Home-grown energy

Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer makes several good points on domestic energy production -- what we call "home grown energy" -- in an op-ed column in today's issue of The New York Times:

Most people are surprised to learn that we can produce gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products out of coal. Indeed, the process was used in America as early as 1928. In World War II, 92 percent of Germany's aviation fuel and half its total petroleum came from synthetic-fuel plants.

Sure, there are downsides -- like high production costs. But with the barrel price of oil soaring, these costs aren't as high -- which many other nations know because of they're leaving the U.S. behind with their investments in synthetic fuels.

Like all Americans, Montanans are tired of this nonsense. We are tired of paying $3 a gallon for gas, tired of watching third-world nations overtake us in energy innovation, and tired of supporting the kind of tyrants that young Americans have spent two centuries fighting and dying to defeat. Synfuel, ethanol, biodiesel, wind power, solar power, hydrogen - these are no longer dreamy ideas. They are now real and ready solutions, and with a national committment behind them, America can kick the foreign oil habit for good.