Rolf:

I'm glad to see some younger people taking this seriously, I'm 57 and have no children so my stake is much smaller.

On the optimistic side, I once read an article about an island off Denmark that went completely off the power grid. I wish I could remember where I read it!

Anyway, it was expensive at about $14,000 per person, but they did it. They rely heavily on bicycles, mass transit and use solar, wind and I think some geothermal energy.

That should be a piece of cake here in Florida! It would be one hell of a cake with 3 million people, but we get about 500,000 btu's of energy per square foot, annually! Combine that with our struggling citrus and sugar industry ( as a source of ethanol) and I think you can see that we don't need any imported oil at all.

Also, we have three(?) nuclear plants and the President's brother, our Governor, wants to fast track more!

For those of you in Europe (this is embarrassing, do Scandinavians consider themselves European- I honestly don't know!?) who feel that they are dependant on oil should take heart in the progress being made in photovoltaics. There is a small German company that is doing some very impressive things. I'll try to get the link to you.