How to solve oil crisis? Elect more 'green' legislators

0 Comments | USA TODAY, May, 2008

The Common Ground feature "A whole lot of gas" made many good points about the United States' dependence on oil. The commentary also triggered memories for me. During the middle and late '70s, the Department of Energy funded many alternate energy research projects (The Forum, Thursday).

Although promising technologies were developed, the marketplace didn't adopt many of them because the cost exceeded that of producing energy with fossil fuels.

During the early '90s, similar technologies were developed to safely store and dispose of low-level radioactive waste.

Again, however, the government left it to the free market to implement.

Needless to say, little was put into practice because there was no clear, quick profit to be made.

...