Here's Our Do Nothing Energy Policy

Energy Policy? What Energy Policy?

By Alan Caruba

When the government controls the provision of energy, it controls the lives of all citizens and the growth or failure of the nation’s economy. Everything else, including national defense, runs second when it comes to this single factor.

Recently the fourth annual survey of more than a hundred executives in the U.S. and Canadian electric and natural gas industries was released by Platts and Capgemini. Platts is a global provider of energy and metals information and Capgemini is a leading provider of consulting, technology and outsourcing services. The objective of the survey was to determine the opinion of energy industry executives regarding the first year and a half of the Obama administration’s energy policies.

The Obama administration’s energy policy is to have as little as possible.

The administration is bent on reducing access to national energy resources, coal, oil and natural gas, combined with a bizarre emphasis on “alternative” or “renewable” sources in the form of wind and solar energy. European nations that went this course ended up with fewer jobs, insufficient energy for the money invested, and massive fraud in its carbon credits exchanges.

It is essential to understand that the nation’s utilities have all signed onto the bogus “global warming” theory that carbon dioxide emissions threaten all life on Earth because they can make gobs of money raising the rates they currently charge for electricity. They expect to do so via the bogus selling and trade of “carbon credits”, a key element of the Cap-and-Tax bill currently in the Senate. It is a massive robbery of all energy consumers and that means everyone.

Under intense pressure from the government and from environmental organizations, many utilities have wasted millions on the installation of wind and solar farms, none of which provide enough electricity to even begin to meet their consumer’s needs. Moreover, they must all maintain traditional coal-burning, nuclear, and other forms of energy generation plants because neither wind or solar provide a reliable source of electricity.

This is the big, dirty secret of the so-called “sustainable” energy from wind and solar. It is not sustainable if the wind is not blowing and the sun is obscured by clouds. Wind energy provides about one percent of all the electricity used daily in America. In 2006 solar power provided 0.1 percent! By contrast, nuclear provides about 20 percent and coal provides just over 50 percent!

The alternative energy suppliers are sustained by a combination of taxpayer subsidies (your money) and mandates imposed on the utilities to include them with nuclear, coal and other energy sources. One way the government makes so-called sustainable energy appear to be a greater source is to include conventional hydroelectric energy.

According to the survey, “some 80% are dissatisfied with the U.S. government’s energy policy performance following the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s inauguration and amid a slowly rebounding economy,” adding, “there is considerable dissatisfaction in the lack of tangible and actionable policy and legislation.”

John Christens, vice president of Smart Energy Services for Capgemini, says, “Few utility executives consider the current solutions as satisfactory either in scale or feasibility.” That’s because there are NO current “solutions” to America’s growing needs for additional energy provision and the nation’s electrical grid is aging daily and in need of major upgrades.

Not surprisingly, since they stand to make billions if the Cap-and-Tax bill is passed, many utility executives were unhappy with the progress “on CO2 legislation and action, regulations which will increase the cost of power without addressing the root issue of atmospheric carbon…”

There is no “root issue” because carbon dioxide plays NO role whatever in climate change. The bloviations of Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are a huge package of lies based on flawed and deliberately spurious computer model projections.

In November 2009, the Climategate revelations that a handful of IPCC scientists had been misrepresenting the truth should have ended the global warming fraud, but it has only intensified the effort of those behind it to impose it on the world. At some point, having taken millions in government funding for research, particularly here in the U.S. and in England, some of these IPCC scientists should be on their way to jail if there is any justice to be had.

The survey is barely useful to the public because it was taken among the very utility executives who are guilty of supporting the global warming fraud in anticipation of reaping obscene profits. The cost of energy will soar if the Cap-and-Tax bill waiting a vote in the Senate is passed and signed into law by the president.

Meanwhile, the real energy policy of the Obama administration is to do everything in its immense power to thwart the building of any new coal-burning or nuclear plants while deceiving the public into believing that wind or solar has any real potential of meeting present and future needs. Dangling promises of “green jobs” is perhaps the cruelest lie of all. Virtually all of the technology required for wind or solar is manufactured overseas.

The Obama energy policy can be summed up as no new energy, no new jobs, and a very dark future for America.

© Alan Caruba, 2010

Taking a Whack at Arizona

And you thought the real problem was illegal aliens entering the US?

The Absence of Competence

By Alan Caruba

Is it too much to expect the Attorney General of the United States, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the President to have actually read the law that the State of Arizona passed regarding illegal aliens?

Is it too much to expect the President not to use that law—-the same as a federal law—-as a lame joke at the recent White House Correspondents dinner?

Does anyone really think President Obama has a clue about the actual facts concerning the BP oil rig accident? When all the reports are written, here’s what they will say. It was an accident.

How can we expect the Obama administration to respond to terrorist attacks on America when they will barely use the word “terrorism” and almost never link it to Islam? Even wars are called “overseas contingencies.”

When words mask reality, reality has a nasty way of intruding.

We’re told not “to jump to conclusions” about the Fort Hood shooter even though he was a deranged Muslim fanatic. The Christmas day attempted airline bombing? Everybody did their job says Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security. Well, no, everyone except the bomber. Time Squares bomber? AG Holder wants to hold a trial of the 9/11 planner a couple of blocks away.

The whole Obama administration is shot through with people who got their tickets punched at various elite Ivy League and other universities, but who hold beliefs that are so mind-boggling that you wonder why the nice men in the white coats haven’t shown up to take them to a rubber room.

The Secretary of Transportation dislikes cars and makes no secret of it. Meanwhile, the government owns General Motors and is still trying to find ways to make selling their cars more difficult by raising mileage standards.

The Secretary of Energy thinks we should paint the roofs of our homes white to reflect back the light from the Sun in order to avoid the dreaded global warming. Apparently nobody has told him the Earth has been in a cooling cycle for the past decade.

The President’s science advisor thinks it would be a good idea to put chemicals into the water supply to reduce fertility. Too many people eating, breathing, and—-Oh my God—-exhaling the dreaded carbon dioxide that will kill us all! NOT!

The President pushed hard for his healthcare bill that was intended to reduce the costs of Medicare and, surprise, it will cost more if implemented. Around the nation, doctors are dropping out of the Medicare program. Try buying health insurance from any company other than the government in a few years. How stupid and Marxist is it to take competition out of this process?

As for the President himself, he is just an endless source of gaffs and pratfalls. Recall those early months when he couldn’t say a word without a TelePrompter? Remember Steve Croft of “Sixty Minutes” taking him to task for laughing inappropriately? “Are you punch drunk?” asked Croft. Or Fox News’ Bret Baier trying to get him to give a straight answer to ANYTHING?

We are now nearly a year and a half into Obama’s first and only term in office. He is still trying to blame former President George W. Bush for EVERYTHING. I half expected to hear him say that George W was seen fishing nearby the BP oil rig shortly before it blew up. It took Obama nine days to even fly over and look at the busted rig. Katrina, anyone?

Just call him President Kiss-of-Death. So far, every Democrat candidate that Obama has endorsed for election has lost. I hope he keeps it up.

Meanwhile, I pray that we last until November when we can throw the whole useless, crazy bunch of Democrats out of office and then slow down Obama’s mad race to “transform” America into something more closely resembling Fidel Castro’s Cuba or Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

His ultimate goal is to totally undermine the American system of governance along with the financial structure that maintains it. That is theis administration's greatest threat to the nation and is being relentless pursued.

(c) Alan Caruba, 2010