The folks who made this video maybe didn’t realize that it shows us just how totally screwed we are. Or maybe they did. Warning: if you only come to this blog to read about Apple, you can skip this item.

Listen, energy isn’t my field of expertise. And it’s not what this blog is about. On the other hand, I am a citizen, and I’m #2 on this year’s Vanity Fair New Establishment list, and I also happen to be very close friends with Al Gore. But if you only come here to read about Apple, just move on.

So here’s the thing. The Council on Competitiveness, this group in Washington, D.C., had a conference last week called the National Energy Summit, and it was full of lots of brave talk about how innovative and courageous we are, and how we’re at the tipping point on energy and now it’s time for America to embrace change and unleash our big brainy scientists and our bold, risk-taking entrepreneurs in the quest to tackle the next great challenge of our lifetimes, blah blah blah.

So they put out this video (embedded below), which shows every president since Gerald Ford saying the exact same goddamn thing that we’re saying today. Jesus! If we were as bad at IT as we are at energy (or as full of shit), the whole world would still be using computers that look like this.

I watched this video and I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. We’re fucked, people. Do you realize this? Forget about global warming. Pretend it doesn’t exist. Forget too about the geopolitical lunacy of continuing to depend on foreign oil. Let’s just talk about money, which is something we can all understand and worship.

Alternative energy is the next big tech market, the one that will spawn the next Google, or Apple, or Microsoft. But guess what? Those companies probably won’t be based here. As Thomas Friedman pointed out in his column a few days ago, the Chinese are racing past us. They’re investing billions — in physics, in nanotech, in material science, in fuel cells, in solar. They’re going to own this market.

Meanwhile we sit here with our heads up our butts, debating things like a gas tax or whether power plants should have to cut back on CO2 emissions and whether we can make this leap to a new paradigm without hurting our economy (read: without hurting the companies that sell oil and run coal-powered generators and which contribute loads of money to politicians in Congress.)

You know what? Like it or not, the whole goddamn world is going to shift away from fossil fuels. It’s going to happen. And we’re going to miss it. We’ve spent decades underfunding our scientists, treating them like shit, starving them of resources. Now, Obama has promised to boost spending, but guess what? Even if our scientists come up with great new technologies, our idiot politicians will do their best to keep anyone from being able to use them.

The oil companies will unleash Glenn Beck and his army of frigtards to attack the proponents of change, just like the health insurance companies have done on health care reform. Solar energy? It sounds so … socialist. Carbon sequestration? Isn’t that some kind of secret plan to take away our freedom? Glenn Beck gets his ratings boost, and who cares if the country gets fucked? Better yet, it’s all done in the name of being patriotic. It would all be hilarious if it weren’t so insanely tragic.

So here’s what happens to us. We’ll shift to new energy, because we’ll have no choice. But we won’t buy our fuel cells and solar panels and other power-generation technology from American companies. We’ll buy it from the Chinese. Better yet, we’ll buy it with money we’ve borrowed … from the Chinese. Does nobody see this? We’re living on heroin here, drugged out and happy. Our drug dealer is happy to keep the China White flowing, at incredibly reasonable prices. Why not? How better to compete with an enemy than to drug everyone in his camp?

And all this talk in Washington about bold action, and what a great and powerful nation we are, how brilliant and innovative? All this stirring music with trumpets blaring and soaring strings? Bullshit. This is all just a lullaby we’re singing to keep ourselves asleep, as our empire slides away.