I’d like to put my energies behind Tom Friedman’s call in his New York Times column this morning for a “to the moon” like project to help secure energy independence for this country over the next ten years. California recently voted to fund billions for stem cell research — this initiative is the energy equivalent of that medically focused effort. Are the big energy company incumbents the primary inhibitors to us launching such a program?
You give me an America that is energy-independent and I will give you sharply reduced oil revenues for the worst governments in the world. I will give you political reform from Moscow to Riyadh to Tehran. Yes, deprive these regimes of the huge oil windfalls on which they depend and you will force them to reform by having to tap their people instead of oil wells. These regimes won’t change when we tell them they should. They will change only when they tell themselves they must.