In 2007, DoD's fighting and transport vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan drank up more than 55 million gallons of fuel, on average, every month.  This equates to billions of dollars each year in fuel costs that continue to rise.  Just last week, oil prices reached $110 per barrel, representing an increase of $6 per barrel over the inflation-adjusted previous high for the price of oil set in 1979, when President Jimmy Carter declared that the country was in an energy crisis.

Our excessive dependence on OPEC has already taken a tremendous toll on our economy and our people. It's a cause of the increased inflation and unemployment that we now face. This intolerable dependence on foreign oil threatens our economic independence and the very security of our nation. The energy crisis is real. It is worldwide. It is a clear and present danger to our nation. These are facts and we simply must face them.

The generation-long growth in our dependence on foreign oil will be stopped dead in its tracks right now and then reversed as we move through the 1980s, for I am tonight setting the further goal of cutting our dependence on foreign oil by one-half by the end of the next decade. ---President Jimmy Carter, 1979

It seems in the 29 years since President Carter delivered those words to the nation, very little progress in obtaining energy independence to stave away inflation and boost domestic employment has been made.  Surely, history will at times repeat itself, but technological advancements - at least during the last century - tend to ensure the repeats center around political situations instead of technological hurdles.

It is as if we are living in a parallel universe to 1979.  Computers now fill an envelope instead of a bedroom.  Satellites send images back from the farthest planets that are so clear we actually declassify some of them as planets.  Surgeries are performed with robotic arms.  Spy planes fly without pilots.  The Red Sox is the best team in baseball and botulinum toxin is used to create youth instead of death.  Yet our transportation system remains as stagnant as our economic growth.  Cars, trucks, and other things that go remain virtually unchanged since 1979, save for a very recent burst of hybrid technologies.  America remains overly dependent on petroleum to get anywhere and the bulk of that finite resource still comes from foreign governments, most of which operate in sharp contrast to U.S. democratic ideals.  Inflation is rising, the dollar is devaluing, oil prices are soaring, and once again politicians are calling for energy independence and efficiency.

Keeping America competitive requires affordable energy. And here we have a serious problem: America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world. The best way to break this addiction is through technology... Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.

By applying the talent and technology of America, this country can dramatically improve our environment, move beyond a petroleum-based economy, and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past.  --George Bush, 2006 State of the Union Address

Bush's speech sounds eerily familiar to President Carter's address 29 years ago.  But how could we be stuck in the same quagmire nearly three decades after our President declared war on oil?  

Yes, developing energy efficient products and renewable energy sources produces a myriad of technological challenges, but so did landing on the moon.  And eight years and $126 billion (today's dollars) after President Kennedy announced his intention to put a man on the moon, Neil Armstrong took his infamous giant steps for mankind.  

Is finding a replacement for petroleum exponentially harder than say, shooting a human 238,900 miles through space in a tiny capsule at 25,000 miles per hour and landing him safely enough so he can fly back to earth using technologies four decades old?

The Brazilians have been using ethanol derived from sugarcane as a substitute for gasoline since the 1980's, and there are over 4 million vehicles in the U.S. that can run on a mix of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline today.  Hydrogen-powered, hybrid and electronic engine technologies also offer great potential in weaning our transportation system off of petroleum.  

The reality of the situation is, despite a decent amount of money being pumped into such technologies by the public and private sectors, the evolution of transportation won't happen at the pace we need it to without a major, comprehensive policy initiative akin to Kenney's moon mission.  And like the moon mission - a cold war response to the Soviets successfully putting a man in space - sweeping alternative energy policies are unfortunately unachievable without an underlining national security motivation.

The link between foreign oil dollars and funding for terrorism in oil exporting nations has been made, although not politicized remotely to the same degree as say, building a gigantic fence in South Texas.  Yet the ability of terrorist organizations to recruit members, conduct training, and carryout attacks would be severely hampered if their funding (oil proceeds) was cut off.  

The argument that has not been properly propagated is America's inability to fight any wars without a massive supply of petroleum, or supply lines that - as seen in Iraq - are highly vulnerable to guerilla warfare tactics.  Heading into the future, the country's major military vulnerabilities remain cyber attacks, over reliance of satellite systems now in missile range, and complete dependence on a finite and highly explosive substance to fuel the American war machine.  

Moreover, by keeping our economy glued to strings wielded by despotic leaders in the Middle East, we are not only jeopardizing our financial will to respond to situations, we are virtually assuring our interests stay intimately tied with a highly volatile and culturally disparate region.

Unless environmentalists, journalists, think tanks, and policy makers push the national security issue to the forefront of the alternative energy debate, the country will remain stuck in a well intended, but poorly executed 1979 policy.  Only through a massive, national vision, on the order of Kennedy's moon mission, can we direct our transportation system into the 21st century and escape the prison of the petroleum economy.