America’s energy policy is like a man determined to die of starvation while sitting with his family at Thanksgiving dinner.
It’s common knowledge that over the last half-century the U.S. has systematically degraded domestic energy production capabilities, while simultaneously increasing economic dependence on foreign leaders whose loyalties are uncertain at best. But because American politics take place outside the realm of reality, we continue to send trillions of dollars abroad to fund hostile regimes while sitting atop what may be the largest energy reserves in the world.
So it was with a mixture of horror and amusement that I read a recent report claiming Middle East nations are plotting with Russia and China to abandon the dollar in pricing oil. Though the report was later denied (with caveats), it is really only a matter of time before the relentless havoc being wreaked by our federal government on the dollar forces other economies to seek shelter in a different currency. Which will then translate to higher oil prices at home and send the cost of energy in America skyrocketing.
Unless the Senate adopts Cap and Tax legislation first. Then a global shift away from the dollar will only increase domestic economic suffering the Obama administration will have already caused.
And what about a war brewing in the Middle East between Iran and Israel? Depending on who fires first, the conflict could engulf the entire region, and if someone sets off a nuke at any point, all bets on energy prices (and everything else) are off.
Any one of these scenarios, or some combination of all three, is entirely plausible in the near future and could create a severe energy (and economic) crisis in this country, and around the world.
No amount of self-righteous insistence or federal subsidies from the Left can change the fact that oil is the lifeblood of the global economy, and will remain so long after “green collar” jobs have been exposed for the boondoggle they are. But any way you look at it, the price of running that global economy seems likely to go very high, very soon.
Yet, believe it or not, the precarious position in which we find ourselves today is not solely the fault of liberals or the extreme environmentalist set. Ironically, eight years ago, it was a Republican president enjoying 90 percent job approval ratings who blew a chance to avert this coming disaster.
That moment was after 9/11, when George W. Bush could have passed literally anything.
Is there any doubt that a president who rammed a bill through Congress as constitutionally abhorrent as the PATRIOT Act and convinced Hillary Clinton to support a shooting war in the Middle East could have had anything he wanted?
So what if, instead of staging the costly and polarizing invasion of Iraq, President Bush had instead chosen to repeal the federal laws that have hamstrung domestic energy production for the last thirty years, and which helped to create the bin Ladin family fortune? What if he had simply stopped funding our nation’s enemies with petrodollars, and had turned the U.S. into an energy exporter at the same time?
It is easy to imagine that the price of oil would have tumbled, thousands of American soldiers would still be alive, and we would never have had to learn the names Putin, Chavez, or Ahmadinejad.
Unfortunately, as we know, President Bush chose another route and his greatest opportunity was lost. Thanks to a lack of strategic vision or political will, today we are more vulnerable than we have ever been.
There is little doubt that a new energy crisis is coming; only its shape and timing remain to be seen. The question now is this: Will it be before or after we suffer sustained economic turmoil that Americans get off their knees and stop begging the world to sell us energy we already have?
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