What the next President needs to do with our energy issues is the following:
Get in front of the American people and tell them we are in a fight for our sovereignty. We need to get off of foreign oil and we are going to do everything in our power to do that within the next 10 years. That is right 10 years - 100% off foreign oil. I do not want to hear that we cannot do that - this is the country that created the atomic bomb in a short time and put a man on the moon in the 1960's. We can do anything we set our minds to.
Then this President needs to engender in us the feeling that we are on a team with the same goal - no "damn democrats" or "raunchy republicans" just "Americans".
The approach needs to include:
- Drilling in the ANWR - and ANY place in the US that we have readily available oil reserves.
- No pussy footing around by the environmentalists - this is short term "pain" for long term gain. Shut them up for 10 years.
- Use our coal reserves to create clean coal to liquid fuel (yes, it can be done cleanly)
- Build more wind plants
- Build solar plants
- Build new nuclear plants
- Research and develop new RENEWABLE energy sources for our cars.
- Build better more fuel efficient cars
- Stop ethanol - it is a waste of time
- Do not export or sell energy outside the US.
If we did this and encouraged (with tax cuts and rebates) Americans to retrofit their homes with solar panels and (if they are in rural locales) wind turbines, we could be more green and free of foreign oil in less than 10 years. Fuel for cars would be cheap and our economy would boom. There is no need to drive a sardine can - our scientists can develop a fuel that can power whatever vehicle we want - cleanly and with a renewable fuel.
Radical Islam could kiss our butts and keep their damn oil. Our oil executives - who are smart - would diversify and build into the new technologies to retrain and keep their employees.
I want to see a President do this - and say to Hell with the naysayers. We CAN do it - and we need to before we are all sitting inthe dark because the Iranian President "I'm-a-nut-job" shut off the spigot.
You pick your option.
