America's Energy Policy: Obstruct Supply, Marvel at Price

In Human Events Online, Mac Johnson has an interesting take on our high energy prices and energy policy.

High energy costs are a mystery. It seems like no matter how much we prohibit domestic energy production, energy prices just keep going up -- and we just keep getting more dependent on foreign sources. There is no law of economics that can explain it, no hypothetical relationship between supply and demand that could predict price. Bill O’Reilly must be right. High prices must be the result of a secret plot by big oil, or perhaps the freemasons.

Well, that’s one explanation. Or we could consider a radical alternative: energy prices are high because Americans object to every possible source of energy known to mankind. Energy, it seems, is icky. Not so icky that we want to use less of it, mind you. But icky enough that we don’t want to make it ourselves. Instead, we fantasize about utopian energy sources of “the future,” and pay through the nose today for limited supplies of foreign energy that originate in the most backward, unstable, and faraway places imaginable.

The article goes on to point out example after example of why each of our viable sources for energy are undesired by the left, and why unrealistic and inefficient energy dreams are favored by the people that hate the viable sources the most.

The article concludes:

Many critics contend that America does not have an energy policy. But that is wrong. Our policy is clear and has been unchanged for thirty years or more: produce little, use lots, and wonder why things never get better.

One too has to consider that the energy supply solutions that are not being pursued today, such as ANWR and offshore drilling, new refineries, construction of nuclear power plants, etc., are all long-term solutions and won't reduce your cost at the pump or your heating bills at home for years after they are finally approved.

This is a catch up game and we are way behind.

Hat tip to Right Nation.