Dan said:

"Anyway, seems to me that if the industry was really worried about future income, they would not be so concerned about economically infeasible drilling, and be concentrating their research on alternate sources of energy...... Of course, that would cut down a bit on OPEC profits and personal income for the corporate upper rungs. And, if the Western Pacific and the B&O railroads had really been all that concerned about transportation at the beginning of the 20th century, rather than control like today.s international oil barons, there would be a Western Pacific and B&O airlines today."

Dan touched upon one of my pet hates about our free market economy. It seems that we always have to march off a cliff even if we see the cliff a mile away. Resolution is possible only through crisis managment and not through foresight. I live in the San Francisco bay area. We all knew the Dot Com was a bubble almost a year before it popped. Unfortunately, almost everyone was too focused on making a quick buck before the party was over.

President Carter initiated a whole bunch of alternate energy research projects. Stanford University and NASA Ames were well funded to do various forms of alternative energy research. Carter knew that it would take decades before an alternative energy system could become economically viable. All of that money dried up after Reagan became president. Instead of energy research, we were presented with the fantasy that petroleum would never run out. The economy is going to take a major hit when gasoline goes over $5/gal. Our whole economic system is based upon the false assumption of cheap oil.

I might add in passing that this same sort of stupidity is killing our space program. Based upon a functioning terrestrial economy, It would take almost century to establish an interplanetary economy. It'll be impossible to establish an interplanetary presence after the Earth takes a hit from a large comet or 90% of the Earth's population gets killed off by a designer virus courtesy of an Al Qaeda weapon's project.

We're marching towards a cliff and no one cares.

Gary