 "...Buffeted by the oil shocks, Americans profoundly--and, it seems, permanently--changed their relationship with energy. Between 1973 and 2000, U.S. energy consumption jumped by about a quarter. But this rise came mostly from the concurrent rise in U.S. population. In fact, U.S. per-capita energy consumption--that is, consumption per American--actually declined slightly from 1973 to 2000. Amazingly, the drop occurred despite the seemingly unsalable U.S. appetite for power-hogging air conditioners, electricity-drinking computers and, more recently, gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles.
 Paradoxically, the United States imports a greater proportion of its petroleum than ever before--but needs it less. In the 1970s, notes Howard Gruenspecht, an economist at Resources for the Future, a Washington DC-based research group, 'the United
States used oil for all kinds of things--home heat, electrical power, you name it. Now the great bulk of it is used for just one purpose: transportation.' Oil imports have quadrupled since the OPEC embargo, because U.S. drivers continue to be addicted to petroleum. But oil use has fallen in many other sectors of the economy. At the time of the embargo, for example, almost one-fifth of U.S. electricity was generated by petroleum; today the figure is less than one one-hundredth.
 In 1973, one out of every four houses in the United States was heated by crude oil; this year it is fewer than one out of ten. With the nation no longer completely dependent on one energy source, the U.S. economy has significantly more resilience against energy shocks than before. 'Retail gas prices came close to doubling between the spring of '99 and the spring of 2000,' says Pietro Nivola, a senior fellow in governmental studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington, DC-based think tank. 'Consumers screamed about it, but overall, the impact was small, because the whole economy is less dependent on petroleum.'"
The U.S. is awakening to the sensibility of alternative transportation. Electrical vehicles and high gasoline mileage vehicles is the solution!
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