Within every crisis, there resides an opportunity.

Our current crisis du jour is the rise in oil prices. Once again, we are seeing oil prices go up and up, with predictions of $5.00/gallon gas for later this year.

Our ongoing crisis, albeit one that has been moved to the back burner, is the unemployment picture. We still have high unemployment, high underemployment, and millions who have dropped out of the labor force altogether. Not to mention that wages are stagnant at best.

So let's put these together and see what we come up with.

It is time to face the facts that unless we want to watch as our country and world completely collapse, we have absolutely got to begin the transition to green energy now. We can't afford to wait, and we really don't have to. It has been shown that there is no technological barrier for us to conquer in order to provide for all our energy needs using green renewable forms of energy.

What is needed now however to make that vision a reality is a crash program of manufacturing and installation of these green renewables. That's where our unemployment numbers come in. Why not establish a government program to employ these people in the green energy sector? Use tax incentives, tax credits, even out right job creation in order to put these people to work implementing a green energy future? It seems like not only the logical thing to do, but the right thing to do.

Such a merger would kill two birds with one stone. It would get the US off its oil addiction while simultaneously knocking down the rolls of the unemployed in this country.

Or we can continue to proceed with middling, muddling half measures that we have now, and watch as our society dies from oil overdose and our middle class sinks into obscurity.