Yesterday, Hilary Clinton unveiled the Democrats' plan to make the US self-sufficient in energy by 2020.
Such an effort would be on the level of Kennedy's plan to put a man on the moon by the end of the '60s in 1961. Achievable - just.
And it is to be widely welcomed, if it means a big push to greater efficiency and renewables. Although it also means the Alaskan natural gas pipeline.
When she announced the initiative she made a neat slip of the tongue that revealed her opinion that the Iraq war was about grabbing oil for the US.
She said that the US spends $50 billion a year to deploy its heavy mob in the Mid-East Gulf area and to supply weapons, bully-boy tactics and despotism-for-dummies training to countries to keep that oil flowing to the United States [well, not in so many words]. "And that does not include the lives and dollars we are spending in Iraq" she added, in tell-tale fashion.
The Democrats would face formidable enemies at home rather than abroad if they pursued the line their 'Energy Independence 2020' plan calls for.
Robert Ebel, the head the energy program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, responded by saying the huge number of service stations and vehicles in the US [read: pushers and users] make the goal "dubious".
"We have to recognize that oil producers and consumers need each other" Like junkies and dealers. "What we need is more energy interdependence, not energy independence." Whatever that means.
He said the money the United States sends abroad to secure oil "is an expense that the US bears to keep the world going ahead in ... economic terms."
But why should ordinary Americans pay for this? US oil addiction makes up a third of its trade deficit. It swallows about a quarter of the 80 million barrels of oil the world uses every day.
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