Whatever comes next in terms of energy supply looks like it is going to be expensive, whether it is lower quality hydrocarbons, nuclear, windmills, solar panels, whatever. Handing out huge subsidies to consumers of energy - such as all these bellyaching massively overhoused suburbanites - while punishing suppliers of energy - be they oil companies or whoever - is obviously a recipe for much worse trouble than we can really stand. Those grand houses aren't going to be heated and cooled if Seventies-style foolishness takes the energy supply away. Read the closing chapter of Simmons - energy supply "bridging" is going to take all the windfall profits that can be found, plus a whole vast lot more.

I really do not understand this point of view that holds, simultaneously, that windfalls that arise from producing  (extracting) something, i.e. these grand and probably transitory oil co. reports, are immoral and worthy of high dudgeon, but yet the tremendous windfall profits that arise from  hoarding and consuming something, namely oil-soaked gargantuan remote real estate, should not only be held sacrosanct as examples of the American way, but should also be supplemented  with all manner of enormous special subsidies and deductions.