^"Availability, usefulness, ease of production, and the amount of stored energy per unit" are just synonyms for "highly profitable".^

Wrong. These words have real meanings, and are quantifiable. If anything else over the past century had delivered what hydrocarbons could deliver, many people would be making profits doing it.

We are told we aren't supposed to use oil. We aren't supposed to use coal. We aren't supposed to use nuclear. The words "alternative energy" are tossed out like a mantra, connected to nothing at all. The environmentalists have shut down land drilling, oil shale, gas pipelines, gas ports, nuclear power plants, hydroelectric plants(!) and even large-scale wind farms (!!) All they have to go on is negation, with nothing but pink fog to replace everything that keeps our civilization running.

We have been subsidizing alternative energy since the 1970s. It doesn't really deliver what we need.

The sooner we take energy policy away from the lunatics, the better.

European nations get by on being very small. It's easy to cover your country with railroads or use less transportation fuel when you don't have to service much territory. France, the largest European nation, is only about 8 percent of the area of the contiguous United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii).