The best way to ease our dependence on foreign oil is to tap our vast reserves of natural gas to power our vehicles. In fact you can get an attachment that hooks into your garage natural gas line and fill up your car yourself and avoid all the road excise taxes associated with gasoline. That would be the single most thing we could do to help, but we also burn oil for electrical generation so we need more nuclear power generation. So called "alternative" energy systems aren't economically viable, and for solar you'd have to have an array the size of a football field to power the typical house. Wind power has been discovered to be a hazard to birds, and doesn't generate enough power to be operated without subsidies. Coal is a gross polluter. (BTW, coal is the most heavily subsidized power we have, which seems to be the name of the game)
The next big power boondoggle will be "Woody Biomass." The Dept. of Energy is giving away 21 million dollar grants to build one, provided you're well connected politically. They claim it's carbon neutral based upon the trees they'll burn for the power are renewable, but woody biomass releases the worst types of particulates into the air and is even dirtier than coal.
