Cold Turki on energy independence

Prince Turki al-Faisal, the person who as chief of Saudi intelligence ran bin Laden's network and who was until recently the Kingdom's ambasador to Washington, has a problem with America's pursuit of energy independence. "It has become very fashionable for (U.S.) politicians to use the word 'energy independence' or 'independence from foreign oil', and that is basically a political canard politicians and technocrats use," he said in a recent economic forum. "There is no way that people, whether in the United States or in the world, other countries that consume oil, would simply give up using oil in the next few decades at least, if not more than that," he said. This is in essence the Saudi wishful thinking. After all if we stop using oil fo transportation and instead we use coal or biomass based fuels or even electricity made from coal, nuclear power or wind energy what will the Saudis sell? The Kingdom's export revenues are almost exclusively oil and gas. Without oil the oil Shiekhs are headed right back to the pre-industrial world: no private jets, no palaces, no luxury suits. But the reality is that the U.S. could make a major shift from oil by adopting the kind of energy policy suggested by groups like the Set America Free Coalition. If it does the Saudi proverb: "my grandfather rode a camel, I drove a car, my son flies a plane and my grandson will ride a camel" could become a fulfilled prophecy.