Breaking the oil habit

When President Jimmy Carter said, in 1977, that energy independence was 'the moral equivalent of war,' he had broad support for programs that both spurred an increase in fuel efficiency and jump-started research into alternative fuels. Carter finally changed that policy, but it wasn't until his successor, Ronald Reagan, pursued even more robust deregulation that domestic oil production helped to reduce the OPEC cartel's power. (Hydrogen is not a naturally occurring fuel, and, except for very few applications, creating it from renewables makes less sense than just using the renewable energy more directly.) If energy policy led to a clear emphasis on renewables, especially solar, and it turned out not to work, there would still be time to re-emphasize coal and nuclear.