I don’t agree with President Bush about much, but I support the remarks he made today about alternative energy sources.

“The problem is we get oil from some parts of the world and they simply don’t like us,” Mr. Bush said, speaking of Middle East suppliers, but naming no countries. “And so the more dependent we are on that type of energy, the less likely it will be that we are able to compete, and so people have good, high-paying jobs.”

While these words are, in my opinion, typical of Bush’s very poor public speaking ability, I think he’s right. Right or wrong, our country has developed a need for enormous amounts of energy, and we are extremely dependent on other nations to get it. Our need to ensure that we have petroleum in large quantities effectively dictates our foreign policy far too much.

I would like to see us change two things about how we spend money as a nation: (1) Dedicate far more of our resources, private and public, to developing more abundant, less polluting energy sources and (2) Dedicate much more of our resources toward direct help for third world nations, particularly Africa.

I firmly believe that alleviating our dependence on hostile and/or unstable countries for energy and helping resolve humanitarian crises in other nations will make our country less of a target and our world a safer and more compassionate place to live.