Obama, D-Ill., has lots of ideas about shifting to a clean, renewable-energy-oriented economy. And he makes sense in urging the Big Three carmakers in Detroit to make cars that use less oil or -- if GM, Ford and Chrysler ever get around to trying them -- electric cars that don't use oil at all. But his entire strategy is predicated on a world where basic energy will remain cheap and the new sources he expects will come magically online when he wants them to. Sorry, but that ain't the world we're living in, senator.

Obama is big on biofuels. He wants to invest $150 billion in them and their infrastructure over the next 10 years. This plan includes some very sensible ideas like investing in low-emission coal plants -- no banning of all coal mining in the United States for him, of the kind that Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. want.

Obama's centerpiece is his market-based cap-and-trade system. Experts say this is superior to that of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., because McCain would auction all pollution credits rather than handing them out free of charge. A rational market mechanism would therefore be allowed to operate.

Obama is also right to accelerate the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, and it's perfectly true that more can be done to develop wind and solar energy -- every little bit helps. But serious energy analysts are almost unanimous in warning that when it comes to running large-scale power stations for a nation the size and population of the United States, there is no escaping from the "big three" fuel sources -- oil, coal and nuclear -- for decades if not generations to come.

Obama's enthusiasm for biomass echoes that of President George W. Bush and is equally romantic and unrealistic. With soaring global food prices and accelerating global climate change already hitting Australia's harvests, the more U.S. farmers plant corn for ethanol or are encouraged to grow crops for biomass fuel, the more they will drive up food prices further. Also, apart from sugar cane ethanol, the crops for which could only grow in four deep South U.S. states anyway, there is no cost-effective, economically competitive and realistic large-scale biomass fuel available, and none on the horizon either.

With the Green lobby riding so high in the Democratic Party, Obama has not dared to support, or even publicly consider, increased drilling off the coast of Florida, even though that is by far the quickest and easiest way to boost U.S. domestic oil supplies and ease the pressure on U.S. gasoline prices. And while he is big on praising low-carbon coal technology, he has so far not spoken out on the far more fundamental issue of building lots more coal-fired power stations and greatly expanding domestic U.S. mining to take advantage of the enormous supplies of coal that remain untapped in the United States, particularly in Utah and North Dakota.

Reading Obama's energy plan it is easy to imagine it being crafted by, and written for, clean, comfortable, idealistic middle-class people living in leafy suburbs. There is no sense of any real-world energy industry professionals or engineers who get their hands dirty making oil pipelines run or power stations operate. Nor is there any sense that a realistic energy policy for the United States may have to focus on just getting enough energy at reasonable prices without having any money or reserves over to leisurely convert the economy to Green, sustainable, renewable energy sources that as yet do not even exist.

The plan so far is playing well enough to the Democratic middle-class base and keeping the Greens in the fold. But it would mark far less of a change from what President Bush has been doing than appears, and it would deliver very little in practical terms during the next four years. Obama would have to show a lot more creativity and boldness to come up with a strategy to bring U.S. domestic oil prices down, otherwise his first term in office will also be his last.