Let Innovators Light Way Out of Energy Crisis

As oil-addicted America looks to its energy future, the nation would be wise to follow in the footsteps of two innovators offering straightforward solutions to the crisis, writes Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times. “The Jewish Henry Ford” has a plan to turn Israel on to electric cars, while an 80-year-old oilman is creating the largest wind farm on the planet.

Shai Agassi envisions a subscription electric-car network that operates like a cell-phone service in which members pay for miles per month rather than minutes. Oilman T. Boone Pickens took matters into his own hands when he got tired of waiting for Congress to take effective action. “This is one emergency we can’t drill our way out of,” he says on his website. We need a government that will “foster" more innovators like this pair—then “get out of the way,” Friedman writes. (More alternative fuels stories.)