If you think the fairy tale died when the Grimm Brothers hung up their quills, you haven't been following the energy debate. Tall tales abound, some from people who should know better.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, for one, floated the energy independence myth yesterday when he called for ending the ban on new offshore drilling off the U.S. East and West coasts.

Don't get me wrong. Getting rid of the ban -- a senseless, self-inflicted restriction based on the myth that modern drilling harms the environment -- is a good idea. But McCain should know that energy independence is neither probable or desirable in coming decades.

Environmentalists are half-right when they say we can't drill our way to independence. But the other half of the argument is just as valid. We can't conserve or biofuel our way to energy freedom, either, at least not without considerable damage to resources and higher food costs. Like it not, our energy future will contain a hefty dose of oil and natural gas from other countries, including Middle Eastern nations.

Robert Bryce explores in detail the geopolitical fallacy and physical impracticality of U.S. energy independence in his book "Gusher of Lies." Despite the sensational title, Bryce, a political liberal, is among the shrinking number of energy policy analysts who remain driven by data instead of ideology.

IN TRYING TO REFUTE MCCAIN'S CALL for lifting the exploration ban on the Outer Continental Shelf, Democratic candidate Barack Obama employed another myth that drives Bryce and me nuts -- that U.S. dependence on foreign oil finances terrorism. Baloney. As Bryce put it during an appearance at the American Enterprise Institute, al-Qaida, Hamas, the Taliban and every other Terrorist-R-Us group won't go broke and out of business if we stop importing oil.

Terrorism is easy to finance. It doesn't take a Mercedes to deliver a car bomb. The average American playground has more physical training equipment than terrorist training camps I've seen on television. On a more concrete note, the 9/11 attacks cost between $400,000 and $500,000 to finance, according to the 9/11 commission. An experienced drug dealer can come up with that cash.

That McCain and Obama would use such intellectually vapid catch-phrases in discussing energy policy is further evidence that politics and partisanship have displaced economic and environmental reality. Nowhere is that clearer than in the unsustainable subsidy of energy-inefficient renewable resources.

Bryce has compiled an ever growing list of respected scientific studies that show the carbon footprint of biofuel production is larger than generation from clean fossil fuel technology. Science aside, elementary school math combined with middle school reasoning shows that biofuel investments are a crummy deal.

Even the most optimistic projections of renewable fuel growth show they'll continue to be a fraction of the nation's energy supply for the foreseeable future. Preliminary projections from the Energy Information Agency's 2008 Energy Outlook show that non-hydro "renewables" will provide less than 10 percent of the nation's BTUs in 2030. Nuclear power will kick in another 10 percent, meaning 80 percent of our energy will still be carbon-based in 20 years. Our lungs would be better served if those resources were invested in cleaner fossil fuel technology than in the black hole of renewable energy.

BRYCE CALLS THE PURSUIT OF ETHANOL IMMORAL. I'm not a priest, so I won't go that far. However, the popular press is finally getting around to exposing the numerous environmental and economic absurdities involved in diverting corn from dinner tables to gas tanks.

Natural gas is a far better transportation fuel alternative, and I've never understood why environmentalists haven't embraced it. It's the least carbon dense fossil fuel and has high energy content. Natural gas-powered vehicle technology is proven and reliable. Supply isn't a problem either. As spectacular as recent oil finds have been, they trail newly found natural gas reserves. The only reason I can figure out for why environmentalists shun natural gas is because it's a product of Big Oil.

With a barrel of crude oil topping $130, we can't afford that type of prejudiced, myth-infested energy policy thinking any longer, especially from presidential candidates.

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