The price of gasoline has just twitched and jumped upward, but nowhere near as high as in France, where it is close to $5 per gallon, steady as a rock there and no twitchy jumps. Motorists here are furious and suspect our high prices are capitalistic exploitation of the worst sort. “Let’s get a rope and hang somebody!”

Well, save your rope for later. Way back in 1991 our U.S. Department of Energy reviewed then current drilling data and concluded that “national oil reserves had plummeted” and were then limited to a “10- to 13-year supply at the (then) current rates of supply,” meaning somwhere between 2000 and 2003. Production at Alaska’s North Slope has already begun to slow down. 2000 to 2003 doesn’t seem like it is very far away — four to seven years from now — two terms for a congressman, just over one term for a senator. With all the “cheap” oil gone and with giant oil rigs probing in distant and difficult places, will our petroleum industry be able to supply us with “cheap” gas? How about pulling up to the pump and reading $14.99.9?

Better go buy an electric car? Eighteen percent of U.S. electrical energy comes from 109 nuclear power plants. It has been quite a while since anyone had the cash or courage to build one. Our own Maine Yankee is scheduled for shutdown in 2008, only a dozen years away. Nuclear plants in general begin to suffer expiration in serious numbers beginning in 2012-2013, not too far away from now. The last one is scheduled to shut down in 2033. They may get a new lease on life through “recapture,” a neat idea where they get extended to make up for all those years lost in construction (assuming they are strong enough to go onward).

I have on my desk a Stirling cycle engine (they run on anything) which will run for seven hours powered by just eight ice cubes. But these little heat engines are still pretty weak. It would take 10 of them to produce enough watts to equal a candle’s flame, or 2,000 of them to light up my computer so I could go onto the Internet.

We are living in the most luxurious of all times. Soon the foulest epithet one could deliver will be the “C” word, to call some one a “consumer,” yet today, when the blue light specials come on in the caverns of shopping, the public-address system happily calls us “consumers” and we think nothing of it.

Want to know for whom the gas station bell tolls? Bing-bong, bing-bong. It tolls for thee. Charles E. Mac Arthur Sangerville