By Selwyn Duke
One of the very best columnists on the journalistic scene is Walter Williams. His articles aren’t filled with flowery prose or esoteric terms (like esoteric!); they just cut to the heart of the matter and provide simple, reasoned analysis. In fact, I can hardly think of an instance where he has written something with which I disagree. Every piece is a home run, including this one, about how Congress, at the behest of environmentalist extremists, is largely responsible for our high oil prices.
This is, of course, no revelation. Yet it cannot be emphasized enough. Sure, there are other reasons why oil is high, such as the burgeoning economies of China and India (the latter’s Tata Nano automobile, with a price tag of only $2500, will make car travel feasible for millions more Indians) and futures speculators. Yet, regardless of the impact of these factors, our failure to develop our own resources is inexcusable.
We hear conflicting reports about the impact exploiting our resources would have, with leftists claiming it would accomplish little. Yet I’m more inclined to believe what Williams cites:
According to ‘We don’t have to
take $4 gas prices — we can drill,’ written by Sterling Burnett in the
Houston Chronicle (5/21/08), ‘It is estimated that beneath America’s
coast lies enough oil to fuel 60 million cars in the United States for
60 years and enough natural gas to heat 60 million homes for 160 years.
… If allowed access to American oil reserves in Alaska and off our
coastline, American oil companies could increase our country’s reserves
an estimated fivefold, taking the United States from 11th place to
fourth among the countries with proven oil reserves.’
But whether you believe this or not, something is undeniable: It’s difficult to make any definitive judgments in this regard when market forces have not been allowed to function.
First, Congress has placed 85% of our coastal waters off limits to oil exploration. Then there’s the fact that we haven’t built a new refinery in over 30 years. Now, since I can tell you off the top of my head that there were twice as many cars on the road in 1990 as in 1970 (just imagine what the figure is today), does this sound realistic to you? Is this a course that a sane, growing, modern nation would follow?
The good news is that, owing to conservation and better technology, our oil consumption is not really that much greater than it was decades ago. The bad news is, with a propagandizing media that won’t tell people the truth and grandstanding politicians who would rather score political points and advance leftist agendas than solve problems, most people won’t know enough to place the onus where it belongs. Instead, they’ll blame the oil companies, as if the latter just suddenly realized they could reap obscene profits by simply raising prices.
Lastly, Williams points out a very interesting but not surprising (not to me, anyway) fact. He writes:
. . . Burnett points out that the ‘two leading environmental groups, the Audubon Society and the Nature
Conservancy, have allowed oil and gas production on several of their
most important and unique nature preserves.’Environmentalists come to their senses when non-drilling philosophy
costs them something. It’s two-faced hypocrisy. At times I’ve suggested
that the best way to get oil exploration in the Alaska National
Wildlife Reserve is to give the land to environmentalists. You can bet
they wouldn’t sit on billions of dollars of oil and gas.
This actually is quite typical of leftists. It’s another example of how they will give you the shirt off someone else’s back, of their "do as I say, not as I do" approach. And you can witness this phenomenon wherever they wield power. Just note how they often raped the land in the former Soviet Union, or how China today is ravaging its landscape. Why, in one region in China all the bees have been eliminated through pesticide use; thus, its fruit farmers now have to pollenate their own crops.
You see, sacrificing money for principle requires that you believe your principles have a basis in something beyond opinion. If you believe they derive from God’s law, you may be able to subordinate mammon to them (and, let’s face it, even then it’s difficult for most). If you’re talking about godless leftists, however, good luck. They will virtually never exhibit that kind of nobility.
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