August 4, 2010

Obama's Disastrous Energy Plans Delayed

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada has decided not to advance the Democrats' energy bill before the August recess. The bill will be reconsidered when the Senate returns about Labor Day.

This may delay Obama's disastrous energy policies but it certainly doesn't mean the end of them.

Predictably, Democrats are using BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico to justify expanding government's interference in the energy sector. "It's a sad day," said Reid, "when you can't find a handful of Republicans to support a bill ... that would hold BP accountable for the worst oil spill in history."

Actually the bill wouldn't do that. The core of the legislation entails caps to be put on carbon emissions; something which would undermine supply-and-demand and drive up energy prices because the earth-saving but costly "green" energies, as wind and solar, are wholly unprofitable and inefficient.

Meanwhile, there are vast reserves of oil and natural gas waiting to be exploited underneath the Atlantic coastline, beneath the northern coast of Alaska, and on land, in Colorado and Wyoming. Combined, these regions hold over two hundred billion barrels of oil and two thousand trillion cubic feet of natural gas that are recoverable with today's technology. That's more than most OPEC nations. If fully developed, it would be enough to free America from the import of foreign oil for almost fifty years.

Yet the president believes that "drilling alone cannot come close to meeting our long term energy needs." Instead, his administration is set to subsidize currently unprofitable renewable energies, stifling necessary progress in these sectors at the expense of millions of Americans who will either lose their jobs, see their energy bills go up, or both. No wonder Senator Reid couldn't even find "a handful of Republicans" to go along with that.

No comments:

Post a Comment