Houston, we have a problem

President Bush's recent statement that it's time to break America's addiction to oil surprised many Americans not just because it was a man from the "Oil Patch" who called for a move beyond petroleum but because of the way he charted to get there. It was the first time the President called for action on oil security without touting domestic drilling. Instead, he envisioned a shift to battery operated cars and vehicles running on next generation fuels made from domestically available non-petroleum energy resources.

Bush's decision to use the bully pulpit of the presidency for such a goal surely stems from his recognition that it is dangerous to be buying billions of dollars worth of oil from nations that, in his words, "don't particularly like us," and that the petrodollars we provide such nations contribute to the terrorist threats we face. But make no mistake: neither the underwriting of terrorism nor the frantic weather patterns which caused last year's spike in gasoline prices would have been enough to get President Bush to move beyond the traditional drill-as-much-as-you-can strategy if not for the alarm bells sounded by the oil industry itself.

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