In this regard, I agree with you completely.

Sometimes, industry conversions don't work too well. Boeing tried to morph into a new area when military orders were declining in the 1970s so they came up with the LRV - Light Rail Vehicle - and sold hundreds of them to Boston and San Francisco to replace the aging PCC (President's Conference Committee) trolleys that were built starting in the 1930s. This was an unmitigated disaster - they couldn't even make good doors (each door had over 150 moving parts that failed all too regularly).

GM is going through something similar in trying to get more 'electric' with their drivetrains and wean themselves off of the old-style drivetrains.

I'm waiting to see which President will be the first one to say "We've kept the peace in Germany since 1945 - it's time for us to come home" and save that money. Then Japan, Korea and so many other places.

Imagine what we could afford if those dollars were spent at home. We'd have our own high-speed trains and public transit systems in place that would mean driving was an OPTION more than a necessity. Then you have all the dominos associated with that (reduced pollution, more efficient use of resources, etc).

But we get corporations who's vision is limited to the next quarter's numbers. You would have thought that we learned our lessons in the 1980s when the Japanese pantsed us by taking the long-term view. And if a company DARES to sacrifice short term profits for long-term sustainability, what do they get as a reward? A shareholder lawsuit.

We should be building windmills in numbers that would make the Dutch faint. We should have long-ago approved the new nuclear plant designs and started stamping them out like the French did. We have a governor in Montana who says they have enough coal reserves to provide all our liquid fuel needs (courtesy of the Fischer-Tropsch process) for the next 100+ years. And it's not like this is new technology - it was invented in the 1920s and the South Africans used this EXCLUSIVELY for making gasoline and diesel when the world was boycotting them due to apartheid.

Look at our problems..

The Peruvians have a better retirement plan than we do.

The Brazilians converted their motoring fleet to sugar-based ethanol.

The South Africans made a modern society without benefit of buying oil from people that wanted to kill them.

The French generate almost all their electricity without a drop of oil - and run 200MPH trains with it.

And what do we get? Endless Environmental Impact Studies followed up by NIMBYs and other professional obstructionists.. I'm tired of it.