What should the future president do about the energy crisis within the next 4 years to significantly diminish?

Question

America's dependence on foreign oil?

Regardless of which presidential candidate wins, what should the next president of the US do, given the parameters of his constitutional office, to significantly reduce the US dependence on foreign oil and thus stabilize our economy?

I thought of this given T. Boone Pickens' interview last night on network TV. If you don't know, T Boone Pickens is an old time independent oil man who wants to invest vast sums of money in wind power and has started his program NOW to do his part.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/08/pickens.plan/index.html#cnnSTCText

Answer 1

There's nothing he can do to undo the damage done by 20 years of neglect of the country's energy supply.

Increasing drilling capacity will take about a decade to generate results.

Increasing refinery capacity will take about that long (under the current legal climate).

What he might be able to do is make it easier/possible to create new refinery capacity by removing all the environmental regulations and other means the greenies and others who want to see the country return to the stone age can use to block refinery construction.

But that in itself may take longer than he'll remain in office.

And of course both Osama and McCain are running on anti-economy platforms, intent on destroying the economy for the sake of "the environment", "redistribution of wealth", and hippie ideas like that.

Answer 2

Theres a lot more that the people can do- for a start getting rid of those stupid gas guzzling 4x4s that no one needs. That alone would probably halve your reliance on foreign oil

Answer 3

Back in the 60s we set a goal of putting a man on the moon in less than a decade.  This is back when a computer with about as much computing power as a dollar store calculator required a warehouse size building to house it.

A goal should be articulated (think Kennedy's man to the moon speech) to be free of dependence on oil (note I did not say foreign oil - just oil) within a decade.

I believe through ingenuity and determination this is doable.

Imagine a world not dependent on oil!  A worthwhile goal, I think.