Now, imports supply nearly two-thirds of our daily needs, according to the United States Energy Information Administration. Most of this oil comes from countries that are either unstable (Nigeria) or whose leaders or people dislike us (Venezuela, Saudi Arabia). Even in Canada, long our best friend on earth, and an immense oil supplier to us, there is an active movement of environmentalists who believe it best not to develop Canada’s vast oil sands and send the oil to us. That movement has recently had some frightening success.

What are we going to do? If there were another oil embargo, we would be in real trouble. If Mexico fell into chaos, if Venezuela stopped sending us oil, there would be extreme hardship.

Beyond that, what if we are close to peak oil  that point at which we have pumped out more than half the oil on the planet? What if supply slips and demand continues to skyrocket, as they are already doing, and these trends continue indefinitely? What if the world has a bitter fight over its remaining oil? Even if this battle is fought with money and not guns, we are at a disadvantage with our pitiful currency and our budget and trade deficits.

In my humble view, we are now in a short-term oil bubble. It will pass and correct, as bubbles do. And speculators will make millions, whichever way it goes. But the long run is terrifying. If we are at or past peak oil, if oil states stop or even hesitate to send us the juice, if Canada decides not to fill our needs, we are in overwhelming trouble.

So, what to do? First, we do not kill the geese  the big oil companies  that lay the golden eggs. We encourage them and cheer them on to get more oil. They need incentives, not hammer blows.

BUT most of all, we treat this as a true crisis. As my pal Glenn Beck, the conservative commentator, says, we need a new moon-shot mentality here. We need to turn coal into oil into gasoline, to use nuclear power wherever we can, and to brush aside the concerns of the beautiful people who live on coastal pastures (like me). And we need to drill on the continental shelf, even near where movie stars live. This must be done, on an emergency basis. If we keep acting as if the landscape were more important than human life, we will make ourselves the serfs of the oil producers and eventually reduce our country to poverty and anarchy.

In that long message sent to Congress 35 years ago, there was an outline of what we needed to do on coal-to-oil and shale-to-oil, as well as wind, solar and wave power. For a generation plus, we have done next to nothing. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said. Let’s roll.