By Ellen Ratner
Bureau Chief, Talk Radio News Service/FOX News Political Contributor

T. Boone Pickens, founder and CEO of BP Capital Management, testified before Congress on Tuesday about alternative energy and renewable resources. He believes that the Great Plains region can get 22 percent of its energy from wind power alone and that wind power would revitalize rural America and jump start the economy. Former Vice President Al Gore’s plan is more ambitious, but no matter whose plan you subscribe to it is clear we have the means and the ability to switch off of foreign oil.
There is a big fight ongoing in Congress about drilling offshore and in ANWR. In addition to environmental concerns there is the danger that drilling might lull us into inaction on alternative energy sources. Howard Monroe, a talk show host in Ohio and West Virginia, recently proposed a solution: an American Energy Corporation.

Instead of giving our oil resources to multinational oil companies, what if we formed our own company owned by our government? What if the oil from new drilling sites was owned by citizens, and that oil could only be used in the United States? What if our government made the profit and we took that money to develop new alternative sources? Many of the oil companies in the Mid-East are owned either directly or indirectly by the government. We see the wealth they have developed. Why not us?