Oil is fungible, so it doesn't matter where the US gets its oil, the price and supply of oil that the US uses is determined by the entire oil output of every nation that Bush has declared an enemy of the US, every nation that has decided that based on Bush they will define the US as their enemy, and every nation that doesn't give a damn either way, but wants to extract as much profit from its oil as they can, and the more the US pays the better, and the House of Saud that is looking to the future and saying "why should we sell our oil cheaply today when we can selling it for lots more in a decade or two?"

Oil and gas and coal will still have value as necessities a thousand years from now, so they will always have value. In fact, they will remain always essential for industry, at least until the earth's crust is depleted by man of all useful metals.

Refining even aluminum, the most common metal in the crust, requires carbon for the electrode so that the oxygen in the aluminum ore can be transferred from the aluminum to the carbon, even tho all the energy is from the electricity. Refining steel requires carbon to capture the oxygen, and also to provide the energy.

Oil and gas likewise provide the essential building blocks for many organic compounds like plastics, polymers, and coatings, and while plants can provide such building blocks, their organic complexity is too diverse, and generally include too much oxygen to provide the high quality polymers that we depend on.

While it is certainly possible to reduce plant organics in order to create exact replacements for the output of oil and coal processing, the costs are significant. On the other hand, burning plant organics for power purposes actually benefits from the added oxygen bound up in the organics.

So, keeping the oil and coal in the ground is a good thing if you believe that the US is the greatest and you want it to be the greatest nation in history.

On the other hand, if you relish the history of the downfall of the Roman Empire and other great but fallen empires and nations, then perhaps depleting the fossil organics from the earth's crust is the way to ensure your place in history as one of the reasons the US became a failed and fallen former world power.

Of course, that is the place in history that Bush seems to be seeking. How else can you explain his efforts to create a crushing burden of debt on future generations?