Addicted to Oil?

As I was listening to Beyond the Beltway, recently, the fellow on the left kept bringing up our "addiction to oil."

Addicted to Oil? Yes, our economy is addicted to oil, in much the same way that our bodies are addicted to air, water and food.

Like it or not, the world's economies are reliant on energy. The cheapest, most reliable, efficient and plentiful source of energy today comes in the form of oil, coal and natural gas - fossil fuels. Electricity could be produced much more cheaply, reliably and cleaner with nuclear energy, but we haven't built a nuclear power plant in over 20 years. So, oil, coal and natural gas, it is. The environmentalists and the left hate the very thing that would do the best job in reducing our dependence (not addiction) on fossil fuels.

The left loves to talk of a future powered by wind and solar energy, and I don't have a problem with that - in the future. Those technologies aren't ready for prime time, yet. Several problems are all but impossible to overcome, the least of which is you can't rely on the wind, and only half of the planet is covered in sunlight at a time. Battery technology is still years behind making electric powered transportation mainstream. If you can't hop in your car and drive non stop from one end of the country to the other, without an 8 + hour "recharge" time breaking up the trip several times, it isn't viable. "I'm sorry , but you can't have your package overnight, the truck has to stop to recharge every 5 hours for 8 hours..."

If there were a better way to power our society, wouldn't the capitalists in our world be jumping all over it? Wouldn't every venture capital company on the planet be jumping on the bandwagon to make a profit from it? The facts are that the most efficient method of powering our transportation, industry and households is burning fossil fuels. Until, that is, our government artificially makes fossil fuels too expensive, and that would wreak havoc on our economy.