http://youtube.com/watch?v=e-LOtKIIKcg

Abundant natural resources? We are focusing too much on the short term. We can't keep worrying about the next place to dig for oil. Gas is no longer "nearing $4 per gallon." Now, it is nearing $5.
If we don't begin researching deeper into other energy sources, there is going to be economic devastation. We not only rely on oil for driving ourselves from here to there, but we rely on oil to transport most of our food to us. We rely on oil to run the manufacturing plants that produce the products we so heavily depend on (including these energy saving lightbulbs). We rely on petroleum-based fertilizers to grow our monoculture of corn and soy. The dependencies go on and on.

It is important to develop products which reduce energy consumption, but not only as a solution to a problem, because it is not a solution. The fundamental problem is being prolonged. These energy-saving products will do us good once we develop and adopt a new means to produce most of our energy, because they will demand less of this new energy source.

We have plenty of renewable resources, in fact there is no shortage of oil. But continuing to pollute the environment due to convenience and manipulation of economic livelyhood is just plain stupid.
Obviously we have greater potential to create more efficient and less damaging means to support civilization but for now those who control the world market of oil have dug themselves pretty deeply into the world economy. All the plastics and synthetics that are made from oil as well as fuel that we consume has made for a convenient way of life that most people are slow to change, only because they have been kept apart from any other way of living.
Change means inconvenience and to the average person addicted to instant gratification inconvenience means I'd rather not. Fortunately the manipulation of pricing oil and fuel at the current level is already creating the change and the inconvenience where most people would not have given much thought to doing anything different. Inconvenience inspires lazy people to find a more convenient way of life, and so there is stir of energies being created which might lead us away from burning of fossil fuels, and dumping the waste products of burnt and unburnt fuel into the air and water. Obviously we can't continue this way of life forever and hope to see the planet sustain a growing population when the planet is getting more toxic.

There is a lot going on that is misleading.
Drilling for more oil is not the problem but it keeps people thinking oil is the lifeblood of civilized convenience and that there is a shortage of it.
Politicians have little control and really don't represent the people as they should. The U.S. Government is little more than a stage set to entertain the world with drama while all the worlds decisions are being made in private and away from the population in general. But for most who do not want to be inconvenienced, they watch the tube, or log on to the internet or listen to the radio to understand what is happening around them but fail to really understand what happens behind the drama.

One should listen to public radio once in a while to get a glimpse into the differences in how free radio works counter to the controlled media of mass marketing and entertainment.