Today's signing of the Energy Independence and Security Act by President Bush serves one real purpose -- to give House and Senate incumbents something to tout on the campaign trail in 2008. It does little else to address real energy concerns, decrease our nation’s energy dependence or prevent America from being held hostage by third world countries.
We have gas hovering around $3 per gallon. Worldwide oil demand is soaring as China and India step up as developing countries. America hasn't built a new refinery since 1972, when I was in sixth grade. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management believes there are 21 gigabarrels of oil within America's boundaries and another 800 gigabarrels trapped in oil shale.
By the way, a gigabarrel is the equivalent of 1,000 million barrels and one barrel produces 31 gallons of fuel. So a gigabarrel equals 31 billion gallons of fuel. Total current U.S. oil consumption is 7.3 billion gigabarrels per year. With the fuel sitting beneath our land and within our ocean boundaries right now, we have enough to meet current U.S. oil demands for 110 years
Yet, in the fairytale land of Washington, what does our government do? Turn on the green light so that we can pump out as much of our oil as we need and sell the rest to developing countries? Heck no. It passes a bill that basically conserves our way to prosperity. The bill President Bush signed today promises to:
- Increase fuel supplies by requiring fuel producers to use 36 billion gallons of biofuel in 2022 – ignoring the fact that increasing ethanol use drives up food prices as demand for corn jumps.
- Reduce demand for oil by requiring cars to achieve 35 miles per gallon by 2020 – just 7.5 mpg over our current standard
- Require all general purpose lighting in federal building to use Energy Star compact fluorescent bulbs – ignoring the fact that disposal of those bulbs genuinely harms the environment due to the level of mercury in the bulbs.
- Establish yet another government agency, the Office of High-Performance Green Buildings, to dictate how buildings are built to conserve energy.
- And in a nod to true environmentalist wackos, to reduce projected carbon emissions (which help make trees grow) by billions of metric tons.
Excuse my Midwest naivety, but just what are we going to do between 2008 and 2020? Apparently nothing.
Next time I'm at the gas pump watching the dollar sign spin endlessly upward, I'll be thankful that our government is using Energy Star light bulbs in its buildings rather than dropping more wells and building more refineries to ensure there is increased legitimate supply in the market.
By 2020 it is very likely that technology will have improved to the point that cars will run on hydrogen or some other easily renewable fuel. If so, that will make today’s actions especially irrelevant considering the new law doesn’t encourage investment in developing any new technology, only a demand that it exist by the deadline date.
How much energy, let alone “global warming” hot air emissions, could we save by shutting down Washington for a single month?