Why won't someone in this admin take some time to understand the only logical pathway to energy independence is the stepped approach, natural gas is it for now!! Pickens understands, Cramer understands, Geithner probably understands but takes some time to share his beliefs, where is Obama? The obstinence of our current administration to review the obvious is just arrogant and I am thoroughly disgusted by this behavior.
Someone like Jim Cramer (and I am far from his advocate since his stock 'picks' are still only ~50% correct from the ones I've tracked) should be one of your advisors on this topic; he understands both the opportunities and challenges since he has open access to more independent thinking than your administration (at least it appears this way). It is all about jobs, ability to drive our own future without dealing with the threats of other countries and trying to get our country to a point where my children do not need to go to China or India to make a decent living.
Clean coal is vaporware and doesn't address the need for new job creation . As Cramer pointed out the other day, if we succeed in creating a powerful car battery to run our cars, guess what it needs to plug into to get juiced up each night... electrical outlets which are largely run by coal and unless you solve that 'clean coal' problem immediately, we are just back in the old pollution conundrum exponentially.