I've noticed that reality seems to have amazingly little to do with what's going on with oil price futures (or the stock market, come to that.) If larger numbers of vehicles start using ethanol, it's going to have an effect on the market even if careful analysis shows we aren't going to balance out on the energy budget.

If we opened Anwar to drilling, the prices would drop even though useful amounts of oil from there are years away. It's a symbol, on both sides of the argument.

If you asked the average American which country most of our imported oil comes from, what do you think they would tell you? How many would say Canada? How many would know that we get more oil from Canada than from the entire Persian Gulf? It's the perception that has the power.

What I'm hoping for is that the private sector will, as it so often does, make an end run around the conventional wisdom and "business as usual" in the energy field.

We sometimes seem to make the greatest advances when the establishment is looking in the other direction. Computers and the internet come to mind, or the private space companies. I have a lot of hopes for recent developments in biofuels, electric cars, and low-cost solar panels.