Just Say No

Ask Palestinians what you get for always saying no to everything; nothing. Yet that is exactly what environmental extremists have been doing for the past quarter century or so. They’ve said no and thrown up disinformation and political roadblocks to every potential source of US energy independence, and to the only viable source of carbon free electricity. Now it’s too late. They’ve let things get out of hand. I predict they will shortly be run over by a steam roller of public outrage. The battle is joined in earnest, people are beginning to pay close attention, and they are not long going to listen to the voices of people who are out to abolish the internal combustion engine, who would see an end to the industrial revolution, and who are apparently willing to see much of the world reduced to a subsistence existence in the process. Ordinary people are not going to sit still for ruinous fuel prices when there are numerous alternatives at hand.

Democrats have been listening to this drivel for so long they don’t even see the problem with gasoline at $4 per gallon. Barack Obama sees no controversy in it. He just would have preferred a more gradual rise. He didn’t see anything controversial about his church either and if he didn’t see the Reverend Wright debacle coming he isn’t going to know what hit him when people realize what he meant. He meant that a prohibitively high fuel price is a good thing because it will force people away from gas guzzlers. He apparently doesn’t realize it isn’t just Humvee owners who are affected. Everybody is affected and most of us aren’t driving Humvees. Even those who would consider trading their SUV in for a Prius have seen the value of the old car drop like a rock and the price of a hybrid skyrocket. There are a lot of people who can’t afford that.

It isn’t as though we can all just cut back on our driving. Many of us depend on our vehicles for a livelihood. More people will take public transportation but the infrastructure isn’t there to support a sudden large increase in ridership. What about all the people who have no alternative? We can’t all move closer to work. The housing isn’t there. What about taxi drivers, truck drivers, deliverymen, and all the other commercial vehicle operators? Do they just jack up their prices? They may be out of business.

Speaking of higher prices, people haven’t thought this through despite warnings from food riots around the world. There’ve been no riots here, not yet, but people are cutting back on food budgets. They’re eating out less often and eating less healthy. They’re cutting back on vacation plans too. People who never used to budget for the gasoline on a family outing are doing the numbers now. That may be good news for gasoline consumption but the travel industry is looking at a pretty bleak season. The ripple effect is just getting started.

Most of us want to be environmentally responsible but to ignore the supply side of our transportation needs is insanity. We are the only oil producing nation in the world that severely restricts new exploration and extraction. We are sitting on reserves of fossil fuels that would last us several centuries if we would just use them. We can and should eventually move away from carbon based fuels but for the foreseeable future there are no realistic alternatives. In pretending that there are the environmental lobby is losing all credibility, and the right to a place at the table as we decide the way forward. It’s a shame. We could have drilled in ANWAR years ago, taken reasonable precautions to avoid harming the caribou, and used the royalties to clean up the Chesapeake, maybe the dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi to boot.