If We the American People had the will (code word for what Jesse Jackson wanted to excise from Obama) to make our employees -- the U.S. Congress, now controlled by authoritarian Democrats and other leftists -- act on our demand to lift the ban on offshore drilling, and to unleash our energy potential at large, we would have solved our transportation-fuel conundrum -- which is mostly the fault of the Democrats and the rest of the left -- but we would have solved it to some degree only. The rub is that the rest of the world is thirsty for petroleum, not only for transportation-fuel purposes (the great oil gulper, 68% in the U.S.), but also for non-fuel petrochemical products (e.g., plastics, fibers, fertilizers, pesticides, solvents, lubricants, paints, etc.). By the way, about 24% of the oil consumed in the U.S. goes to those non-fuel petrochemicals. The article Impact Of Oil Prices On China And India explains, among other things, although at the same time conveying several misconceptions, how intertwined is the problem of high-priced transportation fuels abroad. Thus, once we make our new wells and rigs gush out torrents of oil, we will inexorably end up becoming oil exporters, for the profits to be reaped from the oil demand in foreign markets will be too good to be ignored. It will be just the market behaving according to the laws of supply and demand, particularly in a country of free entrepreneurialism as, thanks God, America is. So, eventually we will be back, not to square one, but most likely to square two or three, with still high prices domestically, the consequence of exogenous oil-demand pressures. And with a world fettered by its dependence on petroleum-derived transportation fuels, oil importers will continue to be vulnerable and prone to domestic strife and even to transnational wars that, one way or the other, will drag us in. And at the same time petro-tyrannies and petro-autocracies will keep using their petro-riches to foster terrorism (e.g., Iran/Shiite Fundamentalism, Saudi Arabia/Wahhabism) or to extort and bully their clients (e.g., Russian hegemony). Dependence on petroleum for transportation fuels will continue to cause grave problems throughout the world. Hence there is the need of transitioning to forms of transportation that do not use petroleum derivates for fuel, or that at least use them in a lesser degree. To go to the point, as much transportation of products and humans as possible must transition to electricity as its source of energy. Yes, air transportation will remain shackled to petroleum-based fuels until other types of energy for air transportation are found and adopted. Maybe in the future ion propulsion will be able to provide the thrust for rapid acceleration needed in aviation. Currently, ion propulsion is suitable only for outer-space travel. Hence there is the need to transition to vehicles that are fully electric (e.g., battery-electric-vehicles, BEV), hydrogen-fed-fuel-cell electric (HFCECV), plug-in-hybrids (PIH), or use hydrogen-internal-combustion-engines (HICEV). The common factor in all those types of vehicles is the need of vast amounts of electricity first to recharge tens of millions of batteries 24/7, and then produce, via electrolysis, vast amounts of the hydrogen to be needed not only for HFCECVs and HICEVs, but also for hydrogen-fed “neighborhood fuel cell electric-power plants”. Neighborhood fuel cell electric-power plants are small power plants with up to 100 megawatt yield envisioned to be distributed throughout highly populated urban areas. Their objective is to provide adaptive compartmentalization to the electric grid, in such a way as to minimize the extensive blackouts that occur when centralized power plants fail. The use of fuel cells, with no other emissions but mere water, makes them safe enough to operate within neighborhoods. Those huge amounts of electricity needed that are cited above can come from our vast deposits of coal, plus new nuclear fission plants. By the way, MIT just announced the discovery of a method mimicking the photosynthesis process in plants, in this case to produce hydrogen and oxygen from simple water. The vision here is that in five to ten years (20 to 30, to be realistic), households would have their own autonomous photovoltaic solar panels systems providing the electricity to produce their own hydrogen and oxygen, which would be used to feed the household mini fuel-cell power plant for all electrical needs. One of the problems here is that when hydrogen and oxygen mix in an uncontrolled environment, they explode. Also, the price of photovoltaic cells would need to be as low as dirt to make the entire contraption economically feasible. The ultimate source of electrical energy, however, is commercial nuclear fusion, and we are falling behind here, as we fell behind in the car industry. The only private enterprise in the world attempting to develop a commercial nuclear fusion reactor for the massive production of electricity is in Canada: General Fusion, Inc., a pre-IPO startup that promises to start shipping nuclear fusion reactors within 5 to 10 years. The Bush administration committed the strategic error of practically abandoning all government funded R&D on harnessing nuclear fusion, and surrendered the funding to ITER, an international consortium running under UN/IAEA auspices where the partners are the United States, Russia, China, the European Union, Japan, India and South Korea ITER has offered to come out with an experimental Tokamak-based fusion reactor by 2016. But being the bloated, snail-paced entity it is and, worse, running under the auspices of the arch-corrupt, and equally bloated and snail-paced UN/IAEA, experts believe that ITER will deliver its experimental baby in 50 years, if not more. America and the world need a COMMERCIAL nuclear fusion reactor NOW. The Russians possess vast deposits of oil, natural gas and coal; they are not interested in making ITER cause the demise of their main source of foreign revenue: oil, natural gas and coal. China’s only interest in ITER is in copying anything good that they can use for their own domestic commercial nuclear fusion reactor program, which is running at full speed. China needs it badly to provide support to the rapid development, industrialization and modernization it is engaged in now; it will not wait until 2060...or later...for ITER’s experimental reactor.