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There are bound to be solutions, from conservation and efficiency to new fuels to wind/solar/tidal etc. energy. What seems to be lacking is the will and drive to make solving the problem a real priority. It's certainly not coming, in this country, from those elected to serve us.

Being a bit of a conspiracy theorist, I don't believe that the entities now profiting from oil, centralized energy production etc. will be part of the solution. And they may well be working against a solution, since the best answers may well be highly highly decentralized and not conducive to concentrating massive wealth into a few hands. Those who currently possess the greatest resources have the most to lose from such a scenario.

Time will tell where all of this leads. I think it's bound to a trickle-up answer, as opposed to the Reaganite dribble-down. The folks amassing the great wealth are very talented at that one thing, but don't often seem to have the vision or even ability to do anything else. And they sure as hell won't let anything trickle out if they can help it.

It's going to take -I hesitate to use the tired phrase- grass roots ingenuity and drive to experiment with various technologies and ways of life that might lead into a more realistic and sustainable future.

Many will be ridiculed, vilified, shunned and ignored. But maybe with luck, there will be a few, somewhere, who plant the seeds of a better future than what we're looking at in the near term.

I certainly hope so. And I hope it's not too long in coming.

Already, many of us are looking at "bunking together" to get through next winter. Shutting down some houses and congregating in others to share the cost of keeping warm and fed. Families and friends together, communes if you will, to share skills, abilities and resources. Not so much from idealism, but plain damned survival.