Gasoline/diesel prices hit record highs

Hoping against Windfall Tax bullshit, personally. Oil companies are making tons of money, but the vast, vast majority of it goes right back in to the system (exploration, upstream/downstream development, etc). If you implement heavy taxation, oil companies will need to cut costs in order to stay in the black. This involves laying off employees, typically, as well as oil platform development. With a lack of manpower, the industry has trouble keeping up with supply-demand eventually and you have the flow of things slowing tremendously.

Windfall Taxation was one of the failures that led to lines at the gas pump a few decades back, but I guess people don't care...

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Regarding metals and such, the US still has fucktons of metals, but due to shit like NIMBY, folks don't want to drill, mine, or anything like that on US soil. Too much red tape and folks who get their panties in a twist over it. Getting to fusion would be dandy, but nuclear research isn't exactly fired up since folks are still wetting themselves over Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Canada and Russia have oil in amounts that dwarf the Middle East, provided we come up with means to get past permafrost (which is possible in the next few years given the cash going in to oil). Add to the fact that the political climate in both of those are much friendlier to the US, and you've got things a little more stable.

Space Exploration would be the best thing ever >=( Buuuuuut people lack foresight, and politicians are no different. We'd need another space race of sorts (sup china), but I don't know if we'd get that going. NASA's funding is abysmal. It doesn't even account for even close to 1% of the fiscal policy, which is disgusting given what it has provided for us technologically.

I side with electrical, but we'd need lots more coal burning and (preferably) nuclear power plants across the countryside for it to be feasible. Ethanol is illogical, since you'd need LOTS of corn just to power one car the same as a full tank of gasoline would. Wind and solar simply don't have that much oomph (it's a matter of flux. You've got stuff coming in, but you can't make it 1000x more effective on its way out). There was a severe caveat to biodiesel, but it escapes me at the moment. Maybe I'll remember it later Hmm.

Zeph --
People see Chernobyl and assume that it's how all melt-downs will go down. But there are a number of things around Chernobyl that folks don't notice:
1) It was deemed as poorly designed when it was built in the 1960s. It melted down in the 1980s.
2) It was deemed poorly designed by RUSSIAN engineers. These guys run things until they break, typically. A plant under these specs probably wouldn't have even opened in the states.
3) The personnel were quite lackluster in maintenance and such.

Three Mile Island was an ideal melt-down in the way that there was no major fall-out, no deaths, and no injuries. Some Jane Fonda movie (China Syndrome) came out literally two weeks earlier and folks went batshit after that came out and a plant melted down.

People know the dangers of dealing with a nuclear plant and take every step to prevent a large-scale fuck-up. A majority of France's power (over 80% I believe) is nuclear, but you've never heard of a single melt-down over there. The drawback to nuclear? Just keep it in check and you're golden. But just like mining, drilling, development, and other things, the "environmentally friendly" dig their heels in and block off lots of paths. Their hearts are in the right place and all, but they REALLY complicate shit. Nuclear is a fine example.

There's nowhere I can't reach.