An answer.

What would the Middle East be like seven years after the implementation of this plan? Good question.

Last I checked, Japan, China, India, and a host of other developing nations require this oil. There is no way world dependence on petroleum disappears with an American energy plan. What these developing nations do not have, however, are multinational oil companies based in their home territories like Exxon, Mobile, and so on gouging American customers for world record profits.

And like it or not, within our lifetimes the oil boom is going to end. Even if someone trips on another huge oil reserve, enough to keep the world in oil for another hundred years, people won't forget $3.60 a gallon. In the seventies it wasn't so much the price as an actual shortage, as in rationing. Now it's crippling prices. So what happens to the Middle East is going to happen one way or another. The ruling families of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have been buying the stability of their population for three generations now. Their fault for not planning for this moment. And that moment isn't all that close because China doesn't appear to be jumping on the ecological bandwagon.

And even more importantly, poor disenfranchised Arabs is EXACTLY what fundamental Islam wants to remove the Satanic stain of western influence. The oil bust is their wet dream. In terms of creating an environment for 500 million new terrorists, I don't know because it's going to happen anyway. And absolutely most important, it doesn't matter because it's not our strategic headache anymore. Let China and India keep their oil wells stable.

Wouldn't that be a refreshing change of world view pace?