The Obama administration and Congressional Democrats are all about “alternative energy” and finding ways to lessen our dependence on foreign oil. At least they say they are. It’s hard to tell what they really believe because it so infrequently dovetails with their actions, like imposing a six-month moratorium on all off-shore drilling after the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, even though the experts they picked to advise them said no such thing. Their words, if not their deeds, would lead you to believe they would support anything that would help alleviate our national need for oil, so it’s curious that they’ve left biofuels producers hanging on whether or not they’re going to extend tax incentives that promote ethanol in our fuel supply.
First off, I’m no fan of subsidies, farm or otherwise, but they exist. If we are to decrease our need for foreign oil for national security reasons, de-incentivizing alternative fuels designed to do just that doesn’t make a lot of sense — especially when Democrats won’t allow more drilling on land, let alone off-shore.
Since removing all tax code carve-outs simply isn’t going to happen — there isn’t the political will to do it — keeping the ones we currently have so we don’t have to buy more foreign oil and send more of our money to oil-producing countries who are hostile to us, to put it mildly, makes sense. What would make more sense would be to allow drilling for the substantial oil reserves under our own soil, but Obama and Democrats have no interest in that or the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs it would create.
This is what happens when a political party is a wholly owned subsidiary of a special interest group, in this case environmental extremists. When you bow to people who would rather the masses walk than drive to work on energy policy you get an energy policy filled with hopes and wishes, not reality and solutions. We’d all wish we could get wind to power our lives, but the technology right now is about as effective as putting a sail on the roof of your car and hoping it’s blowing in the direction of your work in the morning and home at the end of the day. Pretending a problem doesn’t exist doesn’t make it go away.
“Green jobs” and electric cars aren’t a reality, unless “green jobs” refers to the exorbitant amount of tax dollars needed to “create” them. Until someone creates a car that runs on hope and change, we’re going to need gasoline, and the longer we’re blocked from supplying ourselves with that needed gasoline by tree-hugging “policy wonks” who conspire to hide data that conflicts with their political agenda, the bigger our problems will become. We need to work within the current system so we send as little money as possible to nations that have among their objectives our destruction.
We are funding evil through our consumption of oil, but only because a different, domestic evil prevents us from stopping this madness and becoming self-sufficient. So that a moose has the ability to stroll through a vast swath of emptiness in Alaska without the inconvenience of having to possibly see an oil rig in the distance, we are forced to fund those who are hostile to our existence. Drilling in ANWR won’t end terrorism, but not drilling there certainly won’t either. The less money we send overseas the less money those overseas who wish us harm have to spend on that goal. And remember, terrorist organizations need money to operate and have to pay bills like everyone else. Where we can, we need to find ways to leave them less cash to buy explosives and brainwash rubes into ending their lives. (On a side note, how does it not occur to those being recruited into martyrdom that if the selling points used to do so are so great, why is the person recruiting them still alive?)
Subsidies are here to stay, for now. Until we, as a nation, embrace a logical energy policy that operates in a free market and deals in the reality of now and not the hope of the future, we need oil. The less money spent on that oil we send overseas the better for our economy and our safety. That is what makes this proposed swipe at ethanol such a bad idea.
Derek Hunter is a Washington based writer and consultant. He can be stalked on Twitter @derekahunter