Townhall...
Are Sky-High Gas
Prices Good?
By Victor Davis Hanson
Are high gas prices a good thing?
That is not as dumb a question as it sounds. Examine a few revealing
past remarks from President Obama and the Cabinet officials who are now
in charge of the nation’s energy use and oil leases on federal lands.
Then decide whether the current soaring gas prices are supposed to be
good or bad.
In 2008, then-Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar -- now the secretary of the
Department of the Interior in charge of the leasing of federal oil
lands -- refused to vote for any new offshore drilling. In a Senate
exchange with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Salazar objected
to allowing any drilling on America’s outer continental shelf -- even
if gas prices reached $10 a gallon. We can now see why the president
appointed Salazar, inasmuch as Obama recently promised the Brazilians
that he would be eager to buy their newfound offshore oil -- while
prohibiting similar such exploration here at home.
From 2007 to 2008, Steven Chu, now secretary of Energy, weighed in
frequently on global warming and the desirable price of traditional
energy. At one point, Chu asserted, “Somehow we have to figure out how
to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Chu also
lamented, “We have lots of fossil fuel; that’s really both good and bad
news. We won’t run out of energy, but there’s enough carbon in the
ground to really cook us.”
In other words, $10 a gallon for gas would be desirable, while an
enormous amount of recoverable American oil, gas, coal, tar sands and
oil shale should be left untapped.
During the 2008 campaign, Obama himself had strange ideas about the
prospect of expensive prices for fossil-fuel-generated energy: “Under
my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily
skyrocket.” Then-candidate Obama also elaborated on the envisioned role
of his administration in ensuring such high prices: “So if somebody
wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will
bankrupt them.”
As for consumers’ plight in paying skyrocketing gas prices, the
president, now and in the past, has sounded ambivalent. He recently
told a questioner, “If you’re complaining about the price of gas and
you’re only getting eight miles a gallon, you know, you might want to
think about a trade-in.” Few large passenger vehicles today get only
eight miles a gallon, and many squeezed Americans in recessionary times
cannot so breezily think of “a trade-in”.
In 2008, Obama addressed consumer fears about climbing gas prices: “But
we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off
drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting
regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much.”
Note again the fantasy. Few of today’s cars have distributor points.
New-generation spark plugs and computerized ignition usually ensure
75,000-100,000 miles without a so-called “tune-up.” There is no
evidence that Americans’ tires are chronically under-inflated, or if
they were, that such negligence would waste more gasoline than all that
could be recovered from new offshore oil drilling.
What explains the weird rhetoric from Obama and his administration?
First, not long ago they considered high energy prices as not that bad.
Government-sponsored mass transit and alternative energy projects --
from wind and solar to the federally subsidized Chevy Volt -- pencil
out only when gas gets expensive. And if you believe in man-made global
warming, then the less coal, gas or oil that Americans use, the better
for the planet.
Second, a president who believes that modern cars get eight miles per
gallon or need frequent tune-ups, and that proper tire inflation can
substitute for drilling oil, has never run a business that hinged on
having moderately priced gas to power a truck, tractor or car fleet. In
fact, most in the Obama administration came to Washington from either
academia or prior state and federal government employment, where policy
is theoretical, without grounding in real experience.
So much of this administration’s talk about energy sounds similar to a
bull session in the faculty lounge, or what we would expect from
lifelong bureaucrats and public functionaries who have never
experienced long commutes or struggles in the harsher, profit-driven
private workplace.
Now the global economy is recovering and energy use is climbing, as the
U.S. dollar sinks. The oil-rich Middle East is in chaos. And more than
2 billion people in India and China are desperate for imported oil. The
result is that American gas prices are astronomical, and the public is
furious and starting to demand relief from the administration.
Its answer? Simple: Since re-election looms, the administration now
insists that high energy prices are no longer good, but suddenly bad.
And the evil oil companies are mostly to blame!
Read it at Townhall
|
