THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 144, June 11, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
DRILL NOW FOR ENERGY IN AMERICA:
Our Abundant Oil & Natural Gas Would Keep
Money, Jobs, & Opportunities Here in the U.S.A.
By Roy Innis
AMERICA'S INCREASINGLY UNTENABLE & INTOLERABLE ENERGY SITUATION: THE U.S. ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTAL
POLICIES THAT HAVE CREATED FOR AMERICANS ENERGY SHORTAGES & SOARING ENERGY PRICES & PLACED THE
AMERICAN ECONOMY AT RISK -- WHAT MUST BE DONE TO REPAIR THE DAMAGE CAUSED BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT,
ACTING UNDER THE PRESSURE & INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTALISTS, GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS, & OTHER SPECIAL
INTEREST GROUPS -- URGING THE U.S. CONGRESS TO REMOVE THE MORATORIA ON OFFSHORE OIL & NATURAL GAS
PRODUCTION
FULL STORY:
America’s energy situation is becoming more untenable and intolerable by the day. The cost of keeping our jobs, heating
and cooling our homes, driving our cars, and putting food on our tables and clothes on our backs is increasing daily.
Small businesses, energy intensive industries like manufacturers and airlines, and poor, minority and fixed-income families
are getting hammered.
The employment and fiscal security of our nation is at risk. We are sending more than a half-trillion dollars a year to
unfriendly, often dictatorial regimes, to pay for the oil and gas we need to keep our economy running and maintain decent
standards of living.
For minorities the situation goes beyond economics. Their civil rights are being trampled on, because access to abundant,
reliable, affordable energy is the single most important determinant of whether they will ever achieve the constitutionally
protected rights that they finally won, thanks to the civil rights revolution of the 1960s.
But this unacceptable situation has nothing to do with running out of vital energy resources. The shortages and soaring
prices have been created and imposed on us by government policies and edicts. They are artificial. They are due to
unnecessary restrictions on developing the energy resources that we still have in abundance, right here in these United
States of America.
Foremost among them are the estimated 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil (worth more than
$15 trillion at today’s prices) that geologists conservatively estimate lie beneath our Outer Continental Shelf or OCS.
That’s enough natural gas to heat every home that currently uses this fuel as its primary energy source for more than a
century, and enough oil to substantially reduce our dependence and spending on foreign imports.
During that time, we will undoubtedly make a transition to alternative sources, including renewable energy. But that
transition will take time, and there is no reason why we should make it more costly, painful, regressive, and punitive than
necessary – by continuing to impose shortsighted energy policies.
The vast majority of our nation’s energy resources are on federally owned lands. This energy belongs to all Americans,
as their right. It is not the private property of coastal states, vocal activists, or shortsighted judges and politicians who
insist that it never be touched. Policies that keep this energy off limits are an intolerable and unconstitutional snub to
countless Americans whose own property rights in these resources are being ignored. Those Americans are being forced
to pay far more for energy that is artificially scarce, because we are not allowed to find and produce energy right here in
America. Their civil rights are being trampled on. Their civil rights gains are being rolled back.
Today’s restrictive energy policies are a modern version of the Jim Crow laws of a bygone era. Current U.S. energy
policies effectively prevent minorities from actually realizing the rights that are now guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
These minorities have the rights of life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness on paper. But when soaring energy prices and
restrictions on economic growth prevent them from having jobs, buying homes or enjoying improved health and living
standards, the paper rights are never translated into reality. Instead, poor and minority Americans are denied a seat at the
economic lunch counter, and sent to the back of the economic bus.
These intolerable policies have been imposed in the name of protecting the environment. But this is a false dichotomy –
this notion that we cannot develop our critically needed energy resources without sacrificing environmental values. The
platforms that produce oil and natural gas off our shores do not pollute our coastal waters. In fact, they create
magnificent, towering artificial reefs that actually increase marine life. And, by reducing the need to import oil from
overseas, they decrease the likelihood of tanker accidents that do result in significant damage to coastal shorelines,
habitats, and wildlife.
Equally incomprehensible, other congressional mandates have driven demand for natural gas steadily upward. The Clean
Air Act Amendments spurred a switch to natural gas by utility companies, factories, homes, and even part of our
automotive fleet. Concerns about catastrophic climate change have done likewise. Now, the demand curve is being
pushed upward even further, supplies are being restricted, and people are being forced to pay outrageous and
unnecessary prices for natural gas, gasoline, and electricity.
Restricting access to America’s energy also causes us to deplete energy resources that other countries desperately need,
to lift their people out of poverty. When we make it illegal to produce our abundant oil and natural gas resources, we
create artificial scarcities in the face of rising demand. We send the price of energy and food soaring upward for the
poorest families on Earth. We increase the prospect of conflicts, wars and revolutions, as poor people and nations battle
one another for what limited resources do remain available. This is not merely unwise. It is morally wrong.
No other nation on Earth is so self-centered that it locks up its own energy – and then uses other countries’ resources,
and demands that they produce more to meet our needs, which will continue to grow as our population and energy use
increase. It is high time that we stopped acting that way.
America’s restrictive, anti-energy policies may be politically correct. They may be the result of demands by coastal and
environmentalist activists – many of whom live in states that produce little (if any) energy, but are among our nation’s
biggest consumers of oil and natural gas.
However, none of these considerations makes these policies any less intolerable, any less economically harmful, any less
regressive and racially targeted in their consequences. It is time to reverse the decades’ of imprudent energy policies.
Members of the U.S. House Appropriations Subcommittee – and, a week later, the full House of Representatives – will
soon vote to continue these insane, nightmarish energy policies or to remove the moratoria on offshore production, so
that we can start the political and policy process that will take us back to responsible policies and affordable, reliable
energy.
This energy, and the offshore lands where it is found, belong to all Americans. Access to these lands and resources is a
basic civil right – and no party, president, politician, environmentalist group, community, state, or company has the right
to keep us from developing this energy and enjoying its countless benefits.
I urge the U.S. Congress, in the strongest possible terms, to vote in favor of ending these intolerable drilling moratoria.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Roy Innis is Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality and author of Energy Keepers - Energy Killers: The New
Civil Rights Battle. The foregoing article by Innis is based on his June 10, 2008, letter to the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Appropriations.
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THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Conservative & Free-Market Analysis of Government, Politics & Public Policy, Covering Political, Legal, Constitutional, Economic,
Cultural, Military, International, Strategic, & Geopolitical Issues
Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity