Look, if you want to live on saudi arabia's big juicy oily tits, be my guest.
We are already at the point where we will be dependent on Saudi oil to get us to 2050 no matter what we do.
Economies are like vast circulatory systems in living beasts, with circulation of value. Ours are like giant beasts with huge self inflicted gashes in their femoral arteries. The big beasts elsewhere can only drink so much of our blood and turn it into their own beast muscle, they have their own circulatory systems. Global politics is the olympiad of coexistence of beasts, and economics is just one arena in the olympiad of beast interaction.
They are big beasts, and critical desanguination takes time. But, our beasts need enough time to get to 2050. We need to do whaever we can to stop our own bleeding so that our beasts can help all the beasts get there.
Bush The Oil Man quietly signed the US up for ITER in 2003? 2002? The US/DoE has been leading the fusion research effort for 5 decades. (See PPL Princeton Plasma Physics lab, Lawrence Livermore, etc.) The US participation in ITER, both as technical contributor and financial contributor, is important for that 'access to energy' question. The nature of the Deuterium economies (1 Hydrogen atom in every 5000 in seawater is Deuterium)makes 'access to energy' beyond 2050 a question of 'access to seawater(and lithium, initially) plus access to the technology. 1 gallon seawater has the deuterium equivalent of 300 gallons of gasoline. By some estimates, enough known deuterium in the oceans to power humanity at present levels for 180 billion years. (The earth has only been here for 4 billion (non Genesis) years.) The carrot held out by fusion is so massive that it rates a centruy of R&D to get there. If we can get there without destroying each other and/.or shittng the nest, those economies will take humankind to the same stars fueled by the same deuterium.
ITER. There is alot to take in there. They finally stopped bickering over where to tutn over the first shovel of dirt. Gets absolutely no widespread political coverage, because long term solutions do not help machines focused on 2 year election cycles, and makes everyone's eyes glaze over at CNN/FOX/MSNBC.
Domestic oil production isn't about lower prices at the pump in 2008, 2009, or even 2020. Domestic oil production is about stemming the desanguination of our beasts, the ones we need to carry us to 2050.
Wind, solar, conservation, geothermal, biofuels, nuclear, all of those are nibbling around the edges, crutches on the way to future fusion economies. Fusion is the only path that offers game changing returns, but we can't put all of our eggs in one energy basket(like we have with fossil fuels, because they've been so cheap.)
Well, they're not so cheap anymore, so the fringe players have moved up in the world since 1973, when everyone was saying the exact same thing about solar, wind, geothermal, etc.
Our energy policy should be comprehensive, developing all of those as they make economic sense, and not a second sooner, but as part of a long term plan to get to 2050 and the fusion economies.
Our real political problem is, fusion is a long term effort, not easily ridden like a political pony.