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"And if I may beat a drum that I've banged before -- another tactic is to increase the development and production of nuclear power and to use the extra nuke power to process biofuels, notably switchgrass into cellulosic ethanol. A economically advantageous by-product of doing that would be a new agricultural market, especially good for the South where switchgrass grows particularly well. (And nuke power can also be used for thermal depolymerization, which takes care of a lot of excess waste!)"

Please beat that drum! Nuclear energy is a linchpin to ending energy dependence on foreign oil ... See:

We can secure energy for the next 100 years doing these simple things:

1) Tax gas at the pump. 50-70 more cents
2) Add an oil import fee of $5/barrel.
- as sameulson notes, it would encourage conservation
- It would also encourage domestic sourcing;
we have oil shale resources of 500 billion barrels, that
BP says can be extracted for $35/barrel. If global price+ oil import fee is above that price, it is competitive.
This is enough oil for 100+ years, if we reduce use.

Here is how to further reduce use:
3) Build 400 more nuclear power plants, so that 80% of base load is nuclear (as in france) and we use wind, coal, hydro for rest, avoid nat gas for rest.
4) nuclear power costs of operation can be much lower, so long as construction costs are lower; this is possible with standard designs; lower cost electricity will mean it will be cheaper to use electricity than gas for transportation.

5) Plug-in hybrids could reduce oil fuel used by about 50%. Higher mpg from hyrids can cut oil fuel used by another 20%. Result: oil use is reduced by 2/3rd
6) switch transit busses and others from oil to nat gas in transport

Do all this and we will have:
- drastically lower oil use, meaning no oil imports
- corresponding reductions in trade deficits
- far fewer carbon emissions
- no more fears of 'running out of oil' because will have
100+ years of such oil in the US!