"Curing" America's "Energy Addiction"

Because our forefathers were all SO much better off in the primitive, ignorant, filth-and-disease-ridden Stone Age.  And libs have the gall to refer to themselves as "progressives"?

Oh, yes, indeedy.  Fat Albert himself waddled out to give yet another sermon yesterday on the virtues of an energyless existence.  Guess he wants to have the Internet all to himself:

Just as John F. Kennedy set his sights on the moon, Al Gore is challenging the nation to produce every kilowatt of electricity through wind, sun and other Earth-friendly energy sources within ten years, an audacious goal he hopes the next president will embrace.

Sounds like the Lexington Project without the new nuclear plants and drilling.  The Goreacle is even using the same Apollo parallel that John Sith McCain is, and it's even stupider for the former than it is the latter, and for the same reason: the 1960s lunar exploration program had one huge advantage this energy independences falderal never will: visibility.  Everybody could SEE the launches, everybody could turn on their televisions and SEE Neil Armstrong take that "giant leap".  That PR boon kept the public at large engaged and interested and even captivated.  Show me how miles and miles of windmills and artificial fumeroles are going to raise gooseflesh and get kids to say, "Whoa, dude, that is so COOL!"  Besides, let pump prices drop fifty cents a gallon or so for whatever reason and the public arousal over the energy issue will evaporate like spittle in Death Valley.

But that's just the selling difficulties.  The real impracticality with this dangerous scheme is, well, it just won't work.  The largest economy on the planet cannot possibly fufill all its energy needs from wind and steam.  Solar has the potential, but we are decades away at best from the technology that will enable sunbeams to be both collected and stored in sufficient energy density levels to be viable.

J-Ger brings up two inconvenient truths:

As of 2006, renewables produced six percent of U.S. electricity. So all we have to do is switch over about ninety-four percent of our current energy sources. Quite a few other environmentalists found Gore's goal unrealistic, with one comparing it to "challenging your two year old to finish college by the time she is twelve."....

Wind, solar, and geothermal are not manners of propelling a vehicle, or at least not for the purposes of a typical American. (Try going to the grocery store in one of those solar cars.) Nor will they be anytime soon. And Dionne's last sentence hints at why we can't switch to electric cars — an expensive transition whenever it's done — too quickly: producing more electric cars before increasing the supply of electricity generation sources would make electricity more expensive.

There are reasons why fossil fuels have been and remain our predominant energy source: accessibility, efficiency, and versatility.  We can get at them economically, they produce a higher "bang for the buck," and can be used to both generate sufficient quantities of power and propel our transporation modes (trains, planes, and automobiles).  Remember the PR problems I mentioned?  Try selling Jimmy Carter's permanent energy austerity to the public, putting on an extra sweater in lieu of having a thermostat to turn up, and making their fifteen mile commutes to work in the rain on their bicycles and see how far Al's Ten Year Challenge gets.

Or the price tag, for that matter:

The Alliance for Climate Protection, a bipartisan group that [Gore] chairs, estimates the cost of transforming the nation to so-called clean electricity sources at $1.5 trillion to $3 trillion over 30 years in public and private money.

Wouldn't that be $3 trillion (always take the upper estimate on these things, and then double it at minimum) over TEN years?  That IS his "challenge," after all.  Heck, that makes Barack Hussein Obama's proposed $150 billion for the same purpose over the same span look downright miserly.  Anybody, particularly Fat Albert, know where that coin is coming from given the permanent depression his Big Idea would impose on the American economy?  Particularly at the same time that Social Security and Medicare are collapsing?

Ya gotta admire his audacity, I suppose, in throwing out this old socialist chestnut:

"This is an investment that will pay itself back many times over," Gore said. "It's an expensive investment but not compared to the rising cost of continuing to invest in fossil fuels."

No, this reckless, foolhardy boondoggle will cost many times his lowball estimate and return N-O-T-H-I-N-G except poverty and misery.  I can't picture a more effective means of destroying the United States of America as a world power than the Gore Plan, short of an enemy detonating a huge nuclear warhead over our country and EMP-ing our electrical grid and everything attached to it into ashes.  At least that'd be quick, and we wouldn't have to subsidize it.

In the mean time, true progress is being made with the hearts and minds the once & never king presumes to win over.

The [IBD] poll of 920 adults taken last week shows that 73% think “fuel prices at the pump” are a bigger problem for the country than climate change, the new term for global warming. Only 23% say climate change is more important.

The sentiment prevails across the board — among men and women, old and young, rich and poor, and Republicans, independents and Democrats, two-thirds of whom say gas prices are more important.

Support for offshore drilling and oil shale development is also broad-based, with the former favored by 64% of respondents and the latter by 65%.

The results suggest President Bush has strong public support as he puts pressure on Congress to back more exploration for oil.

That public support is corroborated by the 1.3 million DRILL NOW! petition signatures dropped on Nancy Pelosi's and Harry Reid's doorstep by Newt Gingrich's American Solutions organization:

The clarion call from GOP pols for renewed exploration is, astonishingly, growing in volume as well.  And the Bush Administration has, belatedly, listened.  First by lifting the Executive Order against offshore drilling, and now by releasing nearly four million acres of Alaska land for immediate drilling that could yield as many as 3.7 billion barrels of oil starting in as little as two years.  Which had the effect of knocking ten bucks off the oil barrelhead price, the biggest such drop in over twenty years.

Just imagine what could be accomplished if the Democrat Politburo got with the program.  Infuriatingly, imagining is all we can do on that front:

Despite polls showing Americans in favor of drilling more oil from America's huge untapped supplies, Pelosi won't allow it. She just wants to empty our Strategic Petroleum Reserve for a short-term fix to get through Election Day.

It's an irresponsible suggestion, signaling not only an ignorance of how the economy works but also a willingness to place the nation at risk in the case of emergency.

Last Tuesday, Pelosi sent a letter to President Bush urging him to release a "small portion" of the nation's 706 million barrels of strategic-reserve oil to bring down prices. Regardless of how one feels about whether reserves should be held at all, two big problems stand out with Pelosi's tiny demand.

One, she's proposing a misappropriation of the reserves. The U.S. oil stockpile is a 58-day cushion for emergencies that today are all possible. If Israel attacks Iran, for example, and prices double again. Or if Hugo Chavez cuts off his supplies, as he threatened to do as recently as Sunday.

The reserve is there to cushion the blow of a market disruption; it's not an open-market mechanism to manipulate prices for political ends.

Two, Pelosi has finally admitted that supply matters, something that contrasts with her entire legislative record. We count fourteen energy actions to suppress supply on her Web site just since 2005.

She has blocked efforts to open Alaska to drilling, denounced fossil fuels, blamed oil companies for high gasoline prices, voted for biotech boondoggles and condemned speculators.

Foolishness she and her bottom-feeders could get away with in the good old days when pump prices were a third or even half of what they are now.  Now, however, that foolisness is producing its inevitable bitter fruit, and the public - long harangeued and hornswaggled on the morality and virtue of "going green" on just about everything - is rediscovering the efficacies of black gold.  You know the old saying: you never know how much you love something until it's gone.

And yet Democrats are expected to win big this November.  Which is why it is up to every Republican on every ballot this fall to flog the Donks on energy without mercy.

The American electorate will not vote for a return to the Stone Age if they're made to understand that that is where Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democrats are leading us.  If not, if 'Pubbies chicken out once again, then the ex-veep's quip that, "I have never seen an opportunity for the country like the one that's emerging now," will prove tragically and inescapably true.

But not, of course, for them: