printIs the slavish NEWSWEEK being unfaithful to the Celestial One and his gaseous energy policies? Robert J. Samuelson has belatedly and anemically concluded that “the Obama administration is biased against the oil and natural-gas industries.” Dah! You know, a watered down version of the stuff we have been writing about for years (with some important distinction, naturally):
“Contrary to popular wisdom, the United States still has huge oil and natural-gas resources. The outer continental shelf (OCS), including parts that have been off limits to drilling since the early 1980s, may contain much natural gas and 86 billion barrels of oil, about four times today’s “proven” U.S. reserves. The U.S. Geological Survey recently estimated that the Bakken Formation in North Dakota and Montana may hold 3.65 billion barrels, about 22 times a 1995 estimate. And then there’s upwards of 2 trillion barrels of oil shale, concentrated in Colorado. If 800 billion barrels were recoverable, that’s triple Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves….
The president is lauded as a great educator; in this case, he provided much miseducation. He implied that there’s a choice between promoting renewables and relying on oil. Actually, the two are mostly disconnected. Wind and solar mainly produce electricity. About 70 percent of our oil goes for transportation (cars, trucks, planes); almost none—about 1.5 percent—generates electricity. So expanding wind and solar won’t displace much oil, though there might be some small effect on natural gas for heating. Someday, electric cars may change this. But at best, that’s decades away.
For now, the only ways to reduce oil imports are to use less or produce more. Obama has paid some attention to the first with higher fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles. But his administration is undermining the second. At the Department of the Interior, which oversees public lands and the OCS, Secretary Ken Salazar has taken steps that dampen exploration and development: canceled 77 leases in Utah because they were too close to national parkland, extended a comment period for OCS exploration to evaluate possible environmental effects and signaled a more cautious policy toward shale for similar reasons.”
Read “The Bias Against Oil and Gas.”
Update: “According to the analysis … conducted at The Heritage Foundation … the higher energy costs kick in as soon as the bill’s provisions take effect in 2012. For a household of four, energy costs go up $436 that year, and they eventually reach $1,241 in 2035 and average $829 annually over that span. Electricity costs go up 90 percent by 2035, gasoline by 58 percent, and natural gas by 55 percent by 2035. The cumulative higher energy costs for a family of four by then will be nearly $20,000.
But direct energy costs are only part of the consumer impact. Nearly everything goes up, since higher energy costs raise production costs. If you look at the total cost of Waxman-Markey, it works out to an average of $2,979 annually from 2012-2035 for a household of four. By 2035 alone, the total cost is over $4,600.
…Beyond the cost impact on individuals and households, Waxman-Markey also affects employment, and especially employment in the manufacturing sector. We estimate job losses averaging 1,145,000 at any given time from 2012-2035.
Overall, Waxman-Markey reduces gross domestic product by an average of $393 billion annually between 2012 and 2035, and cumulatively by $9.4 trillion. In other words, the nation will be $9.4 trillion poorer with Waxman-Markey than without it.”
Even ignoring the constitutional issues (which I generally do NOT do), the net effects of the Obammunistic policies in energy, environment, and medical care are to: (a) make things worse by creating and rationing scarcity AND
(b) increase government power and dependency upon that governmental power.
Reliance on wind energy: Those dang windmills will require expensive maintenance. But that is just fine, I suppose, because of all the new maintenance “jobs” it will result in.
Idiots; life is not a “make work” proposition.
Is the environmental policy all part of his health cost reduction plan?
Examples of what sort of “cost containment” actions will be taken under Obama Care can be seen in Oregon.
Not long after voters legalized assisted suicide, the state added it as an acceptable treatment option for cancer. Patients deemed to be too expensive to treat are sent letters saying that chemo is denied but assisted suicide will be paid for. Remember the case of Barbara Wagner?
Of course, the proponents of “right to die” laws said this would never happen. And then it did. And then Washington legalized assisted suicide.
I predict that a federal “right to die” law will be snuck in as an amendment and then followed by denial of any treatment for illnesses that have a “low cure rate.” Killing one’s self will become the new patriotism.
Add to all of this the push for smaller, lighter and less safe cars and you have yet another element in the plan to reduce health care expenses. Crash fatalities cost less to treat than crash survivors. The nuts is congress are even trying to ram through mandates for 70MPG. Of course, this will kill even more people since families will have to take two cars and a trailer to go anywhere. Or 4 scooters.
They must understand that if they mandate cars too small for a family that families are forced to buy trucks. That’s what happened when CAFÉ killed the station wagon. And taking two cars that get 50MPG each is the same net MPG of taking one SUV that get 25.
Taking two Dumb cars that get 40MPH to fit my kids and a small amount of stuff is the same as taking my 1999 Cherokee with 175K miles that still gets 20MPG even loaded with 500 pounds of stuff plus the wife and two kids.
So they must therefore want to increase fatalities to decrease health care costs. It is the only logical explanation.