European Energy

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3468

I can't help but wonder about the efficacy of most of these measures were they to be implemented in the US. Especially take the scenario of France. One of their primary boons was the creation of a very well-connected rail system. Americans seem loathe to use rail, whether because we are stubborn individualists, because rail has been less convenient than driving for many trips, or because our airline system makes more sense for so many of our long trips in-country. So do we attempt to create express city-to-city networks of very fast rail to attempt to combat this? We could then fuel those rail lines with electrical power generated wherever we could do it cheaply, and however we wanted; thus broadening our options greatly. I'm still not convinced by most of the anti-nuclear arguments, I think our only real hope is to embrace the newest generation nuclear plants and build with the intention of creating a nuclear backbone, which could be augmented by renewable sources such as wind and bio-fuels.
However, we could definitely learn alot by taking these scenarios from europe as case-studies in order to further our knowledge on the subject.