Charles Krauthammer, whose name is only slightly less cool than Wolf Blitzer (though he surpasses the Communist News Network host on every other level), shows the way on Energy Independence:

There are three serious things we can do now: Tax gas. Drill in the Arctic. Go nuclear.

That’s the really important part. You can stop reading now if you like, and go on to the next post. Still here? Well, he gets down to the details:

First, tax gas. The president ostentatiously rolled out his 20-in-10 plan: reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years. This with Rube Goldberg regulation — fuel-efficiency standards, artificially mandated levels of “renewable and alternative fuels in 2017″ and various bribes (er, incentives) for government-favored technologies — of the kind we have been trying for three decades. Good grief. I can give you a 20-in-2: tax gas to $4 a gallon. With oil prices having fallen to $55 a barrel, now is the time. The effect of a gas-tax hike will be seen in less than two years…

This also works on another level… The best way to wean people from a behavior that the government decides is BAD FOR THEM, is to TAX IT. Just look at Cigarettes… And those that continue to indulge, pay the freight. This will give the government some revenue that can be used to create a prize for the first practical process to create Hydrogen Gas, that costs less or pollutes less or uses less energy than it consumes, or something like that. Or fuel cells, or a Pocket Nuclear Reactor. Whatever.

No regulator, no fuel-efficiency standards, no presidential exhortations, no grand experiments with switchgrass. Raise the price and people change their habits. It’s the essence of capitalism.

Second, immediate drilling to recover oil that is under U.S. control, namely in the Arctic and on the Outer Continental Shelf. No one pretends that this fixes everything. But a million barrels a day from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is 5 percent of our consumption. In tight markets, that makes a crucial difference.

Combining these two, we should be able to cut our 60% reliance on imports to 1970ish levels (say 35%).

No one has a remotely good idea about how to make any difference in global warming without enlisting China and India, and without destroying the carbon-based Western economy. The obvious first step, however, is an extremely powerful source of energy that produces not an ounce of carbon dioxide: nuclear.What about nuclear waste? Well, coal produces toxic pollutants, as does oil. Both produce carbon dioxide that we are told is going to end civilization as we know it. These wastes are widely dispersed and almost impossible to recover once they get thrown into the atmosphere. Nukes produce waste as well, but it comes out concentrated — very toxic and lasting nearly forever, but because it is packed into a small manageable volume, it is more controllable. And it doesn’t pollute the atmosphere. At all.

I have expanded on this topic in the past. Anyone interested can go to the old American Empire page and check the Energy category. I really like the finish too:

So much easier to say ethanol. That it will do farcically little is beside the point. Our debates about oil consumption, energy dependence and global warming are not meant to be serious. They are meant for show.