What are the building blocks of the path toward a post-petrol future?
1. Market driven: Government cannot effectively mandate disruptive shifts to energy sources of the future. But it can play a leading role by seeding the landscape, as it did during the Cold War era by funding basic research, which became the foundation of Silicon Valley. 2. Forward looking: Subsidize future technologies, not current political dilemmas. Congressional hearings considering using the Strategic Oil Reserve to stabilize gas prices, or investigating oil company “windfall” profits, are distractions, not solutions. 3. Non-ideological: Both liberals and conservatives must become more rigorous yet flexible in their approach to energy. For the right, glorifying SUV’s as a symbol of liberty is dangerous in an era when we are threatened by oil-producing countries that fund a range of toxic societies and ideologies worldwide. For the left, serious consideration of unpalatable alternatives like nuclear energy and Alaska drilling should be part of the solution. 4. Evolutionary alternat
