In 1979 President Jimmy Carter, an early practitioner of the Oh, Woe! School of Planetary Analysis (today Al Gore is the dean of that school), said that oil wells were ``drying up all over the world.'' Not exactly.

In 1971, according to M.A. Adelman, an MIT economist, non-OPEC countries had remaining proven reserves of 200 billion barrels. After the next 33 years of global economic growth, Adelman says, those countries had produced 460 billion barrels and had 209 billion remaining. As for OPEC countries, in 1971 they had 412 billion in proven reserves; by 2004 they had produced 307 billion and had 819 billion remaining.

Note the adjective "proven." In 1930, U.S. proven reserves were 13 billion barrels. Then we fought a global war, fueled the largest, most sustained economic expansion in human history, and achieved today's electricity-powered ``information economy.'' Today, America's proven reserves are about 30 billion barrels -- not counting the perhaps 15 billion in the field discovered last year in deep water 175 miles off Louisiana's coast.

America produces about one-quarter of the 20.6 million barrels of oil it uses a day. Unfortunately, just as liberals love employees but not employers, they want energy independence but do not want to drill in the "pristine" (read: desolate) Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (potential yield: 10.4 billion barrels) and are reluctant to countenance drilling offshore.

Well, then, what can be done immediately about the gasoline "crisis" du jour? Americans could save 1.2 billion of the 130 billion gallons of gasoline they use a year if they would properly inflate their tires. And they might do that if ever "soaring" prices actually make gasoline unusually expensive.