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No doubt, the road will probably win -- as roads almost always do in these battles. Indeed, the story of I-70 summarizes the 60-year tale of urban development in modern America: Instead of beefing up public transit, cities build neighborhood-destroying highways, cars fill up those highways, cities then build more highways to alleviate traffic, and then yet more cars flood the roads, creating even more traffic. Known as the "fundamental law of highway congestion," this cycle perfectly embodies the "if you build it, cars will come" axiom confirmed in 2011 by researchers at the University of Toronto.

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Still, President Obama is now calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz -- even at those stops where he’s also promising to “drill everywhere.” And later this month Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders will introduce a much more comprehensive bill that tackles all fossil fuels and their purveyors (and has no chance whatsoever of passing this Congress).

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In energy terms, we are now entering a world whose grim nature has yet to be fully grasped.  This pivotal shift has been brought about by the disappearance of relatively accessible and inexpensive petroleum -- “easy oil,” in the parlance of industry analysts; in other words, the kind of oil that powered a staggering expansion of global wealth over the past 65 years and the creation of endless car-oriented suburban communities. This oil is now nearly gone.

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This week, the average price of a gallon of gas in the United States hit $3.57. That's the highest prices have ever been in February, a fact that is all the more sobering when one considers that prices usually rise in the summer, so more pain is likely on the way. And while it has been reasonably well-established that high gas prices, in and of themselves, don't necessarily sound the death knell for an incumbent, there is definitely a link between the cost of energy and the health of the economy. And since the health of the economy this summer will probably be the single most important factor determining who wins the White House, the equation becomes pretty simple. If high gas prices derail the current economic recovery, Obama becomes more vulnerable.

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“If they impose sanctions on Iran’s oil exports,” Rahimi declared, “then even one drop of oil cannot flow from the Strait of Hormuz.” Claiming that such a move would constitute an assault on America’s vital interests, President Obama reportedly informed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that Washington would use force to keep the strait open.  To back up their threats, both sides have been bolstering their forces in the area and each has conducted a series of provocative military exercises.

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Harper capped a week-long attack on U.S. environmentalists with a nationally televised interview Monday night, essentially telling American opponents of the proposed pipeline to butt out of Canada’s affairs.

The 731-mile Northern Gateway pipeline would run west from the massive oil sands deposits of northern Alberta — across pristine wilderness and more than 700 rivers and streams — to a proposed supertanker port on the Pacific coast of British Columbia.

Harper accused American groups of hijacking public hearings by a federal regulatory agency, which is assessing the environmental impact of the $6.6 billion pipeline project. Decisions on the development of Alberta’s oil sands should be left to Canadians, he said.

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In the face of catastrophic climate change and dwindling fossil fuel resources, this cartoonish narrative has gained traction because it invokes the moment's most powerful political metonyms, from implicit allegations of crony capitalism to hippie-themed epithets about environmentalists to "free market" fundamentalism. The underlying idea -- which will only be more amplified in the wake of the Obama administration's pipeline decision Wednesday -- is that fossil fuels are being persecuted by the American government.

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Take the Strait of Hormuz, already making headlines and shaking energy markets as 2012 begins. Connecting the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, it lacks imposing geographical features like the Rock of Gibraltar or the Golden Gate Bridge. In an energy-conscious world, however, it may possess greater strategic significance than any passageway on the planet. Every day, according to the U.S. Department of Energy, tankers carrying some 17 million barrels of oil -- representing 20 percent of the world’s daily supply -- pass through this vital artery.

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With our nation's still unquenchable (and still highly subsidized) thirst for fossil fuels, the false comfort of NIMBY-ism and the fairy-tale notions of "safety in numbers" is quickly vanishing in our cities, as controversial oil and gas exploration projects creep into metropolitan areas. Incredibly, this geographic trend is accelerating just as new drilling techniques are evoking serious concerns about excessive air pollution and about adverse effects on limited water supplies -- problems that have plagued rural energy-producing regions for decades, but are sure to be even worse as they hit densely populated areas.

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Like the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf that would steal the nation's attention (and 11 lives) just two weeks later, Upper Big Branch was the inevitable outcome of regulators turning a blind eye to a greedy corporate culture that puts profit above human lives. But this is nothing new. Coal, oil and gas companies in the U.S. have been getting away with murder for years. Sometimes it is just less obvious -- the slow poisoning of our air, water and food; the deterioration of human health, the loss of homes and jobs, the obliteration of whole communities and ecosystems.

