It won't be here forever

It's the first day of winter. The Fall was relatively mild, so, despite the sharp run-up in the price of oil, I haven't spent much on oil yet this heating season. In fact, I'm averaging less than $100 a month. I wonder how much longer heating oil, a finite resource, will be available to the average schmuck like me. Consider:

• Another superpower - China - that needs oil is emerging. 40% of the demand for oil over the past few years have been the result of China's growth.
  
• No one really knows how much oil is still in the ground and the oil people are not being very helpful in answering the question. Shell Oil lied about its reserves. Saudi Arabia, supposedly the largest source of oil, won't supply any verifiable information about its reserves. Much of the information we get about oil reserves comes from a guy working above a sub shop in a small town in Switzerland.
• Unlike previous years, there have been no reserves discovered to replaced the oil that has been pumped during the past couple of years.
  
• Who knows what Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, Russia or Saudi Arabia will feel about us tomorrow? They may decide that we are persona non grata and either hold us up or shut us off, assuming that they can find another willing buyer.
• China is buying up oil sites all over the world. How willing would they be to sell it to us at a reasonable price if they decide to go back to their old ways?

We've got an upcoming catastrophe on our hands and we're doing damn little about it. Yes, we've muttered about hydrogen-powered cars and biodiesel fuel; we're even producing millions of gallons of ethanol a year. Some of our cars can run on a combination of ethanol and gas. There are some wind farms in the West. Some can afford solar panels.

Steps are being taken. But they're all very small steps given what will happen when the oil supply diminishes. We need another "Mission to the Moon". If the president of Brazil can vow that his country will become the world's leader in renewable energy and back it up with results, why can't we do something similar?

In only twenty-five years Brazil has moved from a dependence on foreign oil to just about energy independence. This has been due to their focus on ethanol-based fuels as well as - and probably more importantly - the availability of 'flex fuel' cars, i.e., cars that can run on either gas, ethanol or a combination thereof.

While the Sierra Club disputes the environmental benefits of ethanol, many scientists do not; they claim it is much less damaging to the environment.

At times, ethanol has been more expensive than oil, but, to me, it appears as though we won't see those days again. Even if moving to flex-fuel cars is more costly, how far ahead of the game will we be if we become truly energy independent?