While what you say is all true ex the thing that pisses me off is that while the multinationals, including the oil companies of course, continue to make record profits by gouging Joe Citizen for his last nickel they are, at the same time, destroying the planet.  Global warming is no longer a theory, any reputable scientist will attest to the facts of it.  I live in British Columbia and a huge swath of pine forest, (an area about the size of the state of Washington), is dying from an infestation of pine beetles.  Under normal climatic conditions these beetles numbers are kept in check by our usually cold winters but we haven't had a winter cold enough to make them put ear muffs on for about ten years.  A recent article in Canadian Geographic says that in less than a hundred years B.C. will be a tropical paradise while our prairies will be a desert.  What that means for those of you who live further south I can only imagine...  They say the ocean level could rise by as much as 6 metres, (about 19 feet), where does that put our coastal cities?  Anybody looking for some ocean front property in Nevada?  Our governments should be going full out funding development of alternate energy sources instead of feeding our oil addiction... I live in the mountains and have water rights to a stream that runs through my place so I've been looking at setting up a micro-hydro system. I'm told that 150 psi in a two inch pipe will produce enough power, (about 250kwh), to take care of all my electrical needs plus some left over that can be piped back into the local grid which our utility will pay for.( Electrical meters can run in reverse too so you know how much power you are putting into the grid.)  Anyway, it sounds a lot better than the $200.00 a month we're paying now. These are the kinds of things governments should be promoting and even subsidizing... North America, with what, 12% of the world's population? uses a third of the energy.  We're oil junkies and it's time to kick the habit...