America is trading national security and a cooler climate for cheap oil, said James Woolsey, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, in his keynote speech on Tuesday at the Clean Energy Venture Summit in Austin, Texas.

Woolsey advocates electric cars or a hybrid plug-in vehicle to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but he concedes that dealing with global warming will be tougher. He advocated "government leadership" on the issue, but offered few specifics.

Normally, the venture capital and political worlds only laterally intersect, especially around election time. But when it comes to the emerging clean energy market, Woolsey and the other lunchtime speaker, Richard Gephardt, believe that government incentives are the best way to reduce American dependence on oil, as opposed to penalizing drivers by raising taxes on gas. Such incentives could jump-start the market for cleaner energy by funding startups directly or by offsetting costs of new technology for consumers. The problem, said Gephardt, a senior counsel at law firm DLA Piper and a former U.S. representative from Missouri, is that the federal till is running dry, at least for these kinds of initiatives.

Then again, the private financing market for promising auto technologies doesn't seem to be doing so badly.—Stacey Higginbotham

See May 11 story from The Deal.com