AFF Sentinel Vol.5#34
Turn
Out the Lights, the Party's Over (Where's That Whale Oil Lamp?)
Painful fuel costs could yield some positive effects
on politics and economics. Perhaps in time for elections, consumer/voters may
have had the supply and demand lesson they have steadfastly pretended
didn't exist.
Prices exceeding $4.00/gal. and ridiculous calls
from Al Gore and Sen. Barack Obama to be fossil fuel free in a decade have
spotlighted the political left's incredible ignorance of both economics and
technical reality. Personally, I would love to see both of them take
a flight in a solar, windmill or battery- powered commercial airliner - next
week would be fine.
For decades, voters have allowed the political
left to ban drilling for oil at all points of the compass. Voters refused to
face the fact that not drilling for our own oil while the global economy
grew was eventually going to cost our pocketbooks dearly. Ordinary people
fooled themselves, dreaming some cheap, clean, plentiful and powerful energy
source was going to magically appear before oil got prohibitively
expensive because we were refusing to drill.
But the oil industry is not simply a supply
and demand business. Why? Because our Congress has arbitrarily interfered
with market forces by purposely restricting supply at the behest of
environmental zealots who oppose modern life.
Let's be clear here. Environmentalists use caribou
or birds not because their ultimate goal is more of them to pet. They simply pay
their lawyers to use the critters and the Endangered Species Act as
tools to achieve goals.
But they have to come at the issues obliquely,
if not through outright subterfuge. If their campaign to voters for
three decades had been, "Please help us shrink the supply of oil and
block refinery and nuclear plant construction so that the price of gasoline and
power will be so expensive we'll have to live like our great grandparents
without cars, modern electric- powered appliances, airplanes and without the
things made in factories and raised on modern farms," would people
have voted for those policies?
Yet the left's presidential candidate and Congressional
leadership have unmistakably delineated positions recently: no
cost is too high, no inconvenience too great. House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi embodies the unproven hysteria.
"I'm trying to save the planet. I'm trying
to save the planet," Pelosi said.
We're assuming she was referring to Earth but given her outlandish responses to
our planetary happenings, she is sounding like someone not from this world -
and certainly not concerned about businesses or ordinary citizens.
If there is hope, some of it extends from the response to Pelosi's refusal
to allow debate on drilling. Reminiscent of some dotty old lady who turns
out the lights, locks the door and sits in her rocker in the dark
waiting for reality to go away, Pelosi actually turned out the
lights, turned off the microphones and cameras in the House chamber
-- and left on summer vacation to avoid debating drilling.
Instead of leaving, the Republicans stayed in the darkened
House. They yelled - microphones were dead -- about common sense solutions
to our oil problems to the gallery of visiting citizens come to see their
representatives in action. The gallery applauded obvious solutions like
drilling for our own oil, rather than ceding it to the control of
caribou and fish. Is it possible that there are elected
vertebrates left in Washington who will stand up to the envirozealots?
In the Senate, Republicans showed - shockingly --
political savvy. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell moved
to consider an energy bill that included drilling for oil in off-limit
locations. Under Senate rules, only one objection precludes bill
consideration. Sen. Ken Salazar (D.-CO.) dutifully objected. McConnell
then amended his motion, calling for consideration of the drilling bill
when the price of gas at the pump reached a trigger of $4.50/gal.
Salazar again objected. This auction of sorts continued, with McConnell
raising the trigger point to $5.00 to $7.50 and eventually, to $10/gal.,
with Salazar objecting each time. The Republicans then had the Democrats on
record: even $10/gal. gas prices would not be enough for them to even
consider drilling for oil.
Polls show consumer/voters are beginning to
realize the envirozealots and their political left co- conspirators (and
consenting Republicans) have led them down a primrose path on oil. There
are similar paths leading to the same kind of painful places on taxes,
nutrition, health care, judges, agriculture and economic
freedom.
We need free market solutions from Congress and our
president, not the enviro-socialist "solutions" the left is
promising.
Will oil provide the eye-opening voters need?
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