KCC: What's so sad about history repeating itself is that it seems endemic to the human condition -- we are the ones that refuse to learn history's lessons. My real point for all of the above was just to note to folks to beware of easy solutions (exactly as you said much more succinctly) -- hard decisions need to be made regarding energy -- don't trust politicians (any of them) that don't step up to address the very hard issues. I would note this -- if environmentalists had associated stock, I'd be selling them short -- I think that the public is going to demand increased energy production and the politicians are going to follow the public on this one.
One other note -- and where the current administration is fair game to blame (or praise, depending on what you believe) here -- the other major reason beyond supply and demand that oil prices have risen is unique to the US -- we've pursued policies that have kept our economy growing at the expense of a "strong dollar policy", i.e., a dollar is worth less on a relative basis to the world than it's been in a long, long time. Since oil is an international commodity, it means it takes more dollars to buy a gallon of oil.
