Would Disney World shut down at ten-dollar-a-gallon gas? Chris Steiner says so. And a lot more changes, too, on the way to twenty-dollars-a-gallon.

Is “energy independence” an impossible dream? Energy contrarian Robert Bryce says the U.S. can’t afford to kick its foreign oil habit. We’ll hear from him, and the pushback.

Ecuadorean Indians, and American trial lawyers, say Chevron is liable for a huge toxic oil dump, an “Amazon Chernobyl.” The fight reaches from a jungle courthouse to Washington, DC.

Markets in trouble. A call for more troops in Afghanistan. And Budweiser will no longer be American-owned. Our news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

Americans believe in markets, and, over time, markets have worked very well for Americans. But what about now, when oil markets and oil prices and speculation in those markets are sky high and still climbing?
We know oil supply is not infinite, and demand is huge. We knew cheap oil couldn’t last forever. [...]

For thirty years now, more and more Americans have flown at the drop of a hat. Cheaper flights and more flights made the country seem smaller.
Home in Dallas. Cabin in Vermont. Kids in California. Parents in Florida. Vacation far away — no problem, we’ll all fly.
But the oil price surge that is spiking gas prices [...]

If you want to see into the future, what we just had was a week full of glimpses.
Oil, above all, shattering record after record. Airlines now charging by the bag for luggage, and much more change to come.
On the campaign trail, running-mate talk heating up as McCain, Clinton and Obama race for the White House.
In [...]

Suddenly, even for people who don’t follow oil futures and Saudi production estimates, the lid seems to have blown off energy prices.
Oil is at double its price of a year ago and still soaring. Some now predict $200 dollars a barrel. Many Americans remember when it was twenty.
Gasoline is heading over the four-dollar-a-gallon mark. Some [...]

The Irrawaddy delta in Myanmar is underwater, thousands dead, and environmentalists say it’s global warming. Monster tornadoes are plaguing the U.S. — last weekend in Missouri, Oklahoma and Georgia.
Meanwhile, far away, on the west coast of Alaska, the tiny fishing village of Kivalina is falling into the sea. And its attorneys are suing 24 oil, [...]

Hillary Clinton and John McCain say they want to drop federal gas taxes for the summer. Barack Obama says no.
If you’re strapped for cash and struggling with higher food and energy prices, it can sound like a good idea. But step back just half an inch from presidential campaign follies, and the idea can look [...]

Even President Bush said last week, “We’ve got to get off oil.” But we’re not off oil. Not by a long, long shot.
And now oil is hitting all-time record prices, again. $109 dollars a barrel this morning. It hits our lives and economy in a million ways. It especially hits the ways we move. Three [...]

Bestselling writer Ben Mezrich has made his name and fortune tracking young hot shots chasing big money on the edge. He did it in “Bringing Down the House” and in “Busting Vegas,” where fast cars and fast women and casino life were the currency.
Now he’s doing it in the world of oil: oil traders, the [...]

Iraq has the world’s third largest proven reserves of oil, and they’re barely tapped. This week, the price of oil reached $82 dollars a barrel — the highest in history. And Alan Greenspan says in his new memoir that, at least for him, the U.S. invasion of Iraq was “largely about oil.”
Iraq’s ocean of oil [...]