If we truly become independent from foreign oil sources, then we'll have a devastating impact on many countries economies. In turn, that could come back to hurt us. Following the 1929 collapse of the stock market, Congress passed some very restrictive tariff legislation. The end result was that foreign products became too expensive to sell here. Since other countries couldn't sell anything here, they didn't buy anything from America. The end result was that the Great Depression spread worldwide and became much deeper for everyone.

I agree that if we formally announce a big program to become independent on foreign energy within a number of years, we'd probably be denounced. However, we could just quietly work towards the goal without any big announcements. While I normally oppose corporate welfare, this might be a good time to help speed development of multifuel fuel cells like the ones being developed by the Ballard Corporation. It'd be very expensive to develop a hydrogen infrastructure but Ballard has gotten around this by developing fuel cells that can use other fuels. They have some that work with propane, some that work with methane, and even some that work with gasoline. We could also work to implement sensible conservation while increasing domestic production of energy. If we go with nuclear power plants, I'd love for us to follow a sensible standardized approach like the French did.