A fifteen year energy independence moonshot that includes nuclear, coal, biodiesel, and hydrogen research. New nuclear and coal plants go up as fast as we can build them. No red tape. More grants for alternative energy research.
I agree, but 20-25 years is even more realistic.
The late Arthur C. Clarke was asked not very long ago what he thought about the future now that he was in it (I would guess this was relevant to "2001: A Space Odyssey", which he novelized. He gave a number of interesting answers (one of which was that nobody ever suspected computers could be so SMALL!), but one of his most telling was that very few (if any?) of the Golden Age sci-fi writers worried about how much it actually cost -- energy-wise, commodity-wise, and money-wise -- to get into space, let alone stay there.
Regarding energy, we are now on the cusp of being in the future. Sure, there's still plenty of oil and coal in the ground, but getting it out and turning it into something that can be readily used is becoming a bottleneck as demand rises. Likewise for shipping. Likewise for transmission lines.
That's why I think the "moonshot" analogy is apt. We need to drive down demand and increase supply at the same time. Papasmurf gets it right that the cost of energy is hitting us everywhere, which combined with a credit crunch is seriously hurting our personal and national purchasing power. To turn that around, it would require investment in the strongest thing the U.S. has going for it; it's unparalleled R&D capabilities.
I think I heard Rush's stand-in Friday talking about how "bad" it was that there was legislation with the goal of phasing out incandescent lightbulbs. Poor people shouldn't be forced to buy them, because they cost so much more than incandescents! (Of course, using them saves money over the long-term; it's the upfront cost that hurts). The thing is, power companies want people to get CFLs because they are having trouble meeting peak demand loads, and bringing on the peak demand generators costs them money, especially as commodity prices go up! So a lot of the push for the CFLs is not from the Algorians; it's coming from the energy sector that recognizes the increasing economic necessity to lower demand (a blackout is not economically useful).
There are ways to increase supply, but they aren't quick (takes awhile to build a nuke plant; even takes awhile to bring a new field like the Bakken online. And what we REALLY need is a new source of cheap, abundant energy, preferably one that's "clean". Hydrogen? Advanced solar? Nuclear fusion? I don't know. But I suspect that as the Third World's largest countries get increasingly sophisticated, the demand for energy will only get worse, increasing the need for cheap, abundant supply.