Winners and losers energy policies
We can and must rejuvenate our economy by developing America’s resource bounties
Paul Driessen
*********************
Governor
Mitt Romney strongly supports North American energy independence as the
foundation of renewed US employment and prosperity. President Obama is
waging war on fossil fuels, job creation, and efforts to end our
economic recession and reduce dependence on Middle Eastern and Russian
oil.
Romney’s
emphasis on careful analysis and due diligence brought him and Bain
Capital notable winners like AMC Entertainment, Burger King, Burlington
Coat Factory, Domino’s Pizza, Dunkin’ Donuts and Staples. Obama’s focus
on ideology, political calculation, cronyism and campaign contributors
produced scandalous losers like A123, Abound Solar, Crescent Dunes,
Ener1, Fisker, Mountain Plaza, Solyndra, Tesla, and a host of wind and biofuel projects that would collapse if their taxpayer subsidies were cut off.
Not surprisingly,
US gasoline prices are double what they were the day Obama took office.
Some 25 million Americans are without full-time jobs – leaving 23% of
the workforce unemployed, involuntarily working part-time or at jobs
where they are overqualified, making far less money than they did
previously, or no longer looking for a job. Our 64% “labor participation
rate” is at a 30-year low.
There
are still 4.5 million fewer jobs than in 2007, even though our
population has grown; the hourly wage of college-educated Americans age
23 to 29 fell 4.7% between 2007 and 2011; median household income
plummeted $3,040 since the recession (supposedly, officially) ended in
June 2009; and a record 45 million Americans are on food stamps.
Meanwhile,
the ever-unstable Middle East is even more unstable. Terrorists
murdered our ambassador to Libya. A pitiful anti-Islamist video excused
riots in Egypt, where a Muslim Brotherhood leader is now president. More
than 33,000 have died in a nasty Syrian civil war. Internecine
conflicts continue in Iraq and elsewhere. The seemingly perpetual
Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains poised to intensify. the Taliban
and Al Qaeda continue to build power and launch vicious attacks, such as
gunning down the US embassy’s Yemeni security chief in Sana’a. And we
are importing oil from brutal human rights violators.
Outside the Middle East, the Putin government is using energy to pressure and blackmail European nations dependent on Russian oil and gas, while orchestrating anti-fracking
campaigns to keep EU countries from tapping their abundant shale gas
supplies. Politics, events and human rights violations raise further
questions about Russia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nigeria and Sudan. And many
of these countries are among our most important oil suppliers – because
we refuse to develop our own deposits.
Since
oil is sold in a world market, producing more in the United States
means we could import less from abroad, free up more oil for other
nations, and push prices down. Exporting US natural gas and drilling, fracking
and production expertise would make other nations less dependent on the
Middle East and Russia, bring natural gas prices down further,
turbo-charge economies, and encourage African countries to use gas to
generate electricity, rather than “flaring” it as an unwanted byproduct
of oil production.
Romney
understands this. He is calling for more oil and natural gas production
here in the United States, changes to excessive and counterproductive
federal regulations that raise energy costs and kill jobs, and increased
use of friendly Canadian oil to serve America’s consumers. He knows
this will protect us against disruptions in Middle East oil supplies,
reduce the flow of American dollars to totalitarian human rights
violators, create American jobs, increase tax revenues, and jumpstart
our sluggish economy.
President
Obama, by contrast, continues to ignore reality and embrace policies
based on hope, green dreams, and a determination to “fundamentally
transform” America’s Constitution, economy, society and business system.
He continues to waste billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize
unreliable, unsustainable, inefficient, insufficient energy forms that
are at best decades from competing in the free market – even as 80% of Department of Energy grants and loans went to companies owned or controlled by Obama contributors; DOE restructured its $465 million loan to Tesla, to make sure the electric-car company doesn’t run out of cash right before the election; and President Obama says malnourished, energy-deprived Africans should avoid fossil fuels and rely instead on wind, solar and biofuel power.
Many
recipients of involuntary taxpayer largesse are donors to Obama and
Democrat re-election campaigns; have electoral clout in crucial swing
states, where corn growers and others benefit from ethanol, wind and
solar schemes; or provide crucial propaganda and campaign services via
government employee and labor unions and tax-exempt radical
environmentalist organizations.
While
Obama turns his back on the reliable fossil fuels that power America’s
economic engine, he denounces and demonizes companies that produce this
hydrocarbon energy, pay billions of dollars in taxes and support
millions of American jobs. He singles out America’s oil and natural gas
sector for discriminatory tax increases and excessive regulations, and
makes more and more federal lands, waters and resources off limits to
responsible exploration and development.
Environmental activists and the Obama Administration express outrage about subsidies
for traditional, efficient means of generating electricity, which
amount to $0.25-$0.44 (25-44 cents) per megawatt-hour for coal and
natural gas and $1.59 per MWH for nuclear. But they are eerily silent
about enormous subsidies for wind ($23.37 per MWH) and solar electricity ($24.34 per MWH).
They
express equal outrage about importing petroleum from Canada’s oil sands
via the Keystone Pipeline – but are silent about imports of thick,
gooey crude from Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. They brag about
increased US oil and gas production on private lands, but insist that
there be little or no drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, Arctic
National Wildlife Refuge, Rocky Mountains or even National Petroleum Reserve Alaska,
which Congress set aside decades ago specifically to safeguard our
national security by increasing exploration in areas with the best
potential for oil and gas.
Lisa
Jackson’s Environmental Protection Agency is imposing draconian
restrictions on power plants and other CO2 sources, as another way of
“skinning the cat” and hyper-regulating coal out of the US energy
picture, after Congress rejected cap-tax-and-trade legislation.
Meantime, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA) has introduced the Managed Carbon Price Act,
which analysts say will impose regressive taxes that will rise to $5.20
per gallon of gasoline by 2024 and equally hefty surcharges on other
hydrocarbon use.
The
impact on transportation, shipping, commuting, manufacturing, jobs and
families is frightening to contemplate. So is the fact that these
actions are coming even as Britain’s Meteorological Office released data
showing that the world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago – and that average global temperatures rose an impossible-to-measure and statistically insignificant 0.03 degrees C per decade.
Meanwhile,
Germany, Italy and Japan plan to phase out nuclear power, thereby
increasing their use of natural gas and coal for electricity – while
China and India plan to build 900 new coal-fired power plants to
electrify their growing economies. All will pump millions of tons of
carbon dioxide into the atmosphere – dwarfing any reductions the USA
might achieve by closing more power plants and further shackling our
economy.
The
Administration’s actions have been arrogant, irresponsible and
autocratic. Win or lose in November, the White House, EPA, DOE and
Interior Department will impose boxcars of punitive new regulations that
have been put on hold until November 7.
We
can dig ourselves out of this hole. We can and must rejuvenate and
reinvigorate our economy, by developing America’s resource bounties.
We
don’t need to “fundamentally transform” America’s economy, society and
free enterprise system. We need to fundamentally transform the
anti-hydrocarbon culture that pervades the Congress, White House,
Executive Branch and radical environmental groups that have brought us
to where we are today.
_____________
Paul
Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive
Tomorrow and Congress of Racial Equality, and author or Eco-Imperialism: Green power - Black death. 10/15/12
No comments:
Post a Comment