What's the real crisis?

Today's NY Times Headlines:
As Oil Giants Lose Influence, Supply Drops
By JAD MOUAWAD
It is harder than ever for the major Western oil companies to find new prospects, even though they are awash in profits and eager to expand.

Excuse me? Awash in profits? Am I the only person who is outraged by this?

Yes, we need to come up with energy sources, and I for one want to see it come from renewable resources. That's something that should have been started in earnest 40 years ago when we had another "fuel crisis", but NOOOOO - the US government did not support alternatives to fossil fuels (petroleum) - and from what I heard, research in to fuel alternatives was pretty much squashed.

So here we are again with another crisis - actually, we have two: one energy and one economic.

The economic crisis is looking pretty artificial to me. There may be some sort of slowing of oil production, but the economic problems we are experience are actually caused by opportunistic taking of profits from raised prices based on... fear.

The US government supports this fear by supporting everyone in the oil food chain making massive profits on the the backs of us poor schmucks down here in the real world. And worse, the US government itself is making more and more tax dollars on the price gouging at the oil pump - for every jump in price at the pumps, there is an associated jump in the tax on each gallon.

No one in the chain except we peons at the bottom has any incentive whatsoever to fix anything.

This has all been nicely engineered, don't you think? First weaken the voting population by eroding individual freedom using the fear factor (been to an airport lately?). Then the sucker punch of the "fuel crisis". Throw in some toxic food scares and some global warming threats to keep us all soft. Use environmental litigation to stop any possibility of fixing any of this, even while dangling the hope of alternative (cheap) energy that will never come because there is no incentive to fix anything when everyone but the peons are making so much money. You see where this is going?

It's going to just get worse.

None of this was inevitable. All of this could have been prevented. You want some improvement? Just say NO to politics and start doing what needs to be doing yourself. Find out who's researching alternative energy and support them. Use that technology. Become a locavore (eat locally grown foods). Don't buy into mass media advertising.

And for heaven's sake, pay attention to the real crisis: the gullibility of we peons. The real crisis will end when we stop listening to what people say and start paying attention to what people do.