Here is a great quote from The Nation:

An entrepreneur with a choice between wind for 3 cents and coal for 2.9 cents would buy coal. But a responsible society would crunch the numbers. Solar power and efficiency do not have secret costs that include thousands of deaths, millions of dollars in lost productivity, billions of dollars sent to the world’s oil dictatorships and tens of billions spent policing the Persian Gulf. This doesn’t mean we should look with loathing upon the oil and coal industries–after all, they provide heat for our homes and fuel for our cars. But it does mean we should question a government that ignores cleaner alternatives and instead shovels our tax dollars into pollution-creating furnaces.

This article is a bit dated, but it still rings true about the government’s role in energy independence. We need to kick out the oil cronies and get representatives that care about people, not profits.
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