My Shoes are smoking

I'm mama-sitting today and even though it's been overcast for most of the day, its warm and blustery. Mama freezes so she wants the ac and all ceiling fans off.
I took it as long as I could before heading out to my sister's deck. It will be a miracle if we don't have storms tonight.

I'm really concerned about the oil spill in the gulf. I have a lot of friends that live there and more that own property there. This event has all the makings of an environmental disaster.
We as a country have to ween ourselves of oil. I believe that it is this dependence that is funding terrorism. But the amount of money involved is so tremendous that any movement away from oil will be aggressively opposed.
I read a book a while back by Thomas Friedman, called Hot, Flat and Crowded. It's about whats happening on the planet.
One theory he talks about is how to promote research and development of alternative sources of energy. He said one way to approach this is to levy a gasoline tax of at least a dollar a gallon of gas. This money goes directly into funding for R&D and also subsidize these industries. This he said would have a number of effects: it would keep the price of gas high enough to force conservation. He said it would also make developing these alternative energy solutions profitable.
Right now, when people stop driving and start turning toward alternative solutions, then the price of gas inevitably drops which causes people to move back to gas.
An alternative energy company cannot gamble billions of dollars without subsidies during the initial years.
So we are forced into the dilemma of buying oil from Saudi Arabia and other middle eastern countries, or drilling for oil here at home.
There are no easy answers but in my opinion, if our planet has any hope of survival, we as a people will have to make some difficult choices.