The Gop Energy Raid

FOR YEARS the liberals have been telling us that we needed to end our addiction to oil. We needed to do this because energy use harmed the environment. It paved over the nation. It released greenhouse gases. Anyway, there was a finite supply of fossil fuels, and pretty soon we would hit the “peak oil” moment and oil production would go into irreversible decline. And we needed a national energy plan to prepare for a future of solar power, wind power, bio-fuels, and renewables.

All along, conservatives have been saying that liberals had it all wrong. Energy wasn’t a question of fixed or finite anything, it was an expression of human ingenuity. We could keep using oil—or maybe tar sands or oil shale—for centuries into the future. Or we could build nuclear plants. Or we could develop coal. Sure, we said, the planet is heating up—for now—but we don’t know enough about the future to start making wrenching changes in energy use.

By and large the American people have been going along with the liberals on this, and it is not hard to see why. If you get your information from the TV news or from newspapers and magazines they all agree with the liberal line.

Even as recently as last weekend, Sen. Barack Obama the uniter was peddling the liberal line, saying:

We can’t drill our way out of the problem.

You see, even if we did drill, it wouldn’t make much difference, and then we have to ask ourselves “if is worth it for us to damage the environment permanently” and so on.

Of course, this sort of black-and-white thinking is exactly what Democrats are always accusing the Republicans of doing.

But the problem is that energy and environmental policy involve predictions about the future. That means that they are uncertain. That means that they are almost certainly wrong. Suppose you develop an national energy plan. Suppose it was the most brilliant energy plan imaginable. One thing would be for sure. The day after it was announced, it would be out-of-date.

How do we deal with the future in society? We make bets on the future. Entrepreneurs and investors start new companies to develop new technology. Existing companies make decisions about whether to open a mine, or drill for oil, or build a power plant. Maybe they are right. Then they will make a lot of money. Maybe they are wrong. Then they will lose a lot of money. That is what the capitalist system is all about.

But conservatives don’t get a chance to talk to the American people about this until gas shoots up above $4.00 a gallon. Then all of a sudden when we say “Drill,” the American people agree with us and say “Yeah!”.

There is no use getting resentful about this. The fact is that liberals own the culture. They get to control pretty well what is said on the air and in print. But sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes they look like they don’t know what they are talking about, like right now when they seem to be expecting the working class and the poor to suck it in so liberals can feel good about saving the planet. That is the moment when conservatives can execute a daring raid into liberal territory shouting “Drill, Drill, Drill!”

And that is what President Bush did yesterday when he called for Congress to end the ban on drilling in Alaska and on the outer continental shelf.

So maybe we will be able to stampede the Democrats into letting the evil oil companies do what they want to do, the only thing they know how to do: Drill. For. Oil.

Then we can go back to global warming, polar bear extinction, and solar and wind power, and all the other silly stuff that liberals go on about all the time.

I tell you. This ain’t rocket science.

Sphere: Related Content |

Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

TAGS

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

mysql close 0