ast week, just months after cutting government funding for research and development of new efficiency advances and renewable energy, Vice President Dick Cheney announced that he would solve America’s energy security crisis by building a fleet of new fossil-fuel driven electric power plants. “Without a clear, coherent energy strategy, all Americans could one day go through what Californians are experiencing now, or worse.”

Futurist/Politician Cheney asserted that the only way to meet the increase in demand would be to mine new sources of oil and gas, including development of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).

In the last three months, the Bush administration has further emphasized rolling back environmental protection laws for fossil fuel-burning power plants, and has abandoned attempts to reach an international treaty on global warming $mdash; all in the name of energy security.

At least they are being consistent.

Unfortunately, what the new administration has ignored is that energy security and reliance on fossil fuels are fundamentally incompatible. If in ’73 the U.S. had been primarily dependent on domestic renewable resources, there would hardly have been the same hoopla over electricity prices as there is in California. While vehicle transport and several kinds of industrial manufacturing will continue to rely on oil and other fossil fuels sensitive to international market prices, there is no mandate whatsoever that electricity production be sensitive to the same.

Pessimists, predictably, return to the age-old argument that renewable power is more expensive than fossil resources. For the moment, let’s leave this contention alone. Assume with me, however erroneously, that fossil energy is cheaper than renewable energy. Assume with me also that the environmental consequences from fossil consumption such as global warming, respiratory illness, and birth defects do not really exist.

Relying on fossil fuel energy to carry us through even the next 10 years will be a disaster. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that proven U.S. oil reserves will last only another 25-40 years as long as the U.S. continues to supplement its energy demand with imports from abroad. New oil drilled on U.S. soil including in ANWR and other preserved lands will not even come online for another seven years. This gives OPEC at least another seven years of exceptional profits before it has the option to dump prices and quash the new drilling sites.

Natural gas is a little different. Available U.S. gas reserves may last as long as 15 years. If Cheney builds his new energy strategy around gas, however, this figure could be less than 10. Coal, while still plentiful in the U.S., becomes more costly to mine as underground seams get deeper with time.

The U.S. has already consumed more than 40% of its proven reserves. Again, experts at the U.S. Geological Survey suggest that coal will only remain competitive if the U.S. continues to import from overseas, creating an even more serious energy security problem, as most of this coal will need to come from Russia and China, states which have previously been uncooperative with U.S. policies.

An argument in favor of renewable energy is not an argument in favor of isolation. There are one-thousand-and-one other commodities traded between the U.S. and other states that have no bearing on fossil fuels. Plus, increased investment in renewable technologies could even tie together key states for international security in an increasingly protectionist world. Japan and the Netherlands, for example, currently manufacture the world’s most efficient wind turbines. Solar cells have seen significant advances in Germany and Great Britain. The U.S. even stands to become a major exporter of fuel cells once the market for these units develops both domestically and overseas.

Energy security is not the primary reason that the U.S. must reconsider its policy to increase its reliance on fossil fuels; that I reserve for fossil energy’s clear environmental costs, which have received enough attention already. At a time when our politicians consider a marginal price hike in oil to be truly an energy “crisis,” we must seriously rethink our willingness to make oil and other non-domestic fossil fuels the mainstay of America’s growth energy economy.