I forget who it was who said, "US energy policy is to maximize demand,
> minimize supply, and send trillions to the people who hate us the most."
That's good--thanks for mentioning it. It occurred to me recently that our three most unfriendly nations---Iran, Venezuela and Russia---can be respectively described as petro-islamist, petro-socialist and petro- nationalist. If we substantially decreased our oil dependence, not only would we deprive them of leverage but we'd make them irrelevant. That's why I think that alternative energy development should be our national security agenda.