President Bush’s newly released national energy plan offers us more of what already threatens this country.
No, I am not talking about the president’s plans to allow oil drilling in Alaska, or to build more gas pipelines, or to license more nuclear power plants. All of these proposals are beneficial — and desperately needed. The problem is that all of these pro-energy initiatives are undercut by the administration’s ideological cave-in to the anti-energy philosophy of environmentalism.
The Bush administration’s report on the nation’s energy supply claims that “A fundamental imbalance between supply and demand defines our nation’s energy crisis.” That is a superficial, evasive description. What we face is an artificially restricted supply of energy — a supply choked off by green activists.
Everyone knows the environmentalist agenda: they are unalterably opposed to any use of nuclear power, any new pipelines or refineries, any large-scale method of generating power. The administration’s energy report documents the results. Despite a growing economy, which requires more energy to run, power production has remained virtually flat for the past decade. No new nuclear reactors have been approved for almost 25 years. Domestic oil production has actually (SET ITAL) dropped (END ITAL) since 1970. No major new refineries have been built in decades — and there are now fewer refineries in the United States than there were 20 years ago.
What we are facing is not a sudden cut-off of energy from abroad, as in the 1970s, but something more insidious: a slow strangulation from within, as the environmentalists shut down the nation’s energy infrastructure, plant by plant, fuel by fuel. It is a self-made, deliberately manufactured energy crisis.
There is no other reason for the energy crunch — no natural shortage of coal, oil, or natural gas, and certainly no shortage of uranium. If we want abundant energy, the solution is simple. Stand up to the greens, lift the environmental controls, and allow private businesses to do what they haven’t been allowed to do in decades: build more power plants and refineries.
But this would not require a “national energy policy” — or rather, it would require the simple policy of non-interference with energy production.
What does the Bush report suggest? Let’s look at its proposal for allowing oil production in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Bush plan would open “a small fraction” of ANWR to “environmentally regulated” oil drilling. As an apology for this sinful transgression, Bush would “earmark $1.2 billion … from … leasing of ANWR to fund research into … wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal” power — all of them, for the moment, considered environmentally correct power sources. Other ANWR royalties would be earmarked for land conservation.
This is the basic pattern of the president’s plan. For every provision that promises faster approval of power plants and pipelines, there is another provision providing more federal support — including billions of dollars in subsidies and tax credits — for the dogmas of environmentalism: conservation, “alternative” energy, and the protection of “pristine” wilderness. More important, all of these goals are treated as if they are unquestionable — and they set the terms under which power production must be justified.
The overall message of the Bush plan is that we need to allow more energy production — but only so long as we can do it without offending any environmentalists. It is an attempt to scrape out slightly more freedom for energy producers — in exchange for subsidies, regulatory support, and public obeisance to the environmental cause.
The history of environmentalism shows that this is a fatal mistake. The greens don’t just want “clean energy.” They want no energy. Consider their attitude toward just two kinds of power: nuclear and hydroelectric. Both produce zero emissions — no smoke, no smog, not even carbon dioxide. Yet the greens regard nuclear power with a superstitious hatred, and they made it their first victim. Their newest victim is hydroelectric. Once touted as an environmentally correct source of “alternative” energy, dams are now condemned for interfering with fish spawning and the “free flow” of rivers. This attack has gained so much momentum that the Bush plan has to promise expedited permit renewal for existing dams — to protect them against environmentalist demands to breach the dams.
The environmentalists have a very clear “national energy policy.” They are anti-energy. For more than a decade, their philosophy has strangled energy production — and if they could, they would return us all to the Dark Ages. If President Bush wants to reverse this trend and adopt a truly pro-energy policy, he must stop paying lip-service to this anti-industrial creed.
