Every man and woman aspires to be free in his or her mind. Such dreams have been the motivation for the demonstrations in many Middle Eastern countries. One by one, regimes that have ruled with emergency law and an iron fist have either fallen or been forced to make reforms in response to protests by extremely impoverished youth.

I stand with the protestors demanding a government that represents their interests. But while there are great benefits to having democratic Arab states, there are also huge risks that threaten our energy supply (i.e. oil), which could derail our already fragile economic recovery. After three warning shots (Egypt, Tunisia and Libya), it’s time to heed the warning and act now to reduce our need for Middle Eastern oil.

Last month, I had the privilege to attend one of the forums with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, whose knowledge of the Middle East exceeds any of ours. Friedman made one statement that stuck with me. In explaining how the current situation affects the U.S., he succinctly stated that, “we [the U.S.] have built our house next to a volcano,” with regards to our addiction to oil.

This volcano is sending some warning signs, as evidenced by the oil price increasing nearly 11 percent in a month and $3.50 a gallon gasoline, and that’s just based on the Libya situation. Now imagine if the UAE or Saudi Arabia went up in smoke, the latter of which produces 9.7 million barrels of oil per day according to the Energy Information Administration.

Such an event would most certainly lead to the long gas lines seen in the 1974 oil embargo. And let’s not forget that since all of our food, clothing and other basic necessities come in on trucks, all the prices for those items will also rise, leaving us to mourn like it’s the 1970s all over again. While we were hit from behind during the last gas crunch, we have the ability to not repeat the mistakes of the past and push ourselves to get off of our heroin-like addiction to oil from other countries.

We need to look to home first when it comes to our production of fossil fuels, and I’m not just talking about oil. “Drill, baby, drill” is a great political sound byte and while I support the measure as a way to increase our domestic oil supply, we must understand that this is only a temporary and nonetheless fleeting maneuver that will leave us back where we began in a very short time.

We have many other sources of energy in America, especially when it comes to natural gas, which in terms of oil equals 47 billion barrels. In addition, this fuel burns much cleaner than anything derived from petroleum. Taking advantage of new extraction technologies and investment in new natural gas power plants will allow us to significantly reduce the use of oil in producing electricity.

But even with supply increased, there needs to be an increase in energy efficiency as well, and it can start with the auto industry. Since 1978, the Department of Transportation has issued CAFE standards that have become key to ensuring improvements in increasing the distance we can drive on a gallon of gasoline. Fortunately, this is well on its way to being accomplished through new regulations, which set targets of 39 mpg for cars and 30 mpg for light trucks by 2016, only five years away.

This is good, but we can do better. Requiring all new vehicles sold in the U.S. after 2014 to have the capability for flexible fuels and repurposing the subsidies given to the oil giants for retrofitting gas stations to handle E85 fuel could hasten our adoption of other sources of energy. According to David Sandalow at the Brookings Institutute, retrofitting gas pumps would cost approximately $3,000 per pump or $24 million overall. To ensure a market for Detroit to produce these new vehicles, Congress should also agree to make these new vehicles the main staple of the federal automobile fleet through purchases by the General Services Administration.

After all, since the GSA purchased 63,158 vehicles in 2010, I believe that we could easily set a goal for 20 percent of new purchases to get 40 mpg or greater as a starting point for future progress.

Finally, we need to have an “all of the above” mentality when it comes to funding scientific discovery in energy savings. For example, at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists are developing the systems necessary to deploy the next generation power grids, saving us nearly $150 billion a year. But we do not need to look a thousand miles to see advancement in energy science.

Here at the University, we are developing new methods of hydrogen storage, as evidenced by the advances made by David Dixon’s research group in the chemistry department.

While the grant system will continue to exist for academia, it is also time to create a pathway for private industry that maybe cannot afford such an increase in their R&D budgets to participate in these new endeavors. There have been several proposals, including an infrastructure and innovation bank that would issue loans to companies with good, sensible ideas to develop their new energy-conscious product, with the interest paid going back into new loans.

By taking these steps one at a time, we can eventually achieve energy independence once and for all.

Gregory Poole is a graduate student in metallurgical engineering. His column runs biweekly on Wednesdays.