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Townhall...
Win the Future or
Cement Ourselves in the Past?
By Ross Mackenzie
Suddenly, the Libyan turmoil and its subsequent Obamian abdication of
leadership have led -- again -- to heightened fears about America’s
energy future. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline at
the pump has risen 33 cents to $3.51 in just two weeks.
So here’s a question: Where would our fears be, and that per-gallon
price of gasoline, if the country in turmoil were not Libya, which
produces just 2 percent of global oil production, but Saudi Arabia? An
answer is: They would be in a comfort zone -- far below today’s levels
-- if we were doing about domestic energy production what we should
have been doing all along. Sixty-three percent of the oil we use would
not be imported from other countries.
And what should we doing?
New White House chief of staff Bill Daley told “Meet the Press” on
Sunday that “all matters (relating to energy) have to be on the table.”
Very well:
With greens currently driving energy policy, meaning that as a
consequence the U.S. currently has no effective energy strategy,
rebalance green concerns with the nation’s energy needs:
--Lift the Obama administration’s de facto moratorium on deepwater
drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. Federal District Judge Martin Feldman
has termed the administration’s dalliance issuing permits following
last year’s Deepwater Horizon spill “increasingly inexcusable.”
--Lift as well the seven-year federal ban on Atlantic and Pacific
off-shore drilling. Cut the red tape. Speed the permitting process.
Don’t leave these off-shore areas to drilling by Cuba, Mexico, and
China.
--Authorize extension of the TransCoastal Keystone XL pipeline from
Canada to the Gulf coast, thereby daily providing an additional
half-million barrels of crude to Gulf coast refineries.
--Approve drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
(The latest polling shows roughly 2-1 popular support for drilling in
territorial waters, and 54-40 percent support for drilling in ANWR.)
With America the OPEC of coal and natural gas, find regulatory ways to
revive coal mining and to expand -- in truth, even to allow -- its
industrial use:
--Remove regulatory and bureaucratic obstacles to tapping oil and gas
in shale deposits that underlay vast reaches of the country from Texas
to Wyoming to the Dakotas to upstate New York.
--Push (yes, push harder) private-sector research into automobile
engines that operate on, for instance, hydrogen.
--Promote the construction of new refining capacity.
--Encourage -- bigtime -- new nuclear output, as countries across the
globe are doing. And stop letting environmental wackos set energy
policy with wind, solar, and tidal snake-oil schemes technologically
unable to provide energy generation on levels even approaching energy
demand.
--Oh, and fire Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who has spoken sensitively
about the importance of $8-a-gallon gasoline at the pump.
NANSEN Saleri, president of Quantum Reservoir Impact in Houston, notes
the globe possesses ample sources of oil and natural gas: “At current
rates of global consumption, there are sufficient oil and gas supplies
to last well into the next century. What’s missing is a coherent U.S.
energy policy.” With such a policy, he says, the U.S. could switch from
an energy importer to an energy exporter in 15 years.
Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell adds: “As we watch fuel prices rise, inflation
take hold, and government debt reach record levels, Alaskans and those
in other oil-producing states are frustrated. We wonder why the Obama
administration is openly hostile to a sector of our economy that has
created hundreds of thousands of jobs, kept the country on an even keel
even during the recession, and produces a global commodity we depend on
every day.”
President Obama loves the phrase “win the future”; he deployed it a
dozen times in his most recent State of the Union address alone. Yet
how, as a nation, can we win the future if here or there the removal of
an Arab/Islamist goon -- whose removal we morally should favor -- pings
our anxiety meter, sending the price of gasoline into the stratosphere?
If we have the coal, gas, and petroleum resources to make ourselves
energy independent, it makes no sense for us not to use those resources
in responsible ways. In fact Republicans, independents, and Democrats
favor most “on the table” energy proposals (Democrats oppose opening
ANWR to drilling).
Once energy independent, instead of being dependent on tinpot dictators
to power our cars and heat our houses, we wouldn’t have to be passive
about, for instance, turmoil in Libya -- or about Hugo Chavez violating
international sanctions on Iran by sending it reformate” (used to
upgrade gasoline), as he is doing.
Winning the future means gaining our energy independence through
unleashed American technology -- and getting the federales out of the
way. Anything less means cementing ourselves in the past.
Read it at Townhall
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