THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume VII, Issue # 24, January 29, 2005
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THWARTING AMERICA'S ENERGY NEEDS
By Alan Caruba
ONE THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES AFFECTING THE AMERICAN NATION: PROVIDING ENERGY FOR OUR CURRENT &
FUTURE NEEDS -- A LOOK AT THE AGENDA OF THE RADICAL ENVIRONMENTALISTS, WHO REMAIN DEVOTED TO BLOCKING
ACCESS TO & THWARTING PRODUCTION & DISTRIBUTION OF ENERGY FOR AMERICA'S NEEDS
FULL STORY:
Well, of course you want the entire shoreline of the East and West Coast to be filled with windmills producing insignificant amounts
of energy. Nothing better than to head for the beaches of New Jersey or California and look out on the inspiring vista of wall-to-wall
windmills. And let’s not stop there. Kansas could be turned into a huge windfarm to keep the streetlights on in theTopeka area.
Then there’s the promise of hydrogen as a seemingly endless form of energy for our cars and other vehicles. Never mind the billions
it would require to reproduce the existing network of gas stations across the nation or the fact that it would cost a lot of money and
take a lot of energy just to split off that hydrogen molecule for a drive to grandma’s house.
Surely the United States government is on top of all of this. Anyone remember the Bush Energy Plan? Well, maybe not. The
environmentalists — Greens — got in a lather over that, going to the courts to demand to know who participated in helping to
develop it. It has been held up in the U.S. Senate for the last four years. Far too many Senators and others in Congress actively
thwart any effort to insure America can become energy self-sufficient or at least not totally dependent on the Middle East and
elsewhere. Meanwhile, the competition for energy sources will heat up, as nations such as China and India become increasingly
industrialized.
Ben Lieberman, Director of Air Quality Policy with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, thinks the U.S.A. actually has an anti-energy
policy. He points to the billions spent on Green “alternative energy” research on things like wind, solar, and biomass energy, as
opposed to the rather simple idea of drilling for the oil we know exists in Alaska; estimated to be as high as 16 billion barrels,
according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
And, surely, the world is running out of oil, right? Wrong! The world has plenty of oil, enough says the U.S. Geological Survey to
last for at least the next several hundred years or longer. Worldwide, there are 3,000 billion barrels of crude oil reserves. In its
“World Petroleum Assessment 2000” report, the global reserves of crude oil were estimated to be some 3,000 billion barrels.
A really good reason to annex Canada, for example, would be recent reports that its oil reserves now total more than 180 billion
barrels, most of which would be found in economically recoverable oil-tar sand deposits. By contrast, Saudi Arabia’s reserves are
estimated at 264 billion barrels. US oil-shale reserves are estimated to be sufficient to provide a hundred percent of our crude oil
consumption at current rates for more than 200 years! The big IF is whether government will get out of the way and let energy
producers get at it and refine it and sell it to us.
Another energy source of enormous use and value is natural gas. The U.S.A. currently consumes 21.5 trillion cubic feet per year,
with approximately half of that used for industrial purposes. Right now, natural gas is the source of 33% of our total energy
consumption. We surely must be busy building pipelines and new facilities for the storage of liquid natural gas, right? Wrong!
The decline in the rate of gas wells has been steadily increasing for more than a decade since 1986. Demand, however, has been
increasing since 1986. You don’t have to be an economist to know this means higher prices. Alex Epstein, a writer for the Ayn
Rand Institute, recently noted:
“Fortunately, there is a proven technology that could enable Americans to access plentiful
natural gas stores from overseas: Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).”
However, bowing to pressure from the Greens, the building of storage facilities for LNG has met stiff resistance. The reason
given is “safety”, but this is yet another subterfuge in the Green campaign against every form of energy use in America.
According to Epstein, “Countries like Japan use LNG accident-free to get nearly all of their natural gas.”
Not surprisingly, as Richard G. Green, Senior Vice President of LaRoche Petroleum Consultants, Dallas, Texas, has pointed out,
“Continuous litigation by environmental activists has effectively removed large gas productive portions of the Western United
States and offshore from exploitation and reduced potential natural gas production.” The result is that coal remains the source of
nearly half of all electricity generation and you can bet that the Greens continue to militate against the use coal as well.
Need it be said that the Greens don’t like nuclear energy? In October, my friend and energy guru, David Wojick, noted:
“A new University of Chicago study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, reports that
future nuclear plants in the United States can be competitive with either natural gas or coal. (The)
expansion of nuclear power in the United States is a major objective of the Administration’s
National Energy Policy.”
Currently, nuclear power supplies 20% of the nation’s electric power energy mix, the second only to coal. The problem is that
people haven’t a clue as to how and where their electricity comes from when they turn on a light, a television set, an air
conditioner, or anything else. There are 103 U.S. commercial nuclear power plants, operating at 64 sites in 31 states. All have met
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s October 29, 2004, deadline for implementing more stringent security measures. The cost of
this 9-11 measure was in excess of $1 billion since 2001.
We Americans keep being thwarted by the Greens every time a nuclear plant is recommended to meet our growing energy needs,
but in nations such as China, India, South Africa and others, nuclear fission is being embraced with great enthusiasm. As of late
2004, at least 27 nuclear power plants are being built worldwide, with more on order.
There is a reason we focus on coal, natural gas, and oil as sources of energy. It is because Americans and others around the
world are going to be using a lot more of these energy sources — after they have been refined, enriched, and otherwise
transformed into electricity — in the years ahead. It is more than a question of population. It is because we are finding ever more
ingenious ways to use energy to improve our lives. And that is a good thing!
Unless Congress gets serious about our nation’s energy needs, Americans are going to be paying a lot more for it with every
passing year by virtue of nothing more than the law of supply and demand. Those who continually thwart access to the raw
sources of energy are the enemies of everyone else who needs it.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Policy Issues Relating to Energy, Environment,
& Natural Resources
Alan Caruba is a veteran business and science writer, a Public Relations Counselor, Communications Director of the American Policy Center,
and Founder of the National Anxiety Center, a clearinghouse for information about media-driven scare campaigns. Caruba writes a weekly
column, "Warning Signs," posted on the Internet website of the National Anxiety Center
(www.anxietycenter.com). A compilation of his past columns, entitled Warning Signs, is published by Merril Press. In addition
to Warning Signs, Caruba is the author of A Pocket Guide to Militant Islam and The United Nations vs. the United States,
both of which are available from the National Anxiety Center, 28 West Third Street, Apartment 1321, South Orange, New Jersey, 07079.
© Alan Caruba 2005
Published with Permission of Alan Caruba
ACaruba@AOL.Com
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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