The Power of Green By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The article is 11 pages long, so don't expect a point by point critique... I agree that it would be good for the U.S. if oil prices fell and part of that would be that it would defund some of our enemies. I will cry no tears if Hugo Chavez comes up a little short, or if the Saudi's need to cut-back on radical madrasa funding. The problems are two and they are related: How can we decrease the price of oil? If we somehow reduce the price of oil, won't that stimulate demand, and then short-out his other concern--global warming? His solution set can be summed up as, "conservation". With the rapidly industrializing economies of India and China, this strikes me as absurd. We could stop the use of oil completly and in ten years, they will have sopped-up all the oil we saved. I have a better and more "American" style solution: Why don't we turn our efforts to finding a new and better source for oil or better yet a replacement entirely. As a first baby-step how about ANWR? Follow this with the big step of nuclearising our electricty production: It is now about 80% coal and 15% nuke. We have about 100 reactors, so 500 more would cover all of our electric needs and free up our coal for other uses. (I put an extra hundred reactors in the calculation to allow for increased demand) While we are at it, why not have our new reactors use Thorium? It has got some nice advantages over conventional uranium reactors. How about we turn our coal into oil the way the South Africans have figured out how to do? Or make an extra 500 atomic plants and use the power to extract oil from shale? If we flood the market with oil, we would be doing a huge favor to third-world nations trying to develop and it would stick a shiv in the side of a bunch of oil-producing bad-guys. It sure would be nicer than converting our food (corn) into fuel (Ethanol), which causes higher food costs to people who spend a large fraction of their income on food. Win win.