Whats with the world these days?

Gas prices have fluxed nearly a dollar because of Hurricane Ike ripping through Texas, destroying an oil refinery. The prices have seem to come under control around here but my room mate found out yeaterday that you can hardly get gas back in Roswell (my home town, a suburb of Atlanta). People are waiting in lines for hours to only be allowed to get about ten dollars worth of gas. Now rumors have begun about school being closed tomorrow due to the drought. If school gets closed how many people can't get to work either becaue they have to take care of their kids or they simply don't have to means of getting there with the shortage. That means that business' can't operate at their best and when business' are slow the stock market crashes and the chain continues from their. The point of all this is one question. Are we stupid? We have the highest generated GDP in the world and we can't manage to out grow petroleum? Brazil has done it. There is something like less than five percent usage of petroleum in Brazil. They use alternative fuels and natural gas. How can a country who has no issue with cutting down the largest rainforest in the world say "Hey, lets keep the tree's healthy before we cut them down" and we can't say "time out! were taking two weeks break from the war to invest that wasted money into an alternative fuel source." The only people I hear trying to do something about it are the oil companies and really, do you think they are gonna "find" a new solution until the old one they make a ton of money with, runs out? I don't think so. The presidential candidates need to be saying "I have a plan, a plan that will save you thousands of dollars a year, a new fuel source." A new fuel source would work miracles for these candidates. Your saving the voter money, your cleaning their enviornment, and your promoting a new school of thought, being effiicient. Not just the highest output or cheapest way, but the least polluting, the most eco-friendly. Now that is a bright new future to promise.