Who Doesn’t Want Cheap Energy? Plenty of Folks.
Victor David Hanson muses and I have a bit of an answer.
With the world’s largest reserves of coal, after creating the nuclear power industry ex nihilo, and with billions of oil still under our soil and waters, it makes no sense to produce less energy while blaming and taxing those who produce what we have, rather than drilling, digging, and saving, as we find ways to transition to the alternate energies.
It makes no sense if the goal is affordable, reliable fuel.
On the other hand, that’s not necessarily the goal of the folks protesting new drilling or using our own coal more or building more nuclear power plants. If you take their goals into account, it makes perfect sense.
For instance, if what you really want is a return to a smaller society that uses less energy, then the strategy is sound. If shrinking the population of the United States by a few million is something you’d love to see happen, then making energy as expensive as possible is a good thing. If you’re more interested in extracting billions of dollars in new taxes to line your pockets and the pockets of you favored few, then what do you care about how those new taxes affect oil companies of the regular men and women who own them? If you are more incensed by a glimpse of a distant cooling tower or a windmill fan from your backyard porch than you are the enrichment of Islamist butchers, South American dictators, and a Russian tyrant in the making, then the status quo is just fine and dandy.
All of those folks are key constituents of the leftist coalition: overpopulation fetishists, greedy and imperial politicians, rich snobs in Massachusetts, environmental alarmists, and well-connected businesses looking to make a quick and quiet fortune all the while wringing their hands over the newest looming ecological disaster (and in Al Gore’s case, they’re all rolled up into one!).
It makes you wonder whose side they’re on.
Other Posts of Interest:
- The New Menace: Global Warming Will Give You HIV
- Please Stop the Biofuel Idiocy.
- Killing Poor People in the Name of Climate Change
Category: Oh the Climate, It is A-Changin', Thinking About Energy
Yet these same folks are giddy about opening our borders to hordes of immigrants. The inconsistency of liberals is a never ending source of bewilderment.