Answers to the World's Problems:

Each morning I sit at the kitchen island with great thoughts roving through my brain but at a level somewhere between conscious and unconscious, and as soon as I start looking to jot down some of my ideas, something mundane will interrupt my train of thought--as simple as the dog wanting out--and those great earth shaking ideas poof away like a burst bubble.

Before this morning’s second idea disappeared, I wrote it down in my notebook. It was of what I think of the recent turmoil over higher gas prices. At first I was despairing, and “looking through a glass darkly.” Now I look at this fuel crisis as GOOD. First reason: It has our nation trading in their gas eating cars for more fuel efficient ones. For the same reason, I just purchased a Hyundai Elantra GLS, trading in my Santa Fe, weighing it against the Civic with almost comparable fuel economy, and way better price. And in the news just yesterday, the Honda Civic just exceeded the SUVs in car sales.

The second reason I think this crisis is a "good thing" is because the scientists, inventors and entrepreneurs are revving up their gray matter to find solutions other than oil, and as a result they are finding ways of using alternative fuels and energy that not only run engines more efficiently, but also reduce pollution at a time when this earth is needing a reduction of green house gasses in order to survive.

These solutions to the fuel shortage are forcing us to enter a new era of multifaceted dimensions that are so exciting that, when we think we are scared, it could be that we only feel strange because of the extreme changes it’s bringing to our ways of life. Some think, "If we use our grains for ethanol, then there will be a food shortage.” True, but it's about time the farmers of America had a hand in the money game instead of being pawns while big business gets the greater percentage of money with its manipulations and price fixing. Farmers will now be more valued and have reason to expand their crops instead of being paid NOT to plant so surpluses will bring down prices […Remember that?]. And perhaps ethanol doesn't need the refineries for that black tarry polluting oil we get from the depths or our planet.

Another thing that has happened simultaneously with the green house gas problem and with the oil shortage is the new ways of tapping on the natural gas that is now entrapped in shale, making for a new "gold rush" for the gas companies in their buying mineral rights to the farmer's land. And once gas is found, the farmer can still do their regular or more enhanced farming with their dollars per acre profit, while the NG companies tap the earth's less polluting natural gas resources.

Those inventors and entrepreneurs are also looking into the natural energies of the wind, the tides, and solar power as well as developing ways of tapping our oceans for the non polluting hydrogen to power almost everything! …AND, why not hydrogen powered electric instead of the nuclear generated with its problem of what to do with the nuclear waste.

We've dabbled in solar power for a long time now, and we are only now getting serious. It's too bad man cannot profit from the "Solar Rights" of tapping into that energy. Where's the profit on solar power? Only in those who manufacture the panels, the generators, and the storage batteries and such. If someone could have profited from selling sunshine, we probably would have had our engines and vehicles run by its power long ago. If that was so, maybe there would be no longer be wars had we concentrated on solar energy... Well...I guess it couldn't change our genetic tendency to fight and have wars, and force our ideologies upon others.

I haven’t heard these observations of the oil crisis to be seen as a positive thing with the advent of the need of developing alternative energies--Not on morning shows on TV …Not in the evening news--this new era of entrepreneurship.

We are at the dawn of a new and wonderful era where all things are going to click together for the same purpose: to save our planet; to improve our economy; to have all the energy we will ever need. We will have the ability to control our environment while at the same time leaving an inhabitable planet for generations and generations to come ad infinitum.