How not to solve the energy crisis.

1. Elect John McCain.
2. Drill, drill, drill, drill, drill.

Here's how to solve it:

1. Go back four years and elect John Kerry president.

How insulting and ridiculous it is to be told that the solution to our problems is to drill in and destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that would yield a few months of oil when we are already importing 60 percent of our oil and climbing? God only gave us 3% of the world's oil reserves. There is simply no way to drill our way out of our problem. We have to invent our way out...

.. The bottom line - whenever we face an energy crisis, talk of energy independence becomes the common currency of the American political dialogue. We have Apollo projects and Manhattan Projects for alternative fuels; summits and conferences and energy expos. And then, as the price of oil falls or supplies increase or a war is put behind us, the sense of urgency evaporates.

Too often our leaders in both parties have done what's easy, turned their backs on hard realities and great possibilities. Renewables, efficiency breakthroughs, clean technologies have been marginalized in the face of self-interested forces.

In these lost years, we could have created millions of new jobs, opened up vast new markets, improved the health of our citizens, slowed global warming, saved the taxpayers money, earned the respect of the world, and significantly strengthened our long term security. Instead America's energy strategy has been rhetorical, not real...

As Elias is saying this morning,

John McCain wants to resolve the current carbon crisis and the energy crisis by building forty five new terrorism targets (otherwise known as nuclear reactors) by the year 2030.

And those sonsabitches have to be licensed, inspected and defended 24-7...just like with the LNG tank farms in Everett, but with incomparably worse consequences if something should happen.

Oh yeah, that.

The sad truth is, our energy policy can't see past the end of its own snub nose. Predictable crisis follows predictable crisis, and yet nothing changes. It does remind one - as if anyone needed reminding on this point - how tight a grip oil interests have on our political system.