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All presidents indulge in end-of-the-term environmental rule-making, partly to tie up bureaucratic loose ends but mainly to lock in policies that their successor will be hard pressed to reverse. President Bill Clinton's midnight regulations were mostly good, including a rule protecting 60 million acres of national forests from road-building and most commercial development. Not surprisingly, most of President Bush's proposals are not.

In his recent news conference, George Bush Jr. suggested that our nation's "problem" with high gasoline prices was caused by the lack of a national energy policy, and tried to blame it all on Bill Clinton. First, Junior said, "This is a problem that's been a long time in coming. We haven't had an energy policy in this country." This was followed by, "That's exactly what I've been saying to the American people -- 10 years ago if we'd had an energy strategy, we would be able to diversify away from foreign dependence. And -- but we haven't done that. And now we find ourselves in the fix we're in." As is so often the case, Bush was lying.

Will the November 4, 2008, election doom the future of Nevada? That sounds ominous, I know, but this election could be a make-or-break moment in history for the Yucca Mountain Project. This is the ill-conceived plan to bury nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain. Everyone in this state knows the problems inherent in this project and should be on alert. But also this should serve as a "heads-up" to everyone in the country.

House Republicans yesterday scuttled a bill that Democrats had hoped would help lower gasoline prices by forcing the Energy Department to release 70 million barrels of oil--about a three-day supply--from the national stockpile. Democrats promised that the action would have produced immediate relief at the pump, as was the case with similar releases in '91, 2000 and '05. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve now holds about 700 million barrels. Despite winning a clear 268-157 majority, the measure still lost. Democratic leaders had brought the proposal up for debate under rules requiring two-thirds vote to pass. But passing the bill by just a majority would have meant allowing Republicans to force a vote on new offshore drilling leases.

As the saying goes, facts are many but the truth is one. The truth is that the U.S. military is the single largest consumer of energy in the world. But as a wise man once said, don't confuse facts with reality. The reality is that even U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) does not know precisely where and how much energy it consumes. This is my Fact Zero. Below I give some facts and figures on U.S. military oil consumption based mostly on official statistics.[1] If you want to reproduce them make sure you read every footnote even if you need to put on your glasses. Also read the footnotes in this article.

As an additional preamble, when I say that the West has no more credibility than Russia on this conflict, it does not mean that Russia has any credibility, or that I love Putin, it means that the West has no credibility whatsoever; when I mock the West's claims about human rights and democracy, it does not mean that I think Russia is a defender of human rights and democracy, just that we have no credibility either on the topic. All of that stated, here are a few facts worth noting about Georgia and the current behavior of its president, Russia, and decision makers in Washington:

It should be a truly fascinating - albeit possibly enormously grim - thing to watch, one of the more dramatic and revolutionary market-driven shifts in modern history, upheaving everything we've become so accustomed to and changing behaviors and attitudes and alliances and political agendas and ass-girths and no I'm not talking about the "Lost" finale or the new 3G iPhone or how Brangelina's twins are a sure sign of the Second Coming.

One of the standard talking points about high gas prices is the notion that restrictions on exploration and drilling in environmentally sensitive federal lands and offshore areas have tightened supplies of oil at a time of heightened demand. If we can just open those areas and drill more, the logic goes, gas prices would plummet. Never mind that the oil in ANWR wouldn't be available for years. Moreover, as the Campaign for Our Future notes: Drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, at most, lower the cost of a barrel of crude oil by 50 cents in 2025.

Virtually every individual, family, business and institution in the United States is grappling with the destructive consequences of our national failure to devise a responsible energy policy. The price of oil has risen 85 percent in the past two years. Because of our extreme dependence on fossil fuel, that price increase is causing a shock to our economic system that is apparent in higher gas and food prices, rising costs for manufactured goods, damaged corporate profits and painfully stretched household budgets.

Twenty-five years ago, the Nuclear Freeze campaign mobilized hundreds of thousands of Americans to demand an end to the testing, production, and deployment of new nuclear weapons. At that time, advocating the complete abolition of nuclear weapons was a fringe position confined to a few utopians on the left. Even most antinuclear activists struggled getting past the "you can't put the genie back in the bottle" common sense of pundits and arms control experts.

Those of you who do not believe Peak Oil Theory should first make sure you fully understand it. According to this theory, after a reservoir has been depleted by half of its total volume, the output begins to plateau or remain constant for some unknown period. At some later time (which is unpredictable) the output begins a permanent decline of variable duration (which is also unpredictable) until the remaining quantity of oil is no longer economically feasible to extract with current technology. Therefore, Peak Oil Theory does not state that the earth is running out of oil per say. It states that the earth is running out of inexpensive oil, otherwise known as conventional oil - the high-grade oil that comes out by drilling on land and requires minimal refinement costs.

If U.S. President George W. Bush wants to boost Republican chances of holding on to the White House and keeping Democratic gains in Congress to a minimum in the November elections, he might consider taking an attack on Iran before the end of his administration off the table. Of course, that's probably the last thing Bush-and his particularly belligerent vice president, Dick Cheney-will do.

What if oil prices continue to rise with no end in sight? Even now with gas at $4.50 a gallon on the west coast, it's becoming difficult for many people to fill up their gas tanks. What's going to happen when it goes to $5.00, $6.00, $7.00 a gallon, or even higher? This will have an effect on all levels of society - from the poor, all the way to the White House. The entire economy of the country and the free world may be at stake. It could lead to war.

While the U.S. oil industry want access to more federal lands to help reduce reliance on foreign suppliers, American-based companies are shipping record amounts of gasoline and diesel fuel to other countries. A record 1.6 million barrels a day in U.S. refined petroleum products were exported during the first four months of this year, up 33 percent from 1.2 million barrels a day over the same period in 2007.

U.S. federal oil and gas royalties are payments made by firms to the federal government in exchange for the opportunity to explore for oil and gas on government-owned land or water. Traditionally, most of the funds generated by these royalties have gone directly into the general U.S. Treasury. Some of the funds have been directed to the Historical Preservation Trust Fund and the Land and Water Conservation Fund. During most of the twentieth century, oil and gas companies generally paid between 12.5 and 16.7 percent in royalties for a lease to drill on public land or water. Over time, these royalty payments generated over $100 billion in revenues.

While President Bush fiddles as the economy burns from the impact of high energy prices, Senate leadership has proposed legislation, S. 3044, which addresses the pain families are feeling at the pump. Asking oil companies to pay their fair share in taxes to finance a new Energy Independence & Security Trust Fund is not unreasonable; it will provide households with the access to alternatives to high-priced oil that they desperately need. And beefing up the laws and enforcement to make sure that oil companies and financial speculators are playing by the rules will help ensure that all Americans get access to fairly priced energy.