Will Paris Hilton's energy plan work?

But of course converting all of those cars takes time. According to a 2006 article in Forbes, in 2005 new car sales were 17 million, and used car sales were 44 million. And this recent article in Slate notes that the average American replaces his or her car every eight years. So, assuming that America's car-buying habits remain constant, we'd be looking at six or seven years before we've even got half of the US auto fleet converted, and probably a decade before most cars on the road are hybrids and electrics.

So based on these very rough calculations, let's say that under this plan we could get US oil consumption down to 13 million barrels per day by 2025. This is assuming we make no other reductions in oil consumption, and that American driving habits remain unchanged.

How does this timeline compare to that of offshore drilling? McCain said last week that offshore drilling could produce additional oil in a matter of months, but that analysis is – how to put this delicately – completely bonkers. A 2007 report by the Energy Information Administration found that drilling in off the coast in the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030."

What's more, total domestic production would be increased by only 3 percent by 2030, according to the report.

And most of that oil is located off the West Coast, and the governors of California, Washington, and Oregon are latimes.com/news/local/la-me-ocean30-2008jul30,0,2667305.story">vehemently opposed to any drilling off the shores of their states.

Joseph Romm, a former Clinton energy adviser and the blogger for Climate Progress, estimates that offshore drilling would net "under 100,000 barrels a day in supply sometime after 2020 — some one-thousandth of total supply."

And, despite its assertions, McCain's campaign actually knows better. In June, senior McCain campaign adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin acknowledged to the LA Times that "new offshore drilling would have no immediate effect on supplies or prices." He should have added that it will have no real long-term effect, either.

So in short, the Hilton Plan seems to have it backward: Even under fairly conservative estimates we have the ability to develop more fuel-efficient technology before we can access all the oil that's offshore.

But it also looks like, even with such technology, the United States would still need to be importing significant amounts of oil from abroad in the coming decades. If we really wanted to get ourselves off the sauce, we'd need to combine these technological improvements with developing walkable communities and extending public transit.

And energy independence alone won't save our hides. As James Hansen, the country's leading climate scientist, pointed out in 2006, unless we start reducing our greenhouse emissions – that is, our energy consumption – this decade, we face a tipping point in which global temperatures could rise as high as 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century.

As President Hilton would say, that's hot.

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