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Fossil fuels, including oil, are running out and supplies are getting harder to find. If we do nothing, prices will continue to rise and our reliance on oil will come to an abrupt and tumultuous end, causing global economic and social turmoil.

From the happy-go-lucky days of oil exploration and drilling, when a lot of easy sources were being found and easily managed, we're gotten ourselves into this sort of apocalyptic time. We're willing to destroy almost everything, risk almost anything, and go ahead with techniques for which we have no way of responding to the known problems.

If we want to address global warming, along with the other environmental problems associated with our continued rush to burn our precious fossil fuels as quickly as possible, we must learn to use our resources more wisely, kick our addiction, and quickly start turning to sources of energy that have fewer negative impacts.

We all know that we have to get off of fossil fuels. And we know that the world is going in that direction. And we have to do it fast.

First, we should not be opening our coasts, all of our coasts, to oil drilling when we have not taken the first step, not the first step, to conserve oil.

Instead of going to the ends of the Earth - and plumbing the depths of the oceans - to squeeze out every last drop of oil, we need, instead, to do everything we can to reduce the risks of offshore oil and gas production.

Well, for starters, we have to do more to create demand for new technologies that can reduce our dependence on foreign oil and environmental degradation.

We have for too long put vast oil and natural gas reserves off limits to exploration and production, as The Washington Post editorial stated this week.

Even as we work to develop more sources of petroleum for the United States, we must continue our vigorous pursuit of alternative fuels, so that we can be powered by cleaner, more efficient sources of energy.

In energy, you have to plan and do research way in advance, sometimes decades in advance to get a new system that's safer, doesn't require us to go around the world to get all our oil.