We should be exporting oil and not importing it but the only way you could get from here to there is the same way anybody quits smoking... You'd have to, in a single day, ban all importation of oil for all time. THAT would mess us up about as badly as we were messed up during WW-II for about a year (we'd survive it) after which we'd be in fabulous condition. It would mess OPEC up permanently, and they would not recover from it; they'd go back to living in tents and riding camels.
For about one year, here, there would be:
Again we did survive all of thatfrom 1941 - 1946.
That would be like preventing yourself from smoking by using a shotgun on your head. Effective yes, but insane.
How about we build up our own production first? It would be nice to have an economy left after we were done.
For me personally, as an engineer with a couple decades already in the industry, your method would cause me huge financial reward, but at the cost of crippling my country.
No thanks.
The trouble with war measures is that they require wars. I recently read a commenter on another Website who wrote that his grandfather, around 1943 or so, referred to the 1930s as the "good old days." I kid you not. That fellow's grampaw thought that the Great Depression years were relatively good as compared with life in '43.
I don't see any way that the U.S. public would endure the economic collapse that your measure would engender unless it were part of an all-out, full-draft, multimillion-troop, multimillion-death shooting war. That kind of belt-tightening and pain are easier to endure when a fourth to a third of the youngsters are suffering and dying on the front lines. It makes the civvies feel fortunate by comparison, which makes almost anything endurable.
In a way, it's a pity that the Greatest Generation were so tight-lipped about their experiences during World War 2. [My maternal grandfather, an M.D., never spoke of what his war work was; my mother had to find out after he passed away.] Had they been less stiff-lipped, we'd find out what "war is hell" really meant. Complainers may be irritating, but honest and well-meaning ones inform.
[Of course, I'm one to talk: I hardly complain about anything.]