We’ve blogged a lot about the near-religious dogma that is catastrophic man-made global climate change. On the left, it’s very rare for someone to even bother arguing the relative merit of climate change since they have unilaterally declared the debate “over.”
A recent Wall Street Journal editorial makes a lot of really good points, including this:
The former vice president has also recently disavowed any intention of returning to politics. This is wise. As America’s leading peddler of both doom and salvation, Mr. Gore has moved beyond the constraints and obligations of reality. His job is to serve as a Prophet of Truth.
People like Al Gore are the ones standing in the way of energy solutions. For them, a crippled economy is not only unimportant, but actually beneficial to their goal of reducing the so-called human environmental footprint. So when Republicans talk about the economic impacts of high energy costs - especially on the most vulnerable - they aren’t speaking the same language as the powerful special interests writing Democrat policy in Washington, DC. A significant economic blood-letting is exactly what they’ve been ordering for decades.
Posted in Climate Change, Economy, Energy, moonbats | | Write a Letter to the Editor
It’s a good thing Gore doesn’t want to return to politics - the Presidency is not a big enough job to contain his ego.
Even I don’t self-link that much, and I’m embarrassed when I do.
We need some basic fact-finding before you allow oil and gas corporations unfettered access to previously restricted public lands. (That is, after all, the objective of the drilldrilldrill propaganda exercise. It’s just another raid on the commons.)
For one, answer the questions: 1) Is there a gasoline shortage?, and 2) how much does the decline in the value of the dollar have to do with energy price run-ups?
If there’s no gasoline shortage (there isn’t), and if the world oil market, which is pegged to the dollar is merely demanding more devalued dollars in exchange for the commodity, then you’re out in right field on this one.
Ain’t nothing wrong with a little self-reference - saves time when you don’t have to re-make every argument.
Mark, you are correct that in the strictest sense, there’s not a shortage of gasoline - otherwise, we’d see rationing. You’re also right that the weak dollar is playing a big role in prices.
Neither of which matter. Increased international demand for the same barrels of oil provided by OPEC, South America etc. has naturally lead to increased prices.
Whether there is a shortage of oil or not doesn’t change the fact that producing oil domestically - spending the dollar to get it - will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and put the U.S. in the drivers seat of our own energy future.
In a free market, isn’t it smart to buy from outsiders what is too expensive to produce yourself?
Producing oil domestically will not lower the price of oil. The world scale is far too large for our share - about 8.5%, to matter. Even if we increase that to 9%, there’ll be no visible effect on US pricing structure, which is, as you say, tied to world demand. We’ve got about 2% of the world’s reserves. That borders on insignificant. So it’s not a price issue - oil companies will not give consumers a break. (Only Venezuela has ever done that.)
For that reason, I find that allowing corporations even more access to the commons (at bargain prices) than they already have to be foolish. They pose a real environmental threat.
And worrying about importing oil is a pointless exercise anyway. You presume that more drilling will yield more oil without realizing that on land we are all drilled up, offshore we are heavily leased, that there is much leased acreage that is not being exploited. Anyway, we are more than ten years away from any tangible benefits of any current drilling.
This is a PR game - that’s all. Oil companies (and their band of followers) are seizing on this opportunity to get into places that we have denied them before. They are about as much about our energy security as Halliburton, which moved to Dubai.
