Barack O'Carter: anything but oil

Let me see if I get this straight.

No drilling. No nuclear. No coal. No refineries. Oh, and a bunch of new "Windfall profits" taxes on energy companies.

While alternative energy sources remain an admirable goal, they are decades away from becoming serious alternatives to oil.

...If we lost all oil and gas products tomorrow, ...the world would simply collapse. There would be an immense depression beyond anything we saw in the 1930s -- the economy would go back to a primitive state. There would simply not be a functioning society. It would be as if there had been nuclear war, minus the casualties from blast and radiation... In a word, we cannot as a modern society or even a modestly industrial society live without oil and gas. That is, [it is not] a luxury or a narcotic. [It is] a basic necessity of life, as basic as almost any commodity there is.

Does the name Barack O'Carter ring a bell?