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A parting gift from Congress
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Related Topics: BALTIMORE
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - I sat shivering in my car recently in front of a friend’s Lutherville home, waiting for the engine to warm. It’s December, so temperatures in the 20s aren’t unusual for one reason. We have heat.
It’s easy to take that for granted. Heat is a power all its own. We heat our homes, our cars and our offices. That means winter doesn’t stop us from working. We don’t have to wear our coats in the house or sit shivering. We don’t even have to adopt the Jimmy Carter sweater and set the thermostat at a nippy 68 degrees.
That’s because we have energy. America uses lots of energy — roughly 25 percent of world energy use happens in the United States. America also has lots of energy — oil, coal, natural gas, wind power, nuclear power and more. If it made energy sense to hook up small brigades of hamsters to generate power, someone in our nation would do it.
Why? Because power means life. It means businesses continue to run, people keep their jobs and hospitals don’t shut down, killing patients by the thousands.
And for all those reasons and millions more, every American just got a Christmas present from the outgoing Congress. According to The New York Times, Congress passed a bill in its final minutes “that would open 8.3 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to oil and natural gas drilling.”
And who said the best presents come in small packages? Try putting a bow around 8.3 million acres.
Will that provide energy independence or solve all of America’s energy needs? Absolutely not. Is it one more piece in the puzzle to keep the engine of our economy running? Absolutely. Congress should have done more, but at least it’s a start.
I am sure there are environmentalists out there reading this in horror. How dare we ravage the earth to make ourselves comfortable? That is a naïve and even dangerous way of thinking.
Energy has brought mankind out of the Dark Ages. Energy also gives Americans a standard of living most parts of the world can barely comprehend.
In mythology, fire was the greatest gift Prometheus gave to mankind. In this time of giving, energy has taken its place. A little bit of coal, or a few billion barrels of oil, make for a merry, and warm, Christmas.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator. He can be reached at gainorcolumn@gmail.com.
Comments from Examiner Readers
7:38 PM MST on Fri., Mar. 14, 2008 re: "The tax men cometh at the 2007 General Assembly"
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Examiner Reader said:
Apparently the author is a republican that hasn't realized that the politicians in this state don't care about the people and operate on their own agenda. Wake up A hole check your wallet! Erlich, O Malley and any other name we still pay poor and receive less!
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