I agree with both of you that alternate forms of energy need to be found, but the research for those has been going on for years and is still very expensive...numerous government funding has gone towards the research of hydrogen powered engines or whatnot, but all we can do is sit and wait for them to hit some discovery (unless someone here wants to jump in and toss their 2 cents into the research )

I read something yesterday that gas prices right now are high for 2 reasons.

OPEC
OPEC is charging by the demand of oil compared to their possible supply....(simple supply and demand...we all know that). Whereas the U.S. hasn't increased their demand for oil, 2 of OPEC's other countries they supply to are buying record ammounts of gasoline (China & India) which is driving up our costs....there is really nothing we can do about that. If we quit recieving oil from outside countries, the United States roughly has enough oil (at current production rates) to last around 2 months and then we're in trouble.

The fact that the U.S. hasn't built new refinery capacity in a few decades... This doesnt have as much effect as OPEC, but still...the U.S. Refineries are running at around 95% capacity to keep gas prices down with our own supply. The problem that could happen, if one of these refineres were to dry out and or break, we're going to need more oil from OPEC, which would cause the price of gasoline to probably break over $3.00 a gallon! as the National Average

The long and the short of it, the way to reduce gas prices is to build more refineries and open a limited portion of the ANWR (which would have almost no effect on the wildlife up there....do your research and don't trust those media scum)

That would lower how much oil we would have to get from OPEC and would drive down our costs (hopefully) and eventually once OPEC gets overstocked and lowers their cost, you could slow production in the ANWR and use it just for emergencies or in case of shortages or high prices that most middle class americans can barely afford to pay. Your 2nd option is pretty much give up on gas by switching to an alternate fuel source....and since we're still probably years from that happening, you have 2 realistic choices...build refineries and go to the ANWR or you can continue to pay your 2.199 a gallon. Honestly I dont want to open the ANWR, but we don't have many choices.

I know it gets more complex then this, but I tried to keep it simple since Id rather not get into many of the details, partially because I really don't care to and most of you don't either.


NOTE: This post takes no sides politically and is just straight facts from my independant research. For the record, Bush and Kerry both support the opening of the ANWR...


Edit:
Wow, I spent nearly 40 minutes putting together that post probably a record for me