled at the power nozzle, whether it's us, China, India, or all of the above - the slow death of industry by asphixiation.

Unless, of course - FSM forbid! - somebunny in the race cheats, and invents or discovers an energy technology that can fulfill the role petroleum has played without having to actually suck it out of the ground in the Middle East. Combine that with, just maybe, people realizing there's a problem and self-limiting. Maybe a couple people trade in their Hummer Commuter Tanks for Prius, and cut our carbon emissions by 20%.

And the thing that strikes me as crazy is this: Alternative energy is patriotic in the most sincere sense of the word! Our single greatest national security risk is the fact that our economy can be held hostage by the very nations we've just pissed off by kicking through Iraq like we own the place. Face it, without the oil money, the Middle East is full of third world countries. Not that I wish that on them, I just think it's inevitable at this point, largely due to our (the US) steady policy of destabilization and the cultural leanings of those peoples.

Whatever happens, we can be sure of one thing - the petroleum party is just about over, and a bunch of shit will get shaken up. I'm just going to try and position myself to ride out the bumps without losing my seat.