Reply #28: I understand he's addressing the issue... [View All]

and so is Dean. But if it's not a massive, trillion dollar + plan, it's not enough. Making cars more gas efficient is great and all, but our oil demand is already skyrocketing. It's not even enough to level out the demand. We have to completely wean ourselves off of oil. And we're going to have to force our businesses to do it, too (both with punishment and massive, I mean massive, incentives), because they're too comfortable with the deal they have going on right now. We have to show them that they're our buddies, but they don't have a choice.
I think a good start would be throwing out a standing offer that anyone to come up with the technology AND a solid, workable plan to make the US completely independent from oil within a certain amount of time (let's say, 2-3 years) would receive, say, $100 billion upon presentation. We can use the capitalist incentive, still, to come up with the technology and the plan.
It's going to be the implementation that'll be the tough part. But it'll be a combination of brute, executive force and economic incentive and subsidies.