American Resources for the American People…Now!

“We must fall back upon the old axiom that when all other contingencies fail, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes

The audacity of hype never ceases to amaze me. “The truth is, there’s no silver bullet that can bring down gas prices right away.” Really Mr. President? How about tapping our resources, which according to a 2010 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report are the largest in the…wait for it…world! That’s right, the world’s largest deposit of energy resources is right here in the good ‘ole USA. “They eclipse Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th) and Canada (6th) combined – and that’s without including America’s shale oil deposits and, in the future, the potentially astronomic impact of methane hydrates,” reports Peter Glover of the Energy Tribune.

Together we have enough oil, coal, and natural gas to power our nation for an estimated 350 plus years, with a potential of an additional 400 years, as Senator Inhofe states, “…if just 3 percent of [methane hydrates] can be commercialized.” Three times longer then we have been a nation on the face of the planet.

Just take a moment to imagine it–thousands of jobs for the unemployed, billions of dollars for our economy, the cessation of our massive wealth transfer to hostile nations, and, most of all, an end to a major impetus for the spilling of much blood and treasure in turmoil throughout the Middle East and Northern Africa.

In light of this breathtaking potential from known fossil-based energy, what does the Omighty One want to do? Control prices and end subsidies for oil and gas companies. (Kind of anticlimactic isn’t it.) I am all for ending corporate welfare, but I believe there may be something else we could do besides price controls–which never work–or increasing taxes on energy companies–which ultimately ends up being paid by the consumer. How about this Mr. President: Drill, baby, drill! Yes, that much maligned ancient slogan from way back in 2008.

So why, you may be asking, aren’t we tapping our apparently abundant resources? Good question. Let’s tune into President Obama for some insight:

“The challenge with coal is that although it’s very cheap, it’s also dirty.

“Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future — jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced. But it’s also how we will reduce our dangerous dependence on foreign oil, a dependence that endangers our economy and our security. And it is how we will combat the threat of climate change and leave our children a planet that’s safer than the one we inherited.”

“I want the United States of America to be what it has always been — and that is a leader — the leader when it comes to a clean energy future.”

So regardless of what some might view as an epiphany concerning energy realities due to rising gas prices, I don’t believe for a moment that the One who desires to “fundamentally transform America” so easily capitulates to our mere mortal fiscal flaps. After all, what’s a little depression when you have a green utopia to manifest?

With the US possessing more than 28% of the world’s reserves in coal, along with China building a coal-fired plant at the rate of one a month, and in spite of “A new study…by the consulting firm Verso Economics [which] confirms the experience of Spain and other countries: The creation of ‘green’ jobs destroys other jobs through the diversion of resources and the denial of abundant sources of fossil fuel energy,” one can only surmise, however improbable, that our current political class and it’s leader doesn’t really care what We the People have to pay at the pump, or the devolution of our standard of living to the level of a third world county.

As a final thought, here is a question that has been nagging me for some time: If you believe that global warming is man-made and that it will cause the extinction of the human race, and if China will wildly surpass us in emissions in a relatively short period of time, are you ready to go to war to stop them? If not, than I doubt you truly believe what you say you believe and the real intention is to degrade the United States in order to knock us off our supposed “imperial” pedestal. It doesn’t get any more suicidal than that.

(Hat tip: American Thinker, The energy superpower)

Copyright 2011 Julie Schmidt.