High gas prices
Our Opinions

Gasoline and diesel prices continue upward. Monday, the national average for regular gasoline was $3.65. Just a month ago it was $3.28 and a year ago it was $2.94. Diesel is much higher, over $4 per gallon.

We can wring our hands all we want but high fuel prices are here to stay. They have been high in other parts of the world for sometime and the United States has been fortunate that prices have remained as low as they have for as long as they have here.

Some folks say the government should step in and take control of prices and the obscene profits the oil companies are making.

Others say we need to drill more and to drill in areas that have previously been off limits.

Government intervention and more drilling might be a temporary solution but the long term solution - one that is going to have to be addressed sooner or later - is the development of alternative energy sources. That could be ethanol, hydrogen energy, biodiesel, electrical energy or something else to power our transportation needs.

We've read that it takes 100 years or thereabouts to make major technological changes. It took about that long to make the leap from steam to a petroleum-powered engine. We've also read that we may have about 100 years of readily accessible oil left. If that be the case, we'd better get our scientists and engineers moving in high gear.

To their credit, they are farther along working on alternates than our political leaders and average citizens are toward accepting a major change. The technology just has to be perfected.

However, it will require going against big business- the automobile manufacturers and the oil companies among others- as well as butting heads with powerful oil interests around the world.

The leap in technology will require a complete about-face in our thinking and our ways of doing. We must insist that our political leaders - including whoever will be the next president - be a leading advocate of prompting alternative energy.

We think it is terrible that gasoline is headed toward $5 a gallon. It is but just wait until we are fighting over a precious gallon of it at $5 or even $10 a gallon or more and see how much worse things can get.

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