Comparing the threat to our general wealth and happiness with what he faced from the Soviets, Woolsey is clear: "The difference between this and the Cold War is that the Soviets were a stodgy, bureaucratic, and fairly cautious totalitarian power and resisted direct military confrontation with us. We could contain and deter them-and we did-and eventually their system collapsed. The current situation among oil exporters in the Middle East and elsewhere is more chaotic. It's hard to figure out how to deter and contain Iran's Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad, both of whom have threatened the destruction of Israel, presumably with nuclear weapons, and don't seem to care about retaliation against them. If you're that fanatical, you create a very unpredictable situation."

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So how bad could it be? "The heart of the issue is that, although we have other vulnerabilities in our infrastructure-the electricity grid needs changes, for example-those things are at least under the national control of each country. The oil infrastructure is the only one that is worldwide, and much of it is located in the extremely volatile Persian Gulf. A terrorist attack could send prices well over $100 a barrel. There's no other commodity like that. Transportation is 97-percent dependent on oil, which means our oil-importing society has an Achilles' heel sitting out there in the most volatile part of the world. We could wake up and find that overnight the cost of transportation has doubled-a shock for the economy, but it would be a disaster for people who have to drive places for a living and don't have much money."

Woolsey doesn't believe we can wait for a hydrogen infrastructure to develop and fuel cells to become practical and affordable. He believes the answer is already here in plug-in hybrids, which can be charged overnight to give a range of up to 40 miles on electricity alone, covering the needs of 78 percent of drivers on GM's figures, with a conventional engine as backup. You can already have your standard Prius "hacked" to turn it into a plug-in (though Toyota doesn't recommend it because of issues with battery life). Like GM, Toyota is working on a plug-in hybrid that should be on the market within five years.

Woolsey says there should be tax breaks for the companies developing these technologies and the customers who buy them. He's also an enthusiastic advocate of cellulosic ethanol, a method that promises greater quantities of the fuel from a much wider range of plants and waste materials than the current push to corn-based ethanol production, which is relatively inefficient (especially in terms of the greenhouse gas emissions generated during production) and could result in higher food prices.

By combining plug-ins with flex-fuel engines able to run on a high proportion of ethanol, Woolsey says you can quickly and radically reduce the demand for oil. GM says its new E-flex plug-in technology has a total range of over 600 miles. It'll cover 40 miles solely on electricity. Drive 60 miles, with the gas engine helping for the last 20, and you'll average 150 mpg. But run that engine on E85-15 percent gas and 85 percent ethanol-and Woolsey points out that the mpg (in terms of oil-based fuel consumption) skyrockets.

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"I had a conversation with a senior Saudi who said that cars getting 500 mpg are going to ruin his country. I told him we don't want to ruin Saudi Arabia, but we do think maybe you ought to get some other work.

"Even if you have a 12-mpg SUV running on E85 you're [in oil terms] getting over 50 mpg, so one immediate answer is to sharply increase the number of flexible-fuel vehicles." That's easily done, says Woolsey: "It's $100 a car." One small problem he doesn't mention is that ethanol isn't necessarily easy to find: For example, the nearest ethanol pump to Motor Trend's L.A. office is in San Diego, 130 miles to the south.

Woolsey believes plug-in hybrids are the real answer and we'll see the benefits soon. "People at the Detroit show were talking about the 2010 model year [for the launch of plug-in hybrids], which is not an eternity," he points out. "Once people realize that, by driving 40 miles a day on electricity, they're driving on fuel one-tenth to one-fifth the cost of even our relatively inexpensive gasoline and furthermore that they're getting [effectively] over 500 mpg beyond that, I think you'll see them standing in line outside dealers."

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The core technology of plug-in hybrids-long-life, fast-charge batteries-has yet to be proven, but that doesn't dismay Woolsey: "There's been a lot of talk about battery technology needing to develop, but this isn't a Manhattan Project with people in white coats standing around dreaming up something new. We're talking about the manufacturing ease and cost of things that already exist. I don't think those who say battery development is going to take a decade are right at all. I think it's going to take very few years."

Until then, Woolsey is happy to go on sharing platforms with what he terms "a coalition of tree-huggers, do-gooders, sodbusters, evangelicals, cheap hawks, and venture capitalists-and I'd add Willie Nelson in there, too. There are lots of groups moving toward not wanting to depend on petroleum for different reasons, and they find themselves, surprisingly, marching in the same direction."

Does Woolsey have time for the environmental arguments? He launches into a complex analogy to explain his position: "If you're a three-pack-a-day smoker and you see a burglar climbing into your basement carrying a gun, you have two problems, not one," he says. "You can't solve all your problems by saying, 'I ought to stop smoking.' Yes, you should, but you also have to drop a flowerpot on the burglar's head or call the police, or something. Conversely, if you just deal with the burglar and keep smoking three packs a day, you're not going to be around long.

"Our European friends focus on the three packs a day and we focus more on the burglar, but it's pretty stupid."