Discovery’s Cascadia project has promoted plug in hybrid cars for the past year and we hope we are making some headway with the Bush Administration. We know that there is interest in Congress, especially from Senators Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) Former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, now co-chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, has been an ally through this whole effort and spoke at last spring’s Discovery conference on the subject (as did Sen. Brownback). His article, “Gentlemen, Start Your Plug-Ins,” is found in the Weekend issue of The Wall Street Journal.
What is the connection between this subject and “the present danger” in world affairs? Simple: our current thralldom to unreliable or dictatorial or even malevolent oil-rich regimes overseas. As Woolsey points out, plug-ins could cut our gasoline consumption by half in the coming decade, especially when linked to new biofuel production. I will be very disappointed if the President fails to move on this priority in coming days. The best way to drain the swamp of terrorism is to take away their funding sources. As Woolsey has pointed out elsewhere, Americans now wind up financing both sides of the war on terrorism, one directly (ours), the other indirectly (theirs).