This started out as an attempt to create a light and humorous,
Letterman-esque Top 10 list. But the items on the list, and the drain
Americans are seeing in their pocketbooks because of Democrats' actions
(sometimes inaction) are just too tragic for that.
10) ANWR If Bill Clinton had signed into law the Republican
Congress's 1995 bill to allow drilling of ANWR instead of vetoing it,
ANWR could be producing a million barrels of (non-Opec) oil a day--5%
of the nation's consumption. Although speaking in another context, even
Democrat Senator Charles Schumer, no proponent of ANWR drilling, admits
that "one million barrels per day," would cause the price of gasoline
to fall "50 cents a gallon almost immediately," according to a recent
George Will column.
9) Coastal Drilling (i.e., not in my backyard) Democrats have
consistently fought efforts to drill off the U.S. coast, as evidenced
by Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz's preotestation against a
failed 2005 bill: "Not only does this legislation dismantle the
bi-partisan ban on offshore drilling, but it provides a financial
incentive for states to do so."
A financial incentive? With the Chinese now slant drilling for oil just
50 miles off the Florida coast, wouldn't that have been a good
thing?
8) Insistence on alternative fuels One of the first acts of the
new Democrat-controlled congress in 2007 was an energy bill that "calls
for a huge increase in the use of ethanol as a motor fuel and requires
new appliance efficiency standards." By focusing on alternative
fuels such as ethanol, and not more drilling, Democrats have added to
the cost of food, worsening starvation problems around the word and
increasing inflationary pressures in the U.S., including prices at the
pump.
7) Nuclear power Even the French, who sometimes seem to
lack the backbone to stand up for anything other than soft cheese,
faced down their environmentalists over the need for nuclear power.
France now generates 79% of its electricity from nuclear plants,
mitigating the need for imported oil. The French have so much cheap
energy that France has become the world's largest exporter of electric
power. They have plans in place to build more reactors, including an
experimental fusion reactor.
The last nuclear reactor built in the United States, according to the
US Dept of Energy, was the "River Bend" plant in Louisiana. Its
construction began in March of 1977.
Need I say more?
6) Coal "The liquid hydrocarbon fuel available from
American coal reserves exceeds the crude oil reserves of the entire
world," writes Dr. Arthur Robinson in an article on human events.com.
The U.S. has approximately one-fourth of the world's known, proven coal
reserves. Coal would be a proven, and increasingly clean, source of
electric power and--at current prices--a liquefied fuel that would
reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Yet Dems and their enviro friends
have fought, and continue to fight, both coal-mining and coal plants.
5) Refinery capacity "High oil prices are still being propped up
by a shortage of refinery capacity and there is little sign of the
bottleneck easing until 2010," according to Peak Oil News. And,
while voters in South Dakota have approved zoning for what could become
the first new oil refinery in the United States in 30 years, the
Dems' environmentalist constituency vows to oppose it, just like
environmentalists opposed the floodgates that could have saved New
Orleans from Hurricane Katrina.
4) Reduced competition With consolidation in the oil industry,
has come reduced competition. Remember, most of the major oil company
mergers -- Shell-Texaco, BP-Amoco, Exxon-Mobil, BP-ARCO, and
Chevron-Texaco -- happened on Clinton's watch. The number of oil
refiners dropped from 28 to 19 companies during Clinton's two terms.
3) The Global Warming Myth At a Group of 8 meeting this week,
host and Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari
"described the issues of climate change and energy as two sides of the
same coin and proposed united solutions ... to address both issues
simultaneously". As a result of Global Warming hysteria,
the Al Gore-negotiated Kyoto Protocol created a worldwide market in
carbon-emissions trading. Both 2005 --the year that trading
was initiated--and this year --when the trading expanded
dramatically -- saw substantial and unexpected price spikes in the cost
of oil, leading us to reason Number...
2) Speculation "Given the unchanged equilibrium in global oil
supply and demand over recent months amid the explosive rise in oil
futures prices ... it is more likely that as much as 60% of the today
oil price is pure speculation," writes F. William Engdahl, an Associate
of the Centre for Research on Globalization. According to a June
2006 US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations report, US
energy futures historically "were traded exclusively on regulated
exchanges within the United States... The trading of energy commodities
by large firms on OTC electronic exchanges was exempted from (federal)
oversight by a provision inserted at the behest of Enron and other
large energy traders into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of
2000." The bill was signed into law by Bill Clinton, in one of his last
acts in office.
1) Defeat of President Bush's 2001 energy package According to the BBC, "Key points of Bush('s 2001) plan were to:
-Promote new oil and gas drilling
-Build new nuclear plants
-Improve electricity grid and build new pipelines -$10bn in tax breaks to promote energy efficiency and alternative fuels
A New York Times article, dated May 18, 2001, explained:
"President Bush began an intensive effort today to
sell his plan for developing new sources of energy to Congress and the
American people, arguing that the country had a future of 'energy
abundance if it could break free of the traditional antagonism between
energy producers and environmental advocates.
Mr. Bush's plea for a new dialogue came as his
administration published the report of an energy task force containing
scores of specific proposals... for finding new sources of power and
encouraging a range of new energy technologies."
[The Bush plan] "mentions about a dozen areas
including land-use restrictions in the Rockies, lease stipulations on
offshore areas attractive to oil companies, the vetting of locations
for nuclear plants, environmental reviews to upgrade power plants and
refineries that could be streamlined or eliminated to help industry
find more oil and gas and produce more electricity and gasoline."
The article went on to quote some rather prescient words from the
President, "this great country could face a darker future, a future
that is, unfortunately, being previewed in rising prices at the gas
pump and rolling blackouts in the great state of California" if his
plan was not adopted in 2001.
The Times account continued:
"Mr. Bush talked not only of blackouts but of
blackmail, raising the specter of a future in which the United States
is increasingly vulnerable to foreign oil suppliers...Mr. Bush was
praised by many groups for laying out a long-term energy policy. His
report contained 105 initiatives..."
Just as President Bush's predictions have been born out, the article
quoted from that most sage of Democrats, former President Jimmy Carter:
"World supplies are adequate and reasonably stable,
price fluctuations are cyclical, reserves are plentiful," he (Carter)
argued. Mr. Carter said "exaggerated claims seem designed to promote
some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of
environmental quality."
But, as a later Times article notes, "the president's ambitious policy
quickly became a casualty of energy politics and, notably, harsh
criticism from Democrats enraged by the way the White House had created
the plan."
In other words, Democrats refused the President's plea to "break free
of the traditional antagonism between energy producers and
environmental advocates."
Remember that the next time you pull up to the pump ... or the voter's booth.
William Tate is a former award-winning journalist and the author of the new novel, A Time Like This (www.atimelikethis.us/)
