Americans should reduce their ceaseless come-and-go driving in large cars - and perhaps move closer to their jobs to shorten commuting - because the nightmarish price of gasoline will force a lifestyle change upon society. Already, fuel costs are damaging many businesses and bankrupting some airlines.

West Virginia should acquire many new flood-control reservoirs, each equipped with hydroelectric turbines to supplement national power needs. The lakes would be recreation lures for tourists - and fresh water from them could be piped to East Coast cities now running dry.

America should build perhaps 50 more nuclear power plants to keep up with soaring energy consumption.

Gov. Manchin's dream of billion-dollar liquefaction plants across West Virginia, turning coal into gasoline and diesel fuel, is uncertain, because nobody yet has found a way to operate such plants without severe pollution.

National efforts for ethanol production have doubled the price of corn and are driving food prices upward.

All these insights come from a longtime Charleston industrialist who has spent a generation studying energy issues.

Nearly 90 years old, Charlie Jones remains a keen-minded dynamo of West Virginia's economy. As a barge shipping operator, he has spent much of his long life coping with fuel costs, and researching them. As far back as the 1970s, he addressed the Charleston Rotary Club about the gasoline crisis of the Carter era.

In a wide-ranging Sunday interview about worsening fuel costs, Jones spelled out several ideas to help people, businesses and government adapt to the new reality of $120-a-barrel oil and ever-growing demands for energy.

While large reserves of coal, oil and natural gas remain, they grow more expensive to capture because "easy" deposits have been exhausted, he said. So the price of remaining supplies will keep rising.

The decline of U.S. manufacturing reduced power demand - but the saving was offset by the power needs of huge population growth (mostly Hispanics, blacks and Asians), he noted.  If U.S. factories hadn't moved overseas, America would be suffering brown-outs now. The nation should build perhaps 50 new nuclear power plants to help meet the energy gap, he thinks.

All types of renewable energy - wind, solar, biomass, tidal, geothermal, etc. - should be pursued, because the economy needs every new power source it can get, he added.

Jones was this newspaper's 2004 West Virginian of the Year because he provides many jobs through one of the state's few home-based corporations. Many years of wisdom back his energy views. His insights should be heeded by state leaders.

All sorts of energy-saving plans should be explored. For example, the American Electronics Association said last week that 1.3 billion gallons of gasoline could be saved yearly if suitable U.S. white-collar employees "telecommuted" one or two days a week, working from their home computers instead of driving to their offices. The change also would prevent 26 billion pounds of exhaust pollution, the AEA said.

The snowballing energy crisis is real. The best ideas from many sources should be utilized to deal with it.

West Virginia should acquire many new flood-control reservoirs, each equipped with hydroelectric turbines to supplement national power needs. The lakes would be recreation lures for tourists - and fresh water from them could be piped to East Coast cities now running dry.

America should build perhaps 50 more nuclear power plants to keep up with soaring energy consumption.

Gov. Manchin's dream of billion-dollar liquefaction plants across West Virginia, turning coal into gasoline and diesel fuel, is uncertain, because nobody yet has found a way to operate such plants without severe pollution.

National efforts for ethanol production have doubled the price of corn and are driving food prices upward.

All these insights come from a longtime Charleston industrialist who has spent a generation studying energy issues.

Nearly 90 years old, Charlie Jones remains a keen-minded dynamo of West Virginia's economy. As a barge shipping operator, he has spent much of his long life coping with fuel costs, and researching them. As far back as the 1970s, he addressed the Charleston Rotary Club about the gasoline crisis of the Carter era.

In a wide-ranging Sunday interview about worsening fuel costs, Jones spelled out several ideas to help people, businesses and government adapt to the new reality of $120-a-barrel oil and ever-growing demands for energy.

While large reserves of coal, oil and natural gas remain, they grow more expensive to capture because "easy" deposits have been exhausted, he said. So the price of remaining supplies will keep rising.

The decline of U.S. manufacturing reduced power demand - but the saving was offset by the power needs of huge population growth (mostly Hispanics, blacks and Asians), he noted.  If U.S. factories hadn't moved overseas, America would be suffering brown-outs now. The nation should build perhaps 50 new nuclear power plants to help meet the energy gap, he thinks.

All types of renewable energy - wind, solar, biomass, tidal, geothermal, etc. - should be pursued, because the economy needs every new power source it can get, he added.

Jones was this newspaper's 2004 West Virginian of the Year because he provides many jobs through one of the state's few home-based corporations. Many years of wisdom back his energy views. His insights should be heeded by state leaders.

All sorts of energy-saving plans should be explored. For example, the American Electronics Association said last week that 1.3 billion gallons of gasoline could be saved yearly if suitable U.S. white-collar employees "telecommuted" one or two days a week, working from their home computers instead of driving to their offices. The change also would prevent 26 billion pounds of exhaust pollution, the AEA said.

The snowballing energy crisis is real. The best ideas from many sources should be utilized to deal with it.