THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 214, August 29, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
STOP THE WAR ON POOR FAMILIES:
Environmentalist Anti-Energy Policies Impose
Immoral Burden on Our Poorest Citizens
By Niger Innis
LEFTWING POLITICS, ENVIRONMENTALISM, U.S. ENERGY POLICY, & THE HEALTH & ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE: THE CONSEQUENCES OF ANTI-DRILLING & OTHER ANTI-ENERGY POLICIES SUPPORTED BY
LIBERAL LEFTIST DEMOCRATS, RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS, & GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISTS: DECREASED
U.S. DOMESTIC OIL & NATURAL GAS PRODUCTION -- INCREASED DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN PETROLEUM -- ESCALATING
ENERGY & FOOD PRICES FOR AMERICANS -- HIGHER LEVELS OF U.S. UNEMPLOYMENT -- BILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN LEASE
BONUS, ROYALTY & TAX REVENUES LOST -- DECREASED HEALTH & LIVING STANDARDS IN THE U.S.A. -- EROSION OF CIVIL
RIGHTS GAINS FOR MINORITIES -- POOR & ELDERLY HOUSEHOLDS FORCED TO CHOOSE BETWEEN FOOD, MEDICINE, & FUEL
FULL STORY:
As Democratic Party Convention delegates gather in Denver, Colorado, America is repeatedly being told that we must
transform our economy to “green” energy.
Our future is in wind and solar, Liberal Democrats and environmentalist activists insist. Oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear
power must go.
American citizens vigorously disagree. They know fossil and nuclear fuels built this country and created health and
living standards unprecedented in history. Over two-thirds support increased oil and natural gas drilling.
They know world energy demand is surging, while U.S. domestic energy production continues to fall. They realize
anti-drilling policies don’t just cause unemployment and cost us billions in lost lease bonus, royalty, and tax revenues.
In addition, those policies are an immoral war on poor families. They erode civil rights gains, and force minority and
elderly households to choose between food, fuel, and medicine.
Since 2006, the cost of driving a 25-mpg car 10,000 miles has risen $600. Heating and air-conditioning costs – and the price
of everything we eat, wear, and do – continue to soar. While higher income families spend a nickel of every dollar on
energy, families at the bottom of our economic scale spend up to half of their incomes on gasoline, heating and cooling.
This is intolerable and unnecessary. We have centuries’ worth of oil, natural gas, oil shale, coal, and uranium – and we can
develop them without harming the environment.
But environmentalist radicals in and out of Congress refuse to let us do so. They want to force us to switch to renewables,
even though there is a yawning chasm between 0.5% of U.S. energy produced by wind and solar power – and 93%
produced with hydrocarbon and nuclear power.
The eventual switch to alternative energy is obviously decades away. Meanwhile, we are sending nearly $700 billion a year
to oil-rich oligarchs, while actions by Russia, Iran, and Venezuela underscore our own and Europe’s national security
vulnerability.
People are angry that U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to allow a debate or vote on ending congressional drilling
bans. The only “energy” bills she supports would open few areas, while adding more taxes, regulations, lawsuits, delays,
price hikes, and renewable-energy mandates and subsidies.
They will produce little or no new energy. Wind farms with hundreds of gargantuan, unreliable turbines have to be located
where the wind actually blows, usually hundreds of miles from cities.
That means long transmission lines, often through forests and scenic areas. And that means opposition, delays and
lawsuits from the same environmentalists who “support” wind and oppose power plants that actually produce abundant,
reliable, affordable energy. As the Wall Street Journal notes, Greens are already blocking transmission lines in a
dozen states.
It’s increasingly obvious that the only power environmentalist pressure groups and their congressional allies want is the
power to control our lives, and curtail our energy use and economic growth.
Their latest ploy involves claims that the greatest threat facing minority families is climate change. Not drugs, teen
pregnancy, absent fathers, gangs, murders, AIDS, frightening school dropout rates, or skyrocketing energy and food
prices. Climate change.
“Our very health and economic well-being are at stake,” claims the President of the Joint Center for Political and Economic
Studies. The Center has teamed up with the Natural Resource Defense Council and other extreme environmentalist groups
to convince minorities that “costly” global warming will have “disproportionate impacts” on minorities.
Temperatures are higher in cities, they argue, due to the “urban heat island effect” – and air-conditioning use among black
families is half the rate for white Americans. Therefore, global warming will cause more heat-related deaths among minority
families, they claim.
This attempt to justify anti-energy policies by promoting climate change hysteria is embarrassing nonsense.
The disparity in heat-related deaths has nothing to do with climate change, and everything to do with the inability of poor
families to afford air-conditioning and electricity. The disparity in cold-related deaths is even more striking, and likewise
due to energy affordability.
Lock up our energy, take away fossil fuel and nuclear power, impose cap-and-trade policies – and you drive prices even
higher. You make heat and electricity less affordable. You force more people to depend on unreliable, nonexistent wind
power. You force more to choose between heating and eating. You cause more to die.
But radical Greens want to reduce access to the fuels that produce 93% of our energy. They want to increase energy costs.
They call this “energy conservation.” I call it “economic enslavement” – and worse.
Moreover, global temperatures have barely risen for 10 years, even as global CO2 levels soared. Many experts say we are
heading for a period of falling temperatures, because of declining solar intensity. Over 31,000 scientists say there is no
credible evidence that carbon dioxide emissions cause climate change, much less global warming disasters. And China and
India are not about to end their fossil fuel use.
Punishing poor families in the name of speculative climate chaos is insane.
We need to bring sanity and compassion back to our energy policies. Drill, mine, and use American energy. And demand
that Speaker Pelosi and Senator Harry Reid end their war on poor families, and have a real debate and vote on our energy
and economic future.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Political Environmentalism Versus Human Progress & Prosperity:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
The Earth's Natural History, Global Climate Changes,
& the Future of Human Life & Civilization on the Planet:
Science, Ideology, & Public Policy
Political Economy -- Philosophies, Systems, & Public Policies:
Government, the Economy, & Economic Prosperity
The American Political & Cultural Left:
Liberals, Statists, Socialists, & Other Leftists
American Politics & Political Competition:
Elections, PACs, & Political Parties
American Government & the U.S. Presidency:
Presidential Politics & National Leadership
The American Political System:
Politics & Government in the U.S.A.
Niger Innis is national spokesman for the Congress of Racial Equality (www.CORE-online.org) and Co-Chairman of the
national “Stop the War on the Poor” campaign (www.StopWarOnPoor.org)
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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,
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Conservative Government Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity