Short term gain for long term pain

When are we going to stop selling our future? I read today how President Bush was in Saudi Arabia seeking higher oil production and I have to think, why? Yeah I hate paying $4/gallon for gasoline as much as the next person, but I also can look beyond today and realize that we're headed for major problems unless we can curb our appetite for oil. The CIA says that according to estimates for 2005, the U.S. consumed 20.8 million bbl/day of oil. More recent estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration places oil consumption in 2008 at 20.6 million bbl/day. At the current rate of $127/bbl, that works out to $2.6B/day or just under one trillion dollars/year on crude oil.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 allocated a whopping $2B for renewable energy research. Doesn't that seem a little ludicrous? Allocating just barely 0.2% of the money spent on oil to research alternatives? It almost sounds like most U.S. citizens plans for saving for the future, far too little far too late. Yes, I'm sure there are other sources of research money for non-petroleum based energy, but is it enough?

I don't believe we'll do anything serious about oil consumption until we hit a crisis. I believe our government and society is caught up in only looking at the short term. Unfortunately we need to make hard decisions and investments now that will hurt in the short term, but will pay off some time in the future. We should be investing at 10 times the current rate in alternative and renewable energy resources. Given the recent past events such as the sub-prime mortgage crisis, are we really able to delay gratification and to the smart thing instead of the expedient thing?

The real question is: Do the Baby Boomers, of which I'm a part, have the guts to do what it takes instead of mortgaging our children's future? For our children and grandchildren's sake, I sure hope so.