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GOP Renews Hopes for Alaska Oil Drilling (washingtonpost.com):

Renewed interest in a major energy bill has raised Republicans' hopes for a cherished goal: drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But Tauzin said Democrats were obstructing an environmentally friendly approach to drilling that would boost the nation's oil reserves. He suggested critics of the plan should try to "live in the dark and see how they like it."

Here's an Energy Plan that would work to address the oil issue:

1) Take away the bogus tax write-off for the largest of SUVs
2) Force SUVs to comply with passenger vehicle fuel efficiency standards within 3 years
3) Increase across-the-board fuel effiency standards over 10 years
4) Provide refundable tax credits to people who purchase electric, hybrid, or E85 vehicles
5) Provide tax credits to family farms to purchase equipment to convert biomass to ethanol
6) Provide refundable tax credits to fuel stations to upgrade existing pumps to deliver E85 (approximately $300 per pump), while educating the public about the new fuel

At the end of ten years, you would see a dramatic decrease in our consumption of petroleum and an elimination of our dependence on foreign oil. We wouldn't need to drill in ANWR, and we wouldn't be as likely to go around targeting dictators with oil fields at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.