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In "The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the World," Daniel Yergin, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of "The Prize," tackles both this anxiety and its root causes.  The book is an enlightening and detailed historical survey of how man has discovered and harnessed various energy sources, from oil to wind, electricity to shale gas. Although Yergin focuses on the people behind these discoveries -- we learn, for example, how a 19th-century mountaineer's obsession with understanding why the sky is blue led to the discovery of the greenhouse effect -- he adeptly explains the often-complicated political and economical backdrop to these revolutionary feats.

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The Times makes a convincing argument that the White House misjudged the state of the world solar power market in its eager push to get Solyndra's loan guarantee guaranteed. Thas a shame -- in a perfect world, we would all wish for a government that never made a bad investment, and never backed a loser. But the hypocrisy of Republicans on this issue is absurd. The economics of nuclear power are so dicey that private insurers refused to offer policies on nuclear power plants until Congress passed a law limiting nuclear power utility liability and putting the taxpayer on the hook for the costs of a meltdown. But Republicans love loan guarantees for nuclear power plants.

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The federal Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP), created in 1976 to save energy in the midst of the first oil crisis, offers a comprehensive array of weatherization services to 8 million low-income households. Funded through Community Action Agencies (CAAs), created by Lyndon Johnson' War on Poverty, the WAP is the anti-Solyndra, a symbol of what the Obama administration got right on green jobs.

Double-glazed windows and insulated water heaters lack the luster of mammoth solar farms, high-tech innovation funds and shiny new photovoltaic panels. But the process of making the homes of low-income families more energy-efficient by conducting energy audits, installing insulation, sealing gaps and cracks, replacing drafty windows and doors, sealing air ducts and improving ventilation has proven effective in saving money and energy while creating jobs.

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As laughable as it is to portray oil, gas and coal companies -- some of the wealthiest corporations in the world -- as underdogs, the narrative's Machiavellian brilliance should be obvious. For both the global fossil fuel industry and a conservative political movement underwritten by oil barons like the Koch brothers, the mythology self-servingly casts environmentally friendly alternatives as inherently ill-suited to free market economics. In the process, it convinces millions of consumers and entrepreneurs that even if they want to go green, they can't do so in any sort of economically viable way, meaning they should just keep guzzling as much fossil fuel as ever.

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Yes, $534 million is a lot of money, and 1,100 jobs is a lot of jobs, but Solyndra represents just 1.3 percent of the Department of Energy's loan portfolio. America's investment in renewables, and particularly solar, lags behind that of many other G-20 countries as a percentage of GDP. Yet sheer investment isn't enough to ensure a robust renewable sector; it has to be smart investment. And that doesn't mean fussing over individual companies; instead of picking the right companies, we need to pick the right policies. We need to look at what's worked elsewhere, particularly in Germany, which continues to blaze the trail in solar innovation, production and installation.

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Conservatives always warn liberals that "industrial policy" is misguided because the government doesn't have the capacity to successfully pick winners. Solyndra would seem to offer dramatic support for that view. But the real story isn't quite so simple.

As usual, ace green tech reporter Todd Woody provided one of the best early takes on what it all means:

The key graph:

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Which on the surface makes it hard to understand why U.S. and foreign firms continue to seek the services of Neil Bush. The son of one president and brother of another, Neil's political clout has declined since Barack Obama replaced George W. Bush in 2009, and neither brains nor wiles is Neil's strong suit. Two decades ago, the Washington Post observed that his business ventures had "a history of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion," and time, alas, seems not to have improved his record.

Neil claims to have 30 years in the energy industry, though at least 10 people from the Texas oil patch I spoke with said they had never heard of him playing any notable role in the energy business. Of the former first sibling, one international oil executive and consultant said, "I can't imagine anything he could bring to the table."

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"The Keystone Pipeline," wrote global warming activist Bill McKibben, in a letter urging concerned citizens to join a two-week protest in front of the White House, would be "a fuse to the biggest carbon bomb on the continent, a way to make it easier and faster to trigger the final overheating of our planet ..." In an essay titled "Silence Is Deadly," NASA climatologist James Hansen declared that if the tar sands are fully exploited for their oil deposits, "it is essentially game over" for the planet.

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The oil giant Chevron, with $6.2 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2011, has for the past year been engaged in an intense branding campaign called "We Agree," which presents Chevron as a model corporate citizen and steward of the environment. Trying to soften the public image of a company without actually changing destructive business practices is known as "greenwashing" -- and Chevron has been at it for a while.

But in today's media universe, billboards, TV ads, and even Web videos, are no longer enough. That's where the New Jersey firm Social Media Today steps in. I was accidentally sent a confidential presentation for Chevron from a Social Media Today representative I'd earlier corresponded with on another story. It pitches the oil company on a project to build an entire website that apes journalistic outlets in form and appearance but is ultimately committed to advancing Chevron's goals. The presentation offers a window into the frontiers of greenwashing and corporate messaging on the Web.

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