Editorial: Four keys to lower energy costs

Comments

 SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY

EMAIL STORY

PRINT STORY

21 days ago: Stop using SWAT teams on civilians

22 days ago: Pals for principals

23 days ago: Water plans all wet

24 days ago: Speech police alive at UMBC

27 days ago: Identity theft and illegal immigration

28 days ago: No apology needed

29 days ago: Warehousing prisoners doesn’t work

30 days ago: Cutting property taxes will spur ‘smart growth’

31 days ago: Big budget, poor-quality roads

32 days ago: Iraq surge critics should admit they were wrong

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - People who don’t live in places like Wyoming have no idea of the potential power of the sage grouse. The diminutive “prairie chicken” can force the world’s most powerful country to submit to the whims of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The feathered creature needs help to do it, though, and well-funded environmental activists and their allies in government at all levels are more than happy to lend a hand with costly lawsuits, endless regulations and multitudes of other restrictions on those who might come into contact with the sage grouse in its natural habitat.

Until this week, for instance, energy companies weren’t allowed to drill during mating season because sage grouse don’t like the noise. The rigs also couldn’t operate within sight of sage grouse strutting grounds, so energy companies typically had less than six months to drill.

Bureau of Land Management officials wisely agreed to lift most such restrictions in Wyoming this week, but environmentalists promise lawsuits that will almost certainly prevent needed drilling anywhere there are sage grouse above ground and black gold or natural gas below it. And we haven’t even talked about restrictions occasioned by black-tailed prairie dogs or the black-footed ferret or the ... never mind, it’s a long list.

Meanwhile, Americans are paying $4 and more per gallon of gas, and Democrats led by Senate Majority Leader Harry “Oil Makes Us Sick” Reid, House Speaker Nancy “More Drilling Is a Hoax” Pelosi and presidential candidate Barack “I Prefer a Gradual Rise In Gas Prices” Obama stubbornly block all efforts to increase America’s domestic energy production, even though we have abundant untapped billions of barrels of oil and trillions of cubic feet of natural gas on and off shore.

Yet public opinion polls show growing majorities of Americans vigorously support actions like permitting production in currently forbidden areas such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Outer Continental Shelf off the our coasts, and public lands in the West. Democrats must either get out of the way or explain why it’s good for Americans when they can’t afford to fill up their cars, must ration heating and air conditioning in their homes, and pay exorbitant prices at the grocery store.

In other words, the (prairie) chickens are coming home to roost for energy obstructionist Democrats and their environmentalist allies. For 30 years, they’ve made America depend increasingly on foreigners for our oil instead of producing more of it here at home, and the rest of us are now paying for it.

Our priorities must change. There are four keys to solving this energy crisis and assuring short-, medium- and long-term progress toward energy independence. First, to show OPEC and the rest of the world that we mean business about energy independence, we must open ANWR and OCS to drilling and carefully use the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to counter speculators. This will change the present and foreseeable energy market equation, thus forcing OPEC and energy speculators to start lowering the price of oil per barrel. We must also summon the political will to reassess the wisdom of an energy/environment balance that encourages costly litigation and time-consuming unpredictability on the regulatory front.

Second, medium-term measures must include significant public and private investments in alternative energy production, especially wind and solar, and a rebalancing of energy and environmental considerations to further hasten maturing and integration of these resources.

A multitude of wind tunnel projects are sprouting across the nation’s plains that will require new transmission lines to link them to population centers east and west. Regulators must move quickly to clear bureaucratic obstacles to these needed power lines, just as Land Management officials recently opted not to hold up applications to build new solar plants on government land, pending another environmental study.

Third, half of the electricity presently generated in America comes from coal. It will be a decade or more before that fact will change, as alternative energy sources mature. In the meantime, America has been called the “Saudi Arabia of coal” because of our immense reserves of the black rock. Great progress has been made in reducing coal emissions, especially by using low-sulfur grades. It only makes sense to take maximum feasible advantage of this resource.

Finally, for the long term, we must leverage our economic and technological advantages to greatly increase the number of electricity-generating nuclear plants and make oil shale production feasible. Sen. John McCain’s proposal to build 45 new plants by 2030 is a start. Bureaucratic obstacles that crippled the nuclear industry must be removed, and suitable federal surplus lands and facilities should be made available for construction of new plants if needed.

As for oil shale, America has an estimated 1.5 trillion barrels of recoverable oil, or more than five times Saudi Arabia’s reserves. Call it America’s secret weapon in the energy war. There is no time to waste.

SEE THE LATEST ON THIS STORY

EMAIL STORY

PRINT STORY

21 days ago: Stop using SWAT teams on civilians

22 days ago: Pals for principals

23 days ago: Water plans all wet

24 days ago: Speech police alive at UMBC

27 days ago: Identity theft and illegal immigration

28 days ago: No apology needed

29 days ago: Warehousing prisoners doesn’t work

30 days ago: Cutting property taxes will spur ‘smart growth’

31 days ago: Big budget, poor-quality roads

32 days ago: Iraq surge critics should admit they were wrong