"Building an energy plan solely on wind, solar and conservation while we have the largest coal reserves in the world, massive amounts of oil, and the ability to provide all of our electricity needs through nuclear power?"

I take it, from your above statement, that you either don't believe in the existence of global warming or consider it a minimal threat. Otherwise, you would recognize that coal, as the worst producer of greenhouse gases of all of the conventional fossil fuels. I would have expected that, at the very least, you would have mentioned natural gas, which we seem to have in more adequate supply than oil, and which is argueably the cleanest of the fossil fuels.

Oil, which is intermediate between coal and natural gas as a greenhouse gas producer, is not present in massive amounts in the US. The currently producing wells are in their dotage and many may not be able to produce at the market price now that it has fallen so far from $149 to about $80. Tar sand (called oil sand by polyannas) is difficult to process and contains not oil but bitumen. Oil shale contains kerogen, not oil, and after costly and environmentally damaging extraction, the kerogen, like bitumen, must be processed into oil. The production of oil from either of these sources is resource inefficient: much energy must be expended in either process and the extraction of kerogen consumes great quantities of water, basically in an area in which water is in short supply.

The estimated supply of ANWAR oil and outer continental shelf is small and the cost of producing at least the latter will be considerable. It is probably more useful as an adjunct to the National Strategic Reserve than it is to the oil market. Neither of these, like the old wells, tar sands, and oil shale cannot produce anywhere near as cheaply as can many foreign sources. It is difficult to make a case for pursuing them as long as cheaper foreign oil is available.

I don't question that nuclear plants might be required as an adjunct to solar and wind, but I doubt that their expanded use will free us from dependance on foreign suppliers; in this case for uranium rather than oil. If the rest of the world also tries to provide all its power from nuclear sources, then I think we would see peak uranium in a decade or two, depending on the rate at which the power plants are built.

Both solar and wind power are sufficiently mature technologies to allow the growth of manufacturing volume. They have the advantage of having energy supplies which are orders of magnitude greater than our needs and are eternal. Neither has a significant waste product in operation, and they both produce, pretty much directly, electricity, which is the most useful form of energy supply one could have.