The 21st century energy crisis - and how to solve it

When a commodity that is the lifeblood of the nation rises to double its usual price in a year, that is cause for alarm, particularly when it was expensive to begin with. I refer, of course, to oil and it is amazing how much nonsense has been spoken about this, usually from the leftists who secretly pine for $10/gallon gasoline to make the Europeans and the animals feel better.

If it were not so tragic, it would be comical to watch Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party's nominee for president, speak of solving this problem by investing in energy ideas that might - a big might - bear fruit in ten years, while refusing to even consider the idea of investing in energy ideas - like drilling for oil that we know is there - that could bear fruit in three years. It's fascinating to watch Democrats howl that drilling for oil won't bring the price down immediately, and then in the same breath propose government subsidies for wind and solar power that are in the research stage at best. Interestingly, President Bush rescinded the executive order that forbade oil exploration in certain coastal areas and northern Alaska and the price of crude oil dropped $15 a barrel in two days. Nobody is quite certain how much his action had to do with that, but Democrats assure us that it was irrelevant.

Now while we need new sources of fossil fuel immediately or as close to it as we can get, the left is right to say that new sources of energy must be harnessed for the future. But the obvious candidate - nuclear power - is anathema to Democrats and even some Republicans are leery. It is as though they are all replaying "The China Syndrome" in their heads when they sleep. (For those of you too young to remember when Jane Fonda was attractive, that was a wholly fictional film from the 1970's about a severe nuclear power plant meltdown. Nothing like it has ever happened in the United States.) Nobody died at Three Mile Island and the terrible events at Chernobyl occurred in the Soviet Union, where people were not of sufficient value to incur the expense of installing safeguards.

Nuclear power has proved itself cheap, reliable, largely non-polluting and extremely safe for over 30 years. While there have been accidents in the past, as there are in all human endeavors of any consequence, the safeguards are so extensive that nobody has ever died or been seriously impacted by radiation as a result of an accident. So, since liberals and Democrats cannot point to any actual facts to bolster their obstructionism toward nuclear power, they resort to the mantra, "the threat if something did happen is so great that we can't take a chance." I expect the average person spending $100 a week on gas for his car would look at the track record of the power plants, then look at the hand-wringers on the left, and opt for energy independence and inexpensive electricity, which would also reduce the cost of fossil fuel due to decreased demand.

Actually, there is significant consensus among ordinary Americans in favor of nuclear power.
The only thing stopping us is the incessant cries from the usual suspects in the "mainstream" media about how horrible the idea is and concomitant obstructionism from Democrats in the House and particularly the Senate. Now, if George W. Bush wanted to really do something significant with his last few months in office, it would not be to try to make peace between the Palestinians and the Jews (fat chance). He would stump for all he is worth, with all the facts he can marshall, perhaps with diagrams the way President Reagan used to do it, to create a groundswell demand for an end to the many roadblocks that the leftists throw in front of anyone who wants to build a nuclear power plant. President Bush should issue any executive order that he can to cut through the years of red tape, the environmental nonsense and the perpetual lawsuits that cause realistic investors to just forget such projects. He must make an unceasing noise about how it is Democrats that have created this energy crisis, it is Democrats who refuse to do anything real to solve it except punish the oil companies, it is Democrats who stand in the way of every practical effort to generate more sources of energy, and more Democrat officeholders at the federal level will mean the problem will never be solved. He needs to let the American people in on the dirty secret - Democrats don't want this problem solved in any real way; they want $10/gallon gasoline because it will make their environmentalist masters happy. If Americans really understood how cravenly and maliciously they have been betrayed by the Democratic Party on this issue, they would hopefully rise up and, in the lovely vernacular of politics, "throw the bums out."

Sigh. George W. Bush, for all his staunchness in the war which the terrorists started against us, is not known as a domestic fighter. Maybe he's afraid of Katie Couric. Whatever it is, he'd better get over it and start to take the Democrats on. If he doesn't, he'll hand his administration over to an Obama royal court, with an unbreakable lock on the Senate so that even filibusters will be closed off, and a 5-4 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court. The Republicans won't even be allowed to speak.

That should give any thinking person nightmares.

JDK