One thing that is worrisome is the greenhouse effect. I read an article posted on slashdot a while ago that said scientists have discovered the threshold for what the planet can take. Once we reach that threshold, there's no going back from the melting of the icecaps, the death of most life, etc. They don't know how long it'll take to reach that threshold point, or even if we're ever going to reach it. It's still really up to debate whether it's just a natural cycle.

Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly that we should have been looking into alternative fuels much more closely than we have been for the past couple of decades. However, the US government is too full of capitalists and Big-Business proponents to do that; most of the politicians(Democrats and Republicans alike, though mostly, and more stereotypically, Republicans) are in the pockets of those big oil companies, who definitely don't want too much money going to alternative fuel research, despite what they may say publicly.