Daniel Henninger
Wall Street Journal Editorial
August 7, 2008
For years, hyperactive environmentalists have burned votive candles to
the spirit in the sky, hoping she'd levitate energy prices high enough
to make alternatives to oil economically feasible. That day has come.
Result: The oil has hit the fan.
With gasoline over $4 and with life as they love it in the suburbs
being shut down, did people call for the windmills? Nope. A heavy
majority want to drill the bejeezus out of anywhere in America we can
find familiar black slop.
Barack Obama would sacrifice our economy for his environmentalism,
Wonder Land columnist Daniel Henninger tells Kelsey Hubbard. (Aug. 7)
No one has been hit harder by this unexpected truth than Nancy Pelosi and her green brigades.
Fearful of an up-or-down vote on drilling for oil in, of all places,
our own country, the Pelosi House and Harry Reid's Senate shut down
Congress. House Minority Leader John Boehner calls drilling the
greatest issue Republicans have had in his political lifetime. A party
flat on its back is ready to run on oil pumps.
Why stop there?
Republicans shouldn't settle for making the world safe for SUVs. What's going on here is about more than $4 gasoline.
When Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats spent a week holding the people's
chamber under house arrest, they made plain a political vulnerability
beyond drilling. To achieve greenhouse gas goals in the out-years, they
are willing to risk a slowdown now in the American economy. How else
can you interpret what happened this week? These Democrats aren't
environmentalists. They're enviromaniacs.
An environmentalist with two feet on the planet is someone who admits
that fixing what economists call "externalities," such as air pollution
or climate effects, requires a balance between those goals and
protecting the productive economy.
An enviromaniac is the sort of person who would say: "Breaking our oil
addiction . . . will take nothing less than a complete transformation
of our economy." The complete transformation of our economy?
So said Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama in his major
energy statement this Monday. Though the speech had hedged bows to oil,
coal and nuclear, it was overwhelmingly a Goreian jeremiad about
"building" a new economy on a promise called renewables.
"We can see shuttered factories open their doors to manufacturers that
sell wind turbines and solar panels that will power our homes and our
businesses," he said. "We can watch as millions of new jobs with good
pay and good benefits are created." This will "meet our moral
obligations to future generations."
Whoa. "Millions" of new jobs building solar panels and wind turbines, and this is to "meet our moral obligations?"
Virtue aside, here's the biggest problem with Sen. Obama and Democratic
enviromania: It's a risky roll of the dice with the U.S. economy.
The economy we've got works. We know that carbon makes the U.S. economy
run like a Swiss watch (transportation, distribution, production,
commuting). The bet between carbon inputs and growing American outputs
is virtually 1:1.
Mr. Obama and his Democratic colleagues in Congress want a "complete
transformation" of an already successful economy. Not partial.
complete. Can any of them say what the odds are that all this economic
activity, including the nation's electrical grid, will work as well
with their new fuels? Assuredly, growth's odds aren't as good as the
ones we have now.
Sen. Obama: "I will not pretend we can achieve [my goals] without cost
or without sacrifice." Might this mean foregoing some GDP for five to
10 years? "Growth" appears in Mr. Obama's speech only to describe the
"clean energy sector."
The problem with Democratic enviromania is that it's uncoupled from the
realities of a nation whose economy has to compete now with the Chinas
and Indias of the world, whose high growth rates use proven energy
sources.
Republicans this fall should push their argument beyond drilling.
Drilling is mainly a proxy for one's understanding of the U.S. economy.
The Democrats and Mr. Obama showed this week they are so in thrall to
Al Gore's big climate bet that they'd risk having a slow-growth
economy. The GOP should run on High Growth America as a better bet than
Democratic Slow Growth.
Instead of enviro-messianism, they should propose a drill-to-transition
for whatever energy source can prove it works at a nonsacrificial price
-- shale, coal gasification, nuclear, solar or some combination.
(Windmill farms are a pox on the land.)
Don't be oil-industry deniers. Mr. Obama and Rep. Pelosi want to hammer
and punish the only players on the field who actually know how to put
massive amounts of energy on the grid. Don't we want them using their
resources to drill here, rather than off in some godforsaken place
producing gushers of cash for people who want to pound us into a hole?
We need Smart Oil on our side for at least 10 years.
Democrats this week chose the prayer of alternative energy over proven
prosperity. They've handed prosperity in the here-and-now to the
Republicans. Run with it.
