George H.W. Bush: “We've got an energy bill before the Congress right now that does that, encourages alternative use of fuels. We have…”

“We've got an energy bill before the Congress right now that does that, encourages alternative use of fuels. We have sound environmental practice on offshore. We've got--in this bill, I mean, all--from lighting, kinds of new light bulbs that really save an enormous amount of energy, to alternative uses of fuel. We've got a good program. It's hung up in the United States Congress right now. But I would press forward on that energy bill and try to move forward. Let me say this as a word of caution, though. We are more and more dependent on foreign oil. It was about a year and a half ago, when the Persian Gulf situation got fired up, that it was predicted oil would go to $80 a barrel overseas. And I don't know if you saw what Saddam Hussein said the other day. He said the biggest mistake he made is when he first moved into Kuwait, that he didn't move into Saudi Arabia. You want to project something that would just shoot these gasoline prices right off the scoreboard, try that one on. So what we've got to do, it seems to me, is to try to become less dependent on foreign oil for security reasons, and that means alternate sources. I may get into a big fight here, but I believe that nuclear power can be used safely. And it's clean-burning--I believe, clean. I believe that we ought to facilitate that rather than turn our back on that. But it does concern me that we're becoming more dependent on foreign oil, and yet, I think the answer is conservation and alternative sources. That's in our energy bill.”