Does anybody still remember the energy crisis? Not only does this administration remember; its seems intent on repeating it right down to the last outworn cliché.
The same goes for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, the two leading candidates for their party's presidential nomination. Would you believe it? Both are still talking about the danger of peak oil and the beauty of renewable energy, as if they were reading from Jimmy Carter's playbook some 40 years ago. And the lines are getting awfully old.
As in vaudeville, no act is bad enough not to warrant another farewell tour. It all sounds eerily familiar. Drill, baby, drill? But where? We're fast running out of sites to explore! Mr. Carter used to say his opponents would soon be putting up oil rigs next to the Washington Monument. His was a picture of an America that wasn't recognizable then--and still isn't.
Or as the Institute for Energy Research put it not long ago, "Mr. President, America isn't running out of oil, we're running into it." Or as the Financial Times said earlier this year, "The world is drowning in oil." The whole globe is starting to resemble those oil fields in East Texas back when rigs were popping up in every backyard from Kilgore to Tyler. No, it wasn't an aesthetic sight, but it was awfully real. Now the 1970s are back, only in grimy reality. And so are delusional presidents of the United States willing to pick winners and losers in the energy markets--which yearn only to be free again.
Back in the awful 1970s our president was telling the country that "we could use up all the proven reserves in the entire world by the end of the next decade." Fossil fuels soon became swear words. The sky was falling, the earth was shaking and disaster looming. All was lost! Mr. Carter's response to all this scare-talk?
Just put on another sweater or two, leave the thermostat alone--lest we waste any of our dwindling supply of fuel--and start a Synthetic Fuels Corporation that would produce a replacement for dirty old oil. Just as Solyndra was going to save the country from bankruptcy--before it went bankrupt itself. If there is a better example of why corporate welfare doesn't work, it's hard to come up with one. Though there may be many a close runner-up for that dishonor. Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets! Our all-knowing government will tell you if you've won or lost later.
But at least Mr. Carter, who's still meddling in the Middle East, didn't know any better back then. But talk about whoppers: Here is our current president and corporate chairman-in-chief claiming, "On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills . . ." Really? Solar is actually costing us at least twice over, first as taxpayers and then as customers who have to pay ever higher bills for our electricity. Can that really be Barack Obama on television, or Jimmy Carter born again?
What changed? In two words, Ronald Reagan. He promised the country a new beginning and he delivered. And how. He freed the energy market instead of continuing to burden it with rules, regulations and endless make-work. He set the American economy, and the energy market in particular, free again. He let a far older law than any this administration could devise operate freely again--the law of supply and demand. And now we're seeing the bountiful results, for there is no more powerful force in this world than freedom. And now it's delivering again. Indeed, it's gushing. So let freedom ring! And the oil flow.
Editorial on 04/29/2016