The breathtaking escalation of gasoline prices (and everything else in the economy that they affect) is making everybody angry and fearful. But to whom should our anger be directed for causing this mess? George Bush? Hugo Chavez? Henry Ford?No, not really. Better still to direct one's frustration to Rachel Carson. Christopher Stone. Al Gore.
That's right. The heaviest blame for the economic devastation caused by rising oil prices goes to the irrational extremism of the modern "green movement" prohibiting as it does America's solving the crisis with her own resources.
Check out Peter Bronson's piercing column in today's Cincinnati Enquirer for the relevant, inescapable truths related to this important matter.
...Rising world demand from China, India and other emerging economies drives up world oil prices. About two-thirds of our oil is imported, and 20 percent comes from the Persian Gulf (less than I thought).
But what if we had our own Iraq-sized supply that we haven't even touched yet?
We do. According to the U.S. Geological Survey and American Petroleum Institute, we have at least 112 billion barrels of undrilled oil - "enough to produce gasoline for 60 million cars and fuel oil for 25 million homes for 60 years." By comparison, Iraq has 115 billion barrels and Venezuela 80 billion.
At least 16 billion barrels of our oil is in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Drilling would only touch 8 percent of 17 million acres - but environmentalists say it's off-limits. Half of our untapped oil is offshore, mainly on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts - blocked by environmental fears about spills. But since 1980, offshore platforms have pumped 5 billion barrels of oil with a spill rate of 0.001 percent. "Natural seeps introduce as much as 150 to 175 times more oil into U.S. marine waters than offshore oil development," says API. During Hurricane Katrina, more than 3,000 oil platforms were in the path of winds as high as 200 mph, with no big spills.
Each barrel of oil pumped at home replaces a barrel of high-cost imported oil. But we're not supposed to get our lands dirty by pumping our own. We knew five years ago that our refineries can't keep up with demand even at full capacity. But a new refinery hasn't been built since 1976, and the number in service has been shrinking. New ones are blocked by environmentalists, EPA regulations and Not-in-my-Backyard protests...
And for all their hysteria about global warming, environmentalists have also blocked the best alternative to coal and oil: pollution free, zero-carbon nuclear power that has safely generated 80 percent of the electricity in France for 25 years.
William Tucker, author of "Terrestrial Energy: How a Nuclear-Solar Alliance Can Save the Planet," says a typical coal-fired plant burns a ton of coal for each minute of electricity, releasing three tons of carbon dioxide.
Nuclear power requires new fuel rods every two years. "There is no exhaust, no carbon emissions, no sulfur sludge to be carted away hourly and heaped into vast dumps," Tucker said at Hillsdale College in Michigan. "There is no air pollution, no water pollution and no ground pollution."
But nuclear power is taboo because of exaggerated fears spread by environmentalists....
America will never be "green" enough, either, until gas is $25 a gallon. We should ignore the eco-stupidity and start pumping it ourselves.
