However, we can live without bananas.

Obviously the price hasn't been derived from supply and demand, as other prices are. I believe that's why people are angry. If bananas suddenly became $50 a bunch, then people would stop buying bananas. Eventually, the price would come down when the bananas were rotting in piles. However, we can live without bananas. Currently, we can't live without oil. We are dependent on it for too many things. There's no way we can stop buying it. We need to pave our roads, heat our homes, fuel our automobiles. We're emotional because we're frustrated.

That's why the answer is not more drilling. It's not more oil. We have no choice but to bring alternative fuels to the marketplace and make them readily affordable to the average consumer. I believe that our future depends on it.

True enough. But bringing alternative fuels to market in sufficient quantities to satisfy demand will take years. Don't forget that to develop, market, and distribute alternative fuels takes infrastructure, transportation, and investment. Of course, it also takes machines and vehicles et al that can utilize those alternative fuels.

How about instead of repealing the federal tax on gasoline, which really couldn't guarantee that the money would end up in the consumer's pocket, the federal government uses that money to increase tax rebates to people who buy hybrids? Or increase subsidies for people who put solar panels on their roofs? That wouldn't take much time at all! Or how about the billions that have been spent on a military effort that was based on a lie, why don't we use some of those billions for alternative fuels? If we had, I bet we'd all be driving cars that run on water by now.

If wishes were horses ...!

CdLCN, the Soviet Union? I thought they disbanded? Mortal Enemy? Sounds like the 1950s.

(Not to transform this crucial but irrelevant to the topic at hand sub-point into a sub-thread, but..,)

[ACTUALLY, yes, the Russian GOVERNMENT was at one time our mortal enemy, in that, they represented a diametric opposite to our own ideas of how the machinations of "free" government and commerce should function.

There's a old saying that Russia is a land of many ruled by a few. That's b/c it was a feudalistic society who's ties to lineage and power date back centuries if not longer. If the oligarchs, land barons and tycoons of Russian's infrastructure had it's way in East Asia then half of the world would pretty much be ruled by a highly concentrated conglomeration, comprised of the "winners" of the Capitalist game in Asia, a competition which actually went into GAME OVER mode about 5 centuries ago. Instead, we stopped the "Communist" push in East Asia, which weakened the enemy, thus enabling their own ppl to end the centuries old reign of Feudal ties (somewhat figuratively speaking, that is).

Let's not forget that Stalin and his goons managed to somehow, someway, murder about THREE times the number of ppl that Hitler did. The same regime that trained Dogs with explosives strapped on them to run under German tanks ya, that's a true story...

And I'm by no means trying to be a xenophobe here, but parts of the world were living in the medieval days about 50 yrs ago, as a few are still today. I mean, we all rip on the U.S b/c it's our right to. We watch Stephen Colbert and use George Bush toilet paper b/c it's healthy tribal behavior. But if our "mortal enemy" had their post-WWII vision implanted as opposed to the Western ideal, you can be sure the world today would be a starkly different place
and I'll conjecturize here and say we would probably all be picking root-vegetables like our comrades. Basically, there would be a virtually infinite number of Russian principalities with populations of about 2,000 (perhaps 200) citizens, with nuclear weapon capability, who would constitute a large portion of the world's superpowers, and this is not favorable to anyone.

Watch FFC's Patton again, man. Patton was right-on, we shouldn't have stopped before we got to Berlin, we should have rolled right on into Moscow and finished the war there.*

If we had, it's quite plausible that there would never have been the East Asian wars (Nam, etc), no 'floating' Russian nuclear war heads today that might fall into the hands of someone bent on destroying U.S cities, as well as no Russian war in Afghanistan and thus...no C.I.A trained and armed Al-Queda carrying out 9-11. I've heard several comedians including Bill Maher use that line of thought in one of their bits, it's alarmingly funny b/c it's so frighteningly true.


*= And we could have in fact quite 'conquered' them, not in the Russian or German sense of the word mind you, but just the same as we would have all been drinking vodka (owned by Germans) if the Nazis had won WWII, Russia would have been James Dean watching, McDonalds eating, 57 Chevy driving, surfing..(well, no surfing in Russia, aww), Rock n Roll listening, day-trading capitalist bastards like us but about 50 yrs earlier if we had the same conquering spirit of those darned Cossacks.]

A lot of electricity is produced from burning coal. Electric cars are also an indirect dependence on fossil fuels, though not oil. It is not green, unless the electricity is hydro-electric (a big contributor depending on the country of production) or probably wind, geothermal, solar etc (which are far too small contributors). Both nuclear and coal-based electricity are not environment friendly by any chance. Green cities maybe, but not green in general.

The state of NJ is trying to get windmill farms out in the ocean, but you can imagine the environmental challenge that will present.

The state of New Jersey IS an environmental challenge.

Alaskans suffer nation's highest gasoline prices

Motor vehicle fatalities are down 9% this year. "Experts" cite the decrease in driving (and speeding) - especially drunk driving- as a major reason. And this is due to the increase in gas prices.

Sounds like some convoluted reasoning, but hey, why not?

WASHINGTON -- The high cost of gas may be hurting your bottom line, but it could also be a life saver.