I had a debate recently with a thinking woman whose views tend to be somewhat to the left of my own. While she is a business maven, she is also a mother, and when I mentioned that her son would be a great candidate for a service academy -- to serve as an officer in the greatest armed force in history -- she turned white as a ghost and said, “My son or daughter will never carry a gun in some stupid war! No way! I'll never let them be in the military!”

Hysterics aside, the emotional response could be decoded to read that she could not envision a situation in which her offspring should ever be sacrificed at the alter of freedom.

“There's a war going on in Iraq right now, you warmonger,” she hissed. “Would you ask your son to be over there, getting shot at? Or no reason other than to guard the big oil interests' energy assets? You want your son to die for nothing?”

As a matter of fact, I said, he's trying to get into the Air Force Academy or West Point. He wants to fly a jet, drive a tank, or swoop a helicopter, but he also loves the idea of hoisting an M-16 as a grunt and becoming history's ultimate weapon – the armed infantryman. (As a digression, I always wonder, if he becomes a West Point cadet, which side of the stadium do I sit on during the Army-Navy game? A silly question – Navy's side, of course.)

After hearing all the objections a mother can raise to having a son in the uniform of the U.S. Armed Services, she insisted that we're fighting for oil because of a conspiracy. That Big Business -- Big Oil -- is keeping down technologies that would make oil obsolete, and that we as a nation continue to pollute and waste the precious resources of the earth, squandering our children's future – and their very lives – in our sinfulness. That we should go to work to implement oil-free technologies NOW, and that our failure to do so is the result of a vast right wing plot.

It is always difficult for me to paraphrase an opinion I consider ill founded. I tend to make the other side's argument seem ridiculous. Therefore, I decided to let Left Wing Mom speak for herself. The following statements were only edited for grammar, as in the original they were rushed to the page of a hastily written email:

Left Wing Mom:

“I read your editorial ‘What's a Superpower to do?' Wow, I actually agree with more of it than I thought. Of course you're veering way off with the Iranian H-bomb, and the idea of using an American nuclear weapon to ‘solve the problem' and then blaming the mushroom cloud on an Iranian technical problem is wild even for you. And saying Roosevelt allowed Pearl Harbor to come under attack? I can't believe you said that out loud! And as far as Iraq, rather than having our children guard the oil and get killed doing it, the most important thing to be doing is developing, at the most rapid pace, the technology that will radically reduce our dependence on oil -- not only ours, but the rest of the worlds' too. Then the lunatic radical Muslims can incinerate each other all they want and we can ignore them. And as to the Russians supplying Iraq with weapons, it's not time to pick a fight with Russia -- that's history. Better to keep them in the inner circle and use them for diplomacy with Iran when the time comes. But you're not listing the biggest part of the argument, which is that we have to get away from our addiction to oil. Because the most important thing is, American children should NOT be SACRIFICED for oil -- not mine, not yours, none! We need to bring on the technologies that have been suppressed for decades -- technologies that will make oil use obsolete. Then our soldiers can come home.”

The trouble with quoting her directly, of course, is that it makes her argument seem a bit more lucid. But let's go to the issues. First, as to Iran, my recommendations in the article “Iran: What's a Superpower to do?” stand. So far, they are passing the test of time now that Iran has thumbed their noses at the U.N. deadline.

But what of this business about our children dying for oil? Do we have the technology to make oil use a thing of the past?

Actually, we do have the technology to make oil obsolete (several technologies, actually). Here's a short list:

1. Nuclear fission: for use in large-scale power production. This method produces zero carbon emissions (zero!); therefore it is a favorite of environmentalists -- at least the real ones, though not the radical pretenders.

2. Coal gasification and combined cycle power: America is the Saudi Arabia of coal. We could use it cleanly. You simply bring coal into a chemical plant that manufactures synthetic natural gas and synthetic liquid fuel (methanol) while discarding the molecules that are bad for the environment, like sulfur and mercury, and you pipe the syn gas or syn liquid into a conventional natural gas burning or oil-fired power plant. Advantage: doesn't use oil. Disadvantage: makes carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is accused of changing the atmosphere and the climate of the planet, and not for the better. (But, if we happen to have another ice age, won't greenhouse gases come in handy?)

3. Coal gasification at the mine mouth: chemical plant at source of coal. Syn gas is put into the existing national pipeline infrastructure -- ditto syn liquid fuel. Advantage: again, no reliance on oil. Disadvantage: that pesky carbon emission problem.

4. Triple hybrid cars: add to present hybrid a hydrogen fuel cell. The car would run on electric motors supplied by batteries. When the battery is low, the fuel cell kicks in to recharge and provide supplemental power. When the fuel cell is low, the gas engine comes online. The power unit is recharged back at the house by using efficient, zero carbon power technology (nuclear).

5. Microturbines for households: distributed power using syn gas and small gas turbines, about the size of your car engine. Powers one house. While this is less efficient than a larger fossil plant and creates more pollution, it would eliminate costly and unsightly infrastructure (large power transmission towers and power lines, which are susceptible to terrorist attacks).

So you see, if these technologies were implemented, no American children need die for oil.

That's where my email to Left Wing Mom ended. But it occurred to me that we do seem to be ignoring the fact that America has an enormous amount of its own oil. It's in Alaska. Place called the North Slope. Why aren't we exploiting it? Perhaps that's part of the same conspiracy that is suppressing the above oil-free technologies.

Left Wing Mom replied promptly:

“Of course we have technology, but are we developing it, ramping it up? No. Fuel cells have been around for 15 years. It's bull! We consume 20 million barrels a day of oil, just U.S. consumption. Time is long past to get delivery on alternatives. Reasonable, readily available and not environmentally destructive (which nukes, coal and absurdly long pipelines are).”

“Dear Left Wing Mom,” I replied, “have you ever heard of economics?” You don't go crazy making or “ramping up” or implementing technology that will make energy at the equivalent of $150/barrel. Oil was $30/barrel seven years ago. Natural gas was so plentiful that they started cramming it into pipelines and building quickie power plants with gas turbine engines (think a jet engine the size of your house). Now that oil's north of $70/barrel, and natural gas is six times the price it once was early in the decade, economics dictates that we explore alternatives.

When oil is cheap, I continued, all you can (economically) do is test or "pilot plant" the technology for eventual us. You don't actually build it. Why? Who would drive up to your gas station if you were selling gasoline for $16.87/gallon when the station across the street sells it...