Our Cosmos is swimming in renewable energy. Above our heads is a colossal fusion reactor, the tiny fraction of total sunlight our planet intercepts powers gigawatts of mechanical work carried on the wings of wind and water with more than enough left over to run the terrestrial biosphere. Below our feet are granite rafts which sail over a global ocean of white-hot liquid rock and metal. Everyday the sun and moon drag tidal mountains around the earth as a mere gravitational afterthought. There are vast fields of exotic energy all around us, from vibrating super-strings that hold matter together and bind you to your chair, to cosmological forces that are tearing the universe asunder. There's enough energy condensed into the atoms of your body to power a medium sized city for years. The problem we face is not lack of energy, it's harnessing the infinite bounty around us.

It should be noted that the oil companies are simply doing what any company does: providing a product to make a buck. It's fine to investigate reports of price manipulation. It's perfectly fair to point out exorbitant pay and profit, or criticize secret deals cut in the backrooms of Washington, DC. But this diverse network of wells, refineries, pipelines, trucks and corporate cultures are all manned by ordinary hardworking men and women who often toil under brutal conditions in dangerous regions. And they reliably negotiate a maze of challenges to deliver the life blood of our civilization to the corner store for less than the unit cost of bottled water. The failure is not so much the oil companies. The weak link is our political leadership.

Right now we use fossil fuels because they are the cheapest mass form of available energy we clever hominids have been able to easily extract. Over many generations, we have enlisted our most trusted energy ally, fire, to melt rocks into metal, pound metal into molds, contrive massive mechanical devices belching black smoke driven by fire's generous sibling, heat, to turn the wheels of industry and run the engines of war, all powered with the fluids and condensates from putrefied bacterial mats.

But world consumption is increasing faster than world production. And while there is still oil to be harvested, the largest producing fields on earth, led by Ghawar in Saudi Arabia, may have peaked--meaning production will inexorably fall. Ghawar is the crown jewel in our fossil-fuel treasure-chest. There are only a handful of comparable reservoirs to it and we've looked everywhere there is to look. As goes Ghawar, so go others like it, and so goes world production. This dynamic is often referred to as Peak Oil, and the immediate result means oil prices will rise steeply and, essentially, forever. Or until demand falls dramatically.

The US sits on only three percent of world oil reserves and we use over twenty percent of global crude production--we aren't going to drill our way out of this. The fear is that the impact of peak oil on our economy, combined with our staggering debt, will lead to a grim and volatile fate. The US might fall into a Great Depression, one that will not end for decades. Globally, it might easily spell resource wars and virtually apocalyptic conditions for many regions. Higher gas prices this summer may just be the start and they could be our last warning.

We have inherited the fruits of the energy age and yet we may be in great peril for that very reason. We have time to change this, but we must choose wisely now. It may sound alarmist, but our civilization rests precariously on cheap plentiful oil. Failure to address the looming shortfall may leave our great-grandchildren eating Soylent Green in the outskirts of Barter Town. In a worse-case scenario, future generations could spend their day chasing down rats through once bustling streets in the shadow of rusting metal skeletons and dilapidated glass towers, ignorant of the vast energy reserves swirling both above and below the bleak landscape of decaying monuments to winter strawberries and SUVs. The other choice may lead to a future brightly lit with marvels we can barely imagine and sooner than the most optimistic among us might dream.

In that hopeful spirit, I'm pleased to announce that over the next few weekends, Jerome a Paris and I will be exploring various technologies and alternative energy solutions such as:

• Conserving and extending traditional sources
• Solar power
• Tidal/hydroelectric power
• Wind power
• Geothermal power
• Biofuel
• Fission & Fusion power

We humans are clever creatures indeed, but are we wise enough as a people? The tragic irony of our evolutionary legacy is that individually we sport the most prodigious intellect on the planet, but all too often, collectively, we barely surpass the intelligence of those ancient algal blooms whose metamorphosed corpses have led us into this dilemma. It remains to be seen which side of our nature will prevail.