Why West doesn't care much about getting independent of oil?

[HeliArmy]

Hi!
We all know that oil is a dependency West countries have with Middle East, and gas is a dependency Europe has mainly with Russia, meanwhile US tries to find ways to get gas themselves - at a bad environmental cost, but that's another topic - and I wonder why West countries, without much oil & gas resources, doesn't care more about getting independent of Middle East and Russia?

I know that making exchanges between countries helps the peace, and perhaps the fact we brought gas and oil from these countries helped them to make them more "peaceful" - it's a bit relative when we talk about Middle East - but I think getting independent would help a lot West countries to act with more freedom regarding to what these other resourceful countries do.

 

[LilAnn]

I'm so glad you brought this up! I have had this conversations with so many friends, but no one has ever had a satisfactory answer. Here's the idea we're toying with...

While not all all of them, some of the stupidly, ridiculously rich people over here get their fortunes from it, (i.e. the Bush family). I don't know any numbers or statistics. Its a working theory with no research to back it up. If we go to electric cars, or any car that doesn't need gas and oil, while we would become independent, the oil billionaires would be out of a lot of money.