Ponying Up for Alternative-Fuel Research

I’ve long opposed giving government money to corporations. Ideally, they should be able to fund whatever they need the old-fashioned way — through profits.

But we have a real energy crisis facing us, though it may not be readily apparent as long as the lights are on and the highways are humming. We actually are running out of oil. It has little to do with manipulation of oil futures, stocks, per-barrel prices or even violent upheavals in oil-producing nations. The bottom line is that the world is producing less of the stuff as global demand for it is increasing.

We are not likely to run dry of crude in the next 50 years or so, if we are to believe the oil industry analysts. But we probably will experience spot shortages and pay higher prices for anything and everything powered by or made from petroleum.

That is the whispered bad news behind President Bush’s $2.1 billion Advanced Energy Initiative budget proposal, which he presented last month in his State of the Union address.

Washington Post