by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad?<\/p>\n
That should be a stupid question. Yet it is not, when the Obama administration has stopped new domestic offshore oil exploration in many American waters, curbed oil leases in the West, and keeps oil-rich areas of Alaska exempt from drilling. Last week, President Obama went to Brazil and declared of that country\u2019s new offshore finds: \u201cWith the new oil finds off Brazil, President [Dilma] Rousseff has said that Brazil wants to be a major supplier of new stable sources of energy, and I\u2019ve told her that the United States wants to be a major customer, which would be a win-win for both our countries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Consider the logic of the president\u2019s Orwellian declaration: The United States in the last two years has restricted oil exploration of the sort Brazil is now rushing to embrace. We have run up more than $4 trillion in consecutive budget deficits during the Obama administration and are near federal insolvency. Therefore, the United States should be happy to borrow more money to purchase the sort of \u201cnew stable sources of energy\u201d from Brazil\u2019s offshore wells that we most certainly will not develop off our own coasts.<\/p>\n
It seems as if paying lots more for electricity and gas, in European fashion, was originally part of the president\u2019s new green agenda. He helped push cap-and-trade legislation through the House of Representatives in 2009. Had such Byzantine regulations become law, a recessionary economy would have sunk into depression. Obama appointed the incompetent Van Jones as \u201cgreen-jobs czar\u201d \u2014 until Jones\u2019s wild rantings confirmed that he knew nothing about his job description \u201cto advance the administration\u2019s climate and energy initiatives.\u201d<\/p>\n
At a time of trillion-dollar deficits, the administration is borrowing billions to promote high-speed rail, and is heavily invested in the federally subsidized $42,000 Government Motors Chevy Volt. Apparently the common denominator here is a deductive view that high energy prices will force Americans to emulate European centrally planned and state-run transportation.<\/p>\n
That conclusion is not wild conspiracy theory, but simply the logical manifestation of many of the Obama administration\u2019s earlier campaign promises. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu \u2014 now responsible for the formulation of American energy policy \u2014 summed up his visions to the Wall Street Journal in 2008: \u201cSomehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.\u201d I think Chu is finally figuring out the \u201csomehow.\u201d<\/p>\n
A year earlier, Chu was more explicit in his general contempt for the sort of fuels that now keep Americans warm and on the road: \u201cCoal is my worst nightmare. . . . We have lots of fossil fuel. That\u2019s really both good and bad news. We won\u2019t run out of energy but there\u2019s enough carbon in the ground to really cook us.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fairness to Chu, he was only amplifying what Obama himself outlined during the 2008 campaign. Today\u2019s soaring energy prices are exactly what candidate Obama once dreamed about: \u201cUnder my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.\u201d Obama, like Chu, made that dream even more explicit in the case of coal: \u201cSo, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can \u2014 it\u2019s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that\u2019s being emitted.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are lots of ironies to these Alice-in-Wonderland energy fantasies. As the public becomes outraged over gas prices, a panicked Obama pivots to brag that we are pumping more oil than ever before \u2014 but only for a time, and only because his predecessors approved the type of drilling he has stopped.<\/p>\n
The entire climate-change movement, fairly or not, is now in shambles, thanks to serial scandals about faked research, consecutive record cold and wet winters in much of Europe and the United States, and the conflict-of-interest, get-rich schemes of prominent global-warming preachers such as Al Gore.<\/p>\n
The administration\u2019s energy visions are formulated by academics and government bureaucrats who live mostly in cities with short commutes and have worked largely for public agencies. These utopians have no idea that without reasonably priced fuel and power, the self-employed farmer cannot produce food. The private plant operator cannot create plastics. And the trucker cannot bring goods to the consumer \u2014 all the basics like lettuce, iPads, and Levis that a highly educated, urbanized elite both enjoys and yet has no idea of how a distant someone else made their unbridled consumption possible.<\/p>\n
\u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Gas is well over $4 a gallon in most places in California \u2014 and soaring elsewhere as well. But are such high energy prices good or bad?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[208,546],"tags":[56,12,747,1014,1057,291,405,213,219],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-SV","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/faith-based-energy-policy\/","url_meta":{"origin":3405,"position":0},"title":"Faith-Based Energy Policy","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 27, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services When the summer driving season starts soon, and tension heats up over Iran, gas may reach $5 a gallon. Nothing bothers voters more than paying an extra $20 or $30 every time they fill up. In times like these, they soon might prefer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1329,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/oil-rich-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":3405,"position":1},"title":"Oil-Rich America?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services There is a revolution going on in America. But it is not part of the Tea Party or the loud Occupy Wall Street protests. Instead, massive new reserves of gas, oil, and coal are being discovered almost everywhere in the United States, due\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/america-through-the-looking-glass\/","url_meta":{"origin":3405,"position":2},"title":"America Through the Looking Glass","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media President Obama yesterday praised Brazil for its new offshore oil industry and said he wants to buy as much oil as possible in this new win-win partnership \u2014 although we have piled up $5 trillion in new debt, curtailed new petroleum exploration off shore\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3336,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/dreamland-usa\/","url_meta":{"origin":3405,"position":3},"title":"Dreamland, USA","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama just gave a belated but stern warning about escalating debt \u2014 a few weeks after he presented a 2011 budget with a $1.6 trillion annual deficit, the largest shortfall in American history. Congressional Republicans are now crowing about reducing Obama's red\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":912,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-gaseous-policies-of-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3405,"position":4},"title":"The Gaseous Policies of Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media \u201cThey\u201d Did It (Again)! There are no \u201coil men\u201d in the White House. So the Obamites cannot, as in the past, blame Halliburton, BP, or Exxon for rigging gas prices out of the Oval Office. Which leads to the question: why then are prices\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":887,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-gasoline-nightmare\/","url_meta":{"origin":3405,"position":5},"title":"A Gasoline Nightmare","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Obama is barnstorming the west \u2014 blasting oil companies, trying to convince voters that he supports an \u201call of the above\u201d policy, and reminding them that drilling has increased since his tenure. 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