Chas,

Sure, let's explore alternate energy sources. I got no problem with that. But, we're a long way from going off oil. In fact, we may never go off oil.
Ethinol has proven not to be a very viable source, and I'm the son of a farmer and grew up in ag country for crying out loud.
People with windmills running the electricity in their homes, it's providing what? 30%? Plus they still need oil anyway for half or more. How many wind turbines would it take to power 30% of a department store? A school? And still, you'd need oil for 70% of your energy.

Did the government invent the steam engine, the combustion engine? If not, then why should it be the government's job to invent the next source, be it wind, solar, nuclear, etc. If some enterprising souls can invent something that actually works, then it will catch on and become integrated into our society. There are enough environmentally conscious people out there to make that happen. But for government to be responsible for subsidizing all these ventures that are failures, doesn't make much sense to me.

And, this unintelligent claim about us sending 700 billion per year to our enemies for oil. First off, I didn't know Canada and Britain were our enemies.
Second, it's not like we're just handing them money. "here, have a present!" We're getting something for that money; something called oil, which runs the world. If our middle eastern oil supply does run out, they cut us off or whatever, we better be able to get our own damn oil in a freakin hurry. We know that works. Better not be farting around with unproven alternate energy sources.

So yeah, let's work on alternate energy, no problem, but let's not kid ourselves that we can be oil free in 10 years and other such idiotic claims that fly around out there.