Wow, you can taste the stupidity

A Fortune article titled "Energy independence is a disaster in the making". You know this is going to be dumb, but really - how could you expect it to be this dumb?

The simplest way to get the most out of what we spend on energy is to keep energy costs cheap,

Because as we all know, people use cheap, plentiful resources with parsimony and reason. Like the way my mom leaves her air conditioner on all day in the summer, because she doesn't like coming home to a hot house. Or maybe - just maybe - people use resources more efficiently as prices increase. I think I read that somewhere.

and the best way to do that is to take full advantage of global energy markets. Right now it costs less to pump oil from the sands of the Arabian peninsula than from pretty much anywhere else on earth. Why exactly would we want to punish ourselves by cutting ourselves off from the cheapest oil?

This is simply retarded. Does anyone seriously think that the price of oil is determined by the price of production anymore? Sure, and a CD at HMV costs me $1.50, right? How does someone this illiterate get to be an Editor at Large for Fortune?

Let's take a refresher course in Econ 101 here - the price of oil is being driven by scarcity in oil markets, combined with a fear premium that terrorism will knock out some more production in the Middle East. But high prices are almost entirely demand-driven at this point. It doesn't matter what the cost of production is at this point - if Saudi oil were free, they could still charge $65 a barrel, and we'll still pay it because we prefer that to not driving as much.

Of course, the author barely acknowledges the role renewables can play, and brazenly declares that replacing domestic oil would necessitate the building of more coal plants. This is like saying you're going to replace your intake of milk with steak - you guessed it, it makes no sense whatsoever, until someone invents the coal-fired car. I don't know how many times it needs to be said - oil will not be replaced with coal - they aren't the same type of energy. What we need is liquid fuel, not just another fossil fuel. True, we do need more electricity to power plug-in hybrids, but not for a while yet. The utilities in the US estimate that PIH's could reach 30% market penetration before a single new plant would be needed, assuming the cars were charged in off-peak times. By the time we're ready to do that, the wind and solar industries will be more than able to meet demand. These are bold predictions, but I feel very confident about them.