We have more BTUs of coal than OPEC and the other oil producing countries have combined in oil energy. According to Glen Beck on CNN a few months ago, the cost to produce a barrel of oil from coal is about $70. That makes gas at the pump about 2.20ish. The Germans were running their entire war machine on this stuff after we cut them off from the real stuff in WWII.

Both parties were talking about making us energy independent and were talking wind, nuclear (Nuke-U-Lar in the case of Palin) and solar, they were also mentioning clean coal. The question is do we have a shortage of electricity? No we don't.

The question I have for them is why we need to do this, because this really doesn't fix our transportation system's fuel needs. Electric cars are great for what most people do in their daily lives, but we will probably always need internal combustion engines for shipping, long cross country trips and other such things. Increasing fuel efficiency standards to 60MPG won't make us energy independent.

I sorta believe in the Pickens plan's idea to produce more renewable electricity from wind and solar. We have enough wind energy in the U.S. to produce 2-3x what we use in electricity every day. With current photovoltaic technology, we can produce 2-3x the electricity we currently use, if every house had a 500 square foot bank of solar cells on the roof; and the cells are only getting more efficient. This doesn't even take into account the amount of commercial roof space out there we could use for mega solar farms like the FedEx facility in Oakland.

I would take Pikens one step more and say we convert the entire electric grid to wind/solar with a little bit of coal backup for the days when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow. I can give up nuclear because that might as well be the N-word of energy when it comes to the environmentalists and the emotions it stirs up. The electric companies still have to collect fees to manage the grid, their profits should be higher because their overhead on coal is a lot lower, they only have to maintain the grid and only burn coal on low wind/low sun days. This eliminates 2/3 of our CO2, if that is an issue with climate changes, since 2/3 of our CO2 comes from the production of electricity for business, industry and residential uses.

We then take our coal and convert it to liquid which yields kerosene/diesel which means we can drop bombs from our fighters, bombers and UAS's, fly people and cargo in our airliners unchanged. We use our domestic oil to produce gasoline to power the cars on the market today until they age off the road, the GA planes out there, and for the classic car people, because I ain't converting my 67 Firebird to diesel. We set a date 10 years off for the car companies to produce all diesels. They use the new diesel technology like VW has to produce ultra clean, high efficiency, low sulfur cars, and our transportation system remains basically unchanged.

People could also then have electric vehicles for their daily commutes if they so desired since they would not be burning coal to produce the electricity to charge the things. Everybody has an outlet in their garage today.

The coal industry will still be mining, the refineries will still be turning something into liquid fuel, and we could be energy independent for the next two centuries. This could be our bridge until Dr E. Brown invents the Mr. Fusion for the back of my flying De Lorean.

Then we could truly be independent and I am sure a lot of our national security issues would change drastically when the Holy Land becomes a lot less important.