"In 1970, the U.S. imported 24 percent of its oil. By 1990 it was 42 percent, and today it's almost 70 percent. We import 70 percent of our oil at a cost of US$700 billion a year -- four times the annual cost of the Iraq war. I've been an oil man all my life, but this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of. But if we create a new renewable energy network, we can break our addiction to foreign oil."

Whose words are these? An environmental activist's? An anti-George W. Bush group's? No, they're the words of 80-year-old T. Boone Pickens, a life-long oil man and founder and chairman of BP Capital. Pickens opened a website early this month to launch a campaign to end America's addiction to imported oil and has taken out a series of advertisements in the news media expressing his opinions. His alternative is to utilize the wind of the Great Plains states of the central and western United States to generate electricity. According to his vision, building new wind-powered generation facilities and better utilizing America's natural gas resources could replace more than one-third of the country's foreign oil imports in 10 years.

Last weekend, former U.S. vice president Al Gore made an even more ambitious offer. He challenged Americans to commit to producing 100 percent of their electricity “from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years.” Will this be possible in a country where renewable energy accounts for just 4.5 percent of total energy consumption? "When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal," Gore said. "But eight years and two months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon."

It is soaring global oil prices that are behind the increasing resonance of the vision offered by the veteran oil man and the call from the environmental politician, especially in the U.S., which has been putting off signing the Kyoto Protocol that limits greenhouse gas emissions.

Soaring crude oil prices are leading to stronger calls from the other side as well. The so-called "realists," including U.S. President George W. Bush, have been pressuring the U.S. Senate, controlled by the Democratic Party, to end a moratorium on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. (The U.S. has banned offshore drilling near its coasts following a major spill off the coast of California in 1969.)

Bush asserted that in other countries leaders who find oil are treated as heroes and he questioned why only the U.S. is unable to tap the vast deposits just off its coasts. Increased supplies would tame high prices at the pump, he promised, adding that the U.S. was taking a hands-off policy, while Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and former Russian president Vladimir Putin were using oil as a weapon to pursue their interests on the international stage.

A CNN poll last week showed 73 percent of Americans supported drilling off the coast of their country. The shift in public sentiment, which opposed this just around a month ago, shows how big an impact soaring gasoline prices are having on Americans. This is when Al Gore stepped up to the stage. He tried to turn public sentiment from shifting toward supporting offshore drilling to backing renewable energies. "It is only a truly dysfunctional system that would buy into the perverse logic that the short-term answer to high gasoline prices is drilling for more oil ten years from now," Gore said.

Since his inauguration, President Lee Myung-bak has been focusing on "energy diplomacy." It is crucial for Korea, which does not produce a drop of oil, to secure overseas energy sources and to conserve energy at home, especially during times like this. Bush’s argument about the principle of supply and demand is the reality the world is facing now; Gore’s suggestion is for the future.

The problem is that the future Gore is referring to may not be that far away. Capitalism involves a process of creative destruction, with new technologies pushing out dated ones and new industries overtaking the old. If the energy industry begins to transform itself around new technologies, then experts say this process will happen very quickly. It will take a lot more than simply a policy of boosting supply to prepare for this significant shift.

The government and the ruling Grand National Party recently authorized a W10.49 trillion (US$1=W1,018) supplementary budget to help Koreans cope with soaring energy costs. Most of that budget (W8.44 trillion) is to provide rebates to lower-income Koreans to help offset the increase in oil prices. The government only set aside W354 billion to support research and development into renewable energy sources. Over the last five years, the government invested no more than W1.9 trillion into this field. Politicians do a lot of talking, but when it comes down to the bottom line, renewable energy is last priority. Democratic Party floor leader Won Hye-young has proposed the formation of a committee that would seek revolutionary measures in lowering carbon gas emissions. This is something that should be explored on a bipartisan level.