PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
PAtownhall.com
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
Pennsylvania's Marketplace of Ideas
by Chris Freind
Oilman billionaire T. Boone Pickens has taken the moral high road, sounding the alarm that America's security is being severely jeopardized by our dependence on foreign oil. His solution? Invest in wind power through the use of thousands of turbines. Oh, and not coincidentally, his company just so happens to be investing heavily ($12 billion) in wind farms.
"I'm doing it for America," he said. Thank you, Mr. Pickens. You are a true patriot!
Pickens claims his pro-wind comments (and nationwide commercials) have nothing to do with the fact wind power is his company's business. He says that his age (80) and his billionaire status prove otherwise.
Sure.
People who have made billions of dollars don't enter into new businesses out of altruistic desires. They do so to make more money and achieve more business success. Throwing money into "good causes" is called philanthropy. Big difference.
If Pickens had just been honest that he is investing in wind power to make money, his larger message message would carry more credibility. But while Pickens is correct that America must reduce its dependency on foreign oil, he is only half right in his solution, especially since, if everything he advocates came true, we'd still be importing one-third of our oil.
Investing in alternative energy is important, to be sure. Wind, hydro and solar power initiatives are key, as are battery and electric powered vehicles and machinery. But many of these technologies will require trillions of both public and private funding, and realistically, all are many years away from making a substantial difference. They are all longer-term solutions, and, to be honest, are unproven in how effective their widespread use will be.
But the other side of the energy equation is even more critical. Despite some people's claim to the contrary, we live in something called The Real World. We use a tremendous amount of oil, and we will use more and more every year. That won't change, period.
Green solutions are nice, but black gold will always rule the day.
The quicker we recognize that fact and focus our primary energies on domestic oil production, as opposed to pie in the sky feel-good proposals, the better off we will be.
It may come as a surprise, but the United States is the third-largest oil producer in the world. What makes our situation so frustrating is that we are extracting a mere fraction of the petroleum resources located right beneath our feet. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska (ANWR) holds untold billions of barrels, and yet even that figure is dwarfed by the oil and natural gas reserves off both continental coasts and in the Gulf of Mexico. Add to that the mammoth amount of coal at our disposal (which can be converted to energy using new clean-coal technology) and our huge shale deposits, and America could be calling all the shots.
Of course, Congress doesn't see it that way. They won't lift the moratorium on offshore drilling, and they refuse to open up even small tracts in ANWR. But it really doesn't matter how more oil can be captured if you can't refine it efficiently---and we haven't built a new refinery since 1976. A major reason why petroleum prices continue to spike is because of the bottleneck created by our refineries operating at maximum capacity---so much so that most can never be taken offline for any extended period of time because of the constant backlog.
Despite the election year rhetoric from the political parties blaming each other, both have been equally obtuse in recognizing the importance of drilling, even after it was recently revealed that China is drilling right under our nose in the Gulf of Mexico via a licensing agreement with Cuba. Does anyone really think that the opposite would ever happen---that, to its detriment, China would ignore its own resources while allowing its main adversary to access the natural resources at its doorstep? Not a chance.
And ironically, the environmental lobby always vetoes the most efficient "green" energy source, nuclear power. But hypocrisy inside the radical environmental movement is par for the course.
For the people who want short term solutions to skyrocketing pump prices, here's a newsflash: there is none. We got ourselves into this mess by refusing to hold Congress accountable, so we're going to have to wait it out until things get better---and that is at least several years away. But for every day Congress doesn't act to allow more domestic oil production and cut burdensome regulations on energy companies, America's economic and physical security continues to erode.
Never before has the voice of America been so unified on a given political issue, as the vast majority of citizens want increased domestic drilling to begin immediately.
If Congress is given a free pass yet again, maybe we should start learning to speak Arabic.
Chris Freind can be reached at CF@TheBulletin.us
