Energy: What Bush Can Do
Fareed Zakaria argues that the United States is ’seriously behind the rest of the industrial world’ when it comes to energy. In his latest column he tries to explain what US President George W. Bush can do to catch up.
The idea that government should “stay out” is meaningless. It is in knee-deep already; energy is a highly regulated industry. In fact, it’s notable that we have low productivity and runaway inflation in two crucial areas these days—food and fuel. Both have been nationalized, protected or subsidized by governments around the world for decades. A host of regulatory and legal barriers make renewable and small-scale energy production less attractive, profitable and manageable than it could be. But Krupp and Horn focus on the central policy change that the United States needs to make—enacting a cap on carbon. America is the only developed country that does not put a price on carbon.
Imagine if President Bush were to announce at the G-8 summit that the United States would institute a cap on emissions. We would instantly have the world’s largest carbon market and it would, instantly, change the price of clean energy. It would unleash a tsunami of economic activity in renewables that could, over time, give American productivity the next big boost it needs. It would, of course, also quickly send a signal to the market about future demand for oil, which would in turn affect the price.
In other words; Zakaria does not have a clear view of what Bush should do. His opinion seems to be that Bush should do something. And that something is putting a cap on emissions.
That’s a nice start, perhaps, but what Bush should and could do much more. Offshore drilling, nuclear power, coming up with a way to promote clean energy, etc. Bush should’ve dealt with this a long time ago already.
However, his term is almost up. It will only be a 6 months more before he’s replaced by someone else. There is, frankly, not much Bush can do right now. He can only create conditions for the next president to make important moves. He, then, has to prepare his country for the plans of the next US president.
And that’s problematic. After all, who is going to be America’s next president? No one knows. We may guess, but we do not know. And to point out that Obama and McCain would have different energy policies is to point out the obvious.
As such, there’s simply not much Bush can do. At least not with regards to energy.
No, the question should not be what Bush can do, it’s what the next president can do.
If Obama could get his country to support Drilling for 10 years along with their tree hugging mentality on the rest he would win a 90-10 land slide election. In fact no one might even vote for McCain at all.
If John McCain hits the democrats hard who are wedded to tree huggers because they are convinced that the world will burn up with global warming next year then McCain might actually have a shot at pulling this out.
Both candidates are very slow to realize that Global Oil prices are the NUMBER ONE danger to the world right now. NOT terrorism, not Iraq, not anything. OIL.
Nearly everything we make uses oil or its byproducts. That is why food prices are skyrocketing along with oil. The fact that 2 years ago I spent 250 a month on gasoline and today Im spending close to 1000 a month on gasoline because of my job is why the housing industry is melting down.
The politicians want to try and blame Bush for the economy but its not his fault. The fault is 40 years of pathetic and leaderless leadership in the House, Senate and presidency.
Congress has fiddled. America is burning and until we get a handle on this then I am afraid that this country can adopt none of Obama’s social programs without continuing the march to fiscal madness started under LBJ and the Vietnam war and continued as a matter of policy by every president since. Yes even the national debt under Bill Clinton increased by almost 2 trillion dollars in his 8 years………..look it up.
Let me explain what is going on with the oil industry so you can understand where Im coming from on this agenda of mine. The DNC talking points on drilling is many and varied but one of the most popular talking points is that Bush’s own Energy Propaganda suggests that drilling will do no good.
The GOP is in bed with the oil companies. AS is the Democrats as well, but both for very different reasons. Its not Obama’s fault and its not the Democrats and its not the GOP’s fault. The fact of the matter is that because this deception has been going on for so long that people have forgotten just what is going on and why.
The facts are simple. The oil companies really dont want to drill for three very important reasons. There are nuances to the following but this is the gist of things as they stand now.
1. We cant refine the oil we have now and are in fact IMPORTING gasoline as we speak.
2. Oil exploration is extremely expensive and unless the current fields which are producing enough oil to ensure record profits begin to decline then their is no incentive for them to spend billions exploring and drilling only to increase the production and reduce the price of oil. What would you rather do………make 10 hats and sell them for a dollar and work all day or make 1 hat….sell it for 10 dollars and take the rest of the day off?
3. In the 70’s and 80’s some of my family flew jets, owned rather large boats in the gulf of Mexico for one very important reason. They were wild cat drillers who found oil for companies who then sold the oil for a rather substantial profit. Big oil(opec and our big oil companies) drove the price of oil to 10 dollars a BBL and ran all this competition out of business. Once the competition was gone then the price of oil began a slow and steady climb towards profitablity. Right now their are plenty of wildcat’ers who would love to drill for oil and sell it at 100 dollars a bbl but they cannot because the leases to any land that is of any consequence is a bidding war with Exxon and their billions of dollars.
The fact is that once the government started putting the lands with oil up to the highest bidder then the wildcat’er……..the heart and soul of the oil industry was destined to go bust because My family could not bid 26 million dollars on a parcel of land that might or might not have oil on it. Exxon and Shell could………end of story.
Congress is duplicit in this. It has been a government agreement by both parties to shore up oil prices and attempt to curb emmissions so that both parties can appease their bases. To do this they needed to control oil and the government has given big oil what they want……….a monopoly.
Democrats get less oil drilling and emmission controls. GOP gets big oil company profits and they all get big pay checks from the oil lobby each year. What a program. The problem is that the US is fixing to melt down from an unforseen consequence of this………CHINA AND INDIA suddenly exploding onto the market and eating up excess oil.
Neither side wants to give up their big fat checks and their comfortable talking points that they have convinced the country is the truth.