With rising fuel prices a constant reminder, it is getting harder for the public to deny that we’re in big energy trouble. This is the first of three essays by The Rag Blog’s Roger Baker on “Peak oil, peak driving, peak cars.” In the first installment, Roger tells us that the USA has, in effect, squandered the decades since the energy crisis of the 1970s in denial of its growing dependence on cheap imported oil, which is now in global decline.