With 1 million square miles of the Arctic melting unexpectedly this summer, these are warning signs that we have to act and act now. Our addiction to Middle Eastern oil obviously has security implications, and we think it's about time to be generating Eastern Washington wind energy instead of sending our money to the sheikhs.

There is no excuse for this administration shielding information about Iraq and the fact that we have great difficulties there from the American people.

I would like to see whoever is our next president dedicate a significant part of their inaugural address to this challenge. We have to ignite the nation's energies and passions on this to make this happen. I think we do need the same kind of inspiration we had from Kennedy in his inaugural address in 1961.

Back in the mid-1970s, we adopted some fairly ambitious goals to improve efficiency of our cars. What did we get? We got a tremendous boost in efficiency.

Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000.

I'm sure that in the fullness of time we'll learn that one or more of these seemingly promising technologies were dead ends. And that's the nature of innovation, and that's why we should spread our bets; we should not put our eggs in any one basket. Some of these will be grand successes, some of them will be average, and some of them will be abject failures.

If this ice melts in Greenland it can shut down the Gulf Current.