After reading this thread, does anyone see why we should be moving away from oil as our primary source of energy??

Everyday, the US consumes over 20 million barrels of oil. With only 5 million barrels produced domestically, 15 million barrels of oil comes from foreign countries. 15 million barrels a day * $133.3/barrel (make the math easy) adds up to 2 Billion US dollars that we send overseas EVERYDAY. Every single day. 365 days a year. Do that for years and years, and I think you begin to see the magnitude of this crisis. And people wonder why the value of our dollar is getting lower and lower. Furthermore, if you take a look at the countries with the top 10 oil reserves in the world, you will find just about every nation that we hate.

Saudi Arabia
Canada
Iran
Iraq
Kuwait
United Arab Emirates
Venezuela
Russia
Libya
Nigeria

Iran, Iraq, Venezuela, Libya, Nigeria. We HATE these countries. So why are we sending them billions of dollars everyday. It is downright insane. We are funding both sides of the war on terrorism. Forgetting the massive economic and environment benefits of switching from oil, there is still a compelling national defense reason why we need to stop using oil.

I believe that both presidential candidates are serious about reducing our dependence on oil. That is good. What happens in the next few years is really going to determine whether we are able to ride out this recession and start on the path of economic prosperity, or whether we will go into a depression (as severe as anything since WW2, as predicted by Alan Greenspan). We need a 10 year Apollo like effort. Reduce government subsidies to oil companies, and increase government subsidies to alternative energy (NOT ETHANOL!). Make it economically favorable for everyone to own a hybrid/plug in hybrid/all electric car. Over 11 million barrels of oil per day goes to power cars, and yet we have reasonably priced technology to power cars using NO OIL! The technology is out there today to become completely independent of foreign oil, TODAY!

We need to do something about our use of oil, or we are going to have to accept the fact that soon we may no longer be the richest and most powerful nation in the country. And we are going to have to accept the fact that our economy may fall into a depression. The price of oil is only going to go up and up and up. Lets use the technology that has made our nation great for the past 100+ years and do something about oil. Lets cut our usage significantly so we can be completely independent of foreign oil.