Pardon me for feeling a tad vindicated. Since the release of my latest book just two months ago, a few radio hosts, and Sean Hannity on TV, have raised their rhetorical eyebrows at the subtitle of Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America. “Bankrupt America? C’mon”, they say. Well.
It is now known to those who follow the issue that Obama’s express model for his (continued) vow to centrally plan a “green economy” is bankrupting Spain, the country he hailed eight times for its vision. And Spain has acknowledged it.
Ratifying this assessment were Obama’s pleas to that country to stop the gusher of public spending for fear of Spain becoming the next Greece and bringing us down ultimately in the process. Never mind that he is pumping the gas here while imploring others to pump the brakes. After all, there’s a “fundamental transformation” to put in place here. Undoing which will, as he knows, be next to impossible, even if crisis causes a lessening of the wealth transfers on occasion.
Then there are the other elements of what he has in plan for you, as detailed in Power Grab: he is not anti-offshore drilling, he is anti-domestic energy production. Immediately upon entering office he sealed off millions of acres from domestic energy production in a breathtaking, well, power grab, even canceling leases already entered.
So that pap in the Oval Office speech last Tuesday about us being in deep water, literally and figuratively, because we are running out of place to find energy onshore and in shallow water was disgraceful.
That he felt compelled to trot out the trope about having only a few percent of the world’s “proven reserves” only further serves to buttress this harsh take: yes, that’s what happens when you make it unlawful for twenty-five years to look for the stuff by imposing moratoria on exploration in almost every place the geologists expect it would be. But as I detail in the book, we also sit atop the world’s largest likely energy resources. But we have placed it nearly all off limits, including the recent power grab of a moratorium on all offshore drilling.
The Left have driven us into deep water and Obama is keeping us there, only to now seek to shut even that off. So, further affirming my thesis is the language of today’s opinion out of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana enjoining Obama from implementing his sledgehammer response, a devastating moratorium on all deepwater drilling in response to what he otherwise insists was a reckless BP. To wit:
The effect on employment, jobs, loss of domestic energy supplies caused by the moratorium as the plaintiffs (and other suppliers, and the rigs themselves) lose business, and the movement of the rigs to other sites around the world will clearly ripple throughout the economy in this region…
An invalid agency decision to suspend drilling of wells in depths of over 500 feet simply cannot justify the immeasurable effect on the plaintiffs, the local economy, the Gulf region, and the critical present-day aspect of the availability of domestic energy in this country.
The court also found that the Obama administration had engaged in misleading activities to try and support what the court found to be wholly unsupported, such deception notwithstanding.
Yes. Obama’s green policies will steal your freedom and bankrupt America. Ask the poor folks in the Gulf suffering under his crisis-capitalization, after speaking to the folks who have had leases pulled out from under them in Utah, and elsewhere feeling his War on the West. Those are places where he’s just getting started. Or, ask judge Martin Feldman.
Christopher C. Horner serves as a Senior Fellow at CEI.