I’m middle class, but I’ll find it difficult to afford my oil bill next year, which will exceed $6,500. I live in semi rural Maine and I have to drive everywhere, so my gasoline bill will be $25 a day at today’s prices; that’s an additional $9,000 a year. Plus, my electric bill is over $200 a month thanks to deregulation. Go away for a vacation this summer? Please!

Wind energy, solar and hybrid vehicles are great technologies moving us in the right direction. Their advocates correctly think they can change our wasteful energy habits. Unfortunately, that seems to be an elitist “let them eat cake” solution for the short term, offering little hope for most of us who are facing a winter where we will be making decisions about whether to heat or eat. I can’t afford a hybrid car because I haven’t paid last winter’s fuel bill. I’ll be investing in a wood stove; what do you think that’s going to do for global warming?

As the world’s largest consumer of oil, why can’t we leverage the market? Can’t we cut deals with countries to provide us with cheaper oil? How about working with our neighbors Canada and Mexico, two large oil producers? Why can’t we break the back of OPEC as we did in the ’70s?

Joe Kennedy and Citizen’s Oil seem to offer a solution for the poor, but programs like his could be expanded to include all of us. We are all diminishing economically. Give us oil stamps (like food stamps) that will give all of us big discounts on oil and gas purchases.

The oil companies have made more money than any other industry in history – and at our expense! Tell me why there has been no windfall profit tax passed in Congress? We could put that money into R&D for clean and renewable energy projects and provide jobs.

Most oil experts suggest that the real price of oil is less than half of its current price and this is due to speculation. I heard the president of British Petroleum state on NPR that the real price of a barrel of oil is around $40 a barrel. The greedy and predatory practices of oil companies and speculators must be regulated, and in some instances, stopped.

Part of the problem is us. We guiltily feel that somehow this must be our fault. No way! We’ve been ripped off big time. Remember California and the Enron manipulated energy crisis?

We need to get fired up and demand that our government declare an energy emergency now. We should demand that our elected leaders not take campaign contributions from the oil industry. We need to share the pain; truckers, fishermen, pilots can stay home, and the rest of us can take a few days off from using our cars. If demand drops, the price will drop. Put pressure on state and federal governments; you bet then the oil companies will start to feel the pain. If things don’t change soon we will be saddled with even higher prices for goods and an economy continuing down the tubes in a recession or worse. We need to act now to save lives next winter.

Hugh Magbie lives in Warren.