Solutions To Energy Independence

On this past Sunday's edition of NBC's "Meet the Press", host David Gregory played several old clips of the former presidents' interviews on "Meet the Press". He had one clip of then presidential candidate John F. Kennedy on January 3, 1960, then he had another clip of president Gerald Ford who was gearing up for the 1976 presidential campaign, then he had Ronald Reagan giving an interview as well in regards to the 1976 presidential primary campaign. I heard then President Ford talking about the campaign and he made some statements in regards to energy independence. He stated we needed to be energy independent and not rely on importing foreign oil. HE SAID THAT BACK IN 1976! Why are we still dependent on foreign oil? Why do we as a country do business with Saudi Arabia? Nineteen of the 21 hijackers on the planes that attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were of Saudi descent.

It's a disgrace that we import oil from foreign countries when we have oil in our own country we can drill and put out in the market. Ever since the Arab Oil Embargo of 1973, we should've been drilling for our own oil as well as seeking alternate energy solutions so we wouldn't be dependent on foreign oil. Why are we still dependent on foreign oil? I don't think it's an accident. All the hype we've been hearing on the news the last few years about energy independence is an absolute farce! Our elected officials have no intention of making the United States energy independent. WE'VE HAD 36 YEARS WE COULD'VE DONE SOMETHING ABOUT IT! When you take a look at the situations we're facing with Iran and North Korea, we don't need to be importing oil from the Middle East. That's the way the powers-that-be desire it.

Our politicians are in bed with the Saudis as well as the seven sister oil companies. Our elected elite receive campaign contributions from the oil companies as well as from Saudi Arabia. Our politicians aren't going to break the monopoly of the oil companies. We need to make OPEC and the Middle East irrelevant to the United States. How do we do that? We devise solutions in America that would break our dependence upon OPEC and the Middle East. We don't have any business obligating ourselves to the Middle East considering the turmoil it's in.

What are some solutions we can consider? The quest to make America energy independent isn't going to happen overnight. I believe it will take two phases to put America in a situation it needs to be in. First of all, we need to be drilling for oil in any of the territories in America that has oil. Those places are the ANWAR in Alaska, offshore drilling from the Gulf coast in California and Florida. We also could be drilling for oil in Colorado, Nebraska, and Utah. There's probably other territories in America we can drill as well. I believe that alone would supply all the oil we need to not be dependent on foreign countries. We also need to build more refineries. We haven't built one in over 30 years. The environmentalists complain about the environmental hazards, but dont' tell me we don't have the technology to build refineries that will be environmentally safe. I believe we do. I also believe that since we fought a war in Iraq for a number of years, we should import some of their oil as payment for all the blood and treasure America's invested in that war. I also believe we should import oil from Mexico since we have to take care of their illegal aliens that will cross into America.

However, we shouldn't just stop with drilling for oil. That's one phase. The next phase should be inventing alternate energy solutions so we don't have to use oil for all our energy. We need to diversify when it comes to use of energy. Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens promotes windmills as one phase of alternate energy. I'm for using that in the few areas that will handle windmills, but it's not going to work in many areas of our country. We should use the nuclear energy we make in the nuclear plants to produce electricity. That way we wouldn't have to be as dependent on coal for electricity. I've heard there's some good uses for natural gas. T. Boone Pickens suggests natural gas should be used for our transportation system. He believes vehicles should use natural gas because it's a cleaner fuel. I don't know much about it, but if it can be more efficient and burn longer than unleaded gasoline, then it needs to be looked into. America's automakers need to be retooling vehicles so they can average higher fuel efficiency. I believe that's possible without making our cars too small. The media gives the impression that vehicles have to be small in order to average high fuel efficiency. I believe there's ways that vehicles can be designed without compromising safety.

Lastly, there's something I would like to throw out for people to consider. How about tobacco? Could tobacco be a good alternate energy use? I don't know but I believe it's worth considering. I believe there's uses for tobacco that could be to our benefit besides making cigarettes, for example. We need to conduct some studies on tobacco to see if they can be used for energy. Any type of enegy alternative that can be beneficial and affordable to solving our energy problems should be used. The time to end our dependence on foreign oil is now!