Our Insane Anti-American Energy Policy
Copyright © 2008 Keith Snelson
Introduction
Our nation has been blessed materially. Our fertile fields, our lakes and rivers and our climate are all beneficial for our production of weaalth. We are the largest exporters of food in the world. In addition, we have large deposits of coal, of natural gas and oil as well as being able to generate energy from our streams.
We also in our past registered more patents and invented more devices than anyone else. We produce over 30% of the worlds‘
products and have the biggest economy in the world in spite of only having 6% of the worlds‘ population.
However, our management of our resources leaves much to be desired. Even though we were first in the development of nuclear energy we are now far behind other developed nations. We are so burdened with rules and regulations that the obstructions to build cause us to take much more time than any others. China is presently building four nuclear power plants using American and French companies to do the construction and their plans are that a plant will be built in four years. In our country if the same construction companies were used it would take ten years. We have not built a nuclear power plant in the last thirty years and even though restrictions are supposedly being lessened there is still nothing under construction.
There have been no oil refineries built in the last thirty years and our productive capacity has decreased while our consumption has increased. We now import 60% of our requirements and thereby allow a cartel to establish prices and determine production. And, the price established has no relationship to the costs of mining, refining and distributing the oil. The cartel sets the price to maximize their profits and we do nothing. Even though we have huge oil deposits off our shores, in the gulf, Alaska and in shale in the Rocky Mountains we are not drilling and mining and trying to produce more oil.
We also are blessed with huge deposits of coal and steps have been taken by our government to reduce our production of coal. Our natural gas fields are really big and even though natural gas is used to heat our homes and produce electricity we have done nothing to encourage its use in transportation where it could reduce our costs.
In other words, our government seems to be against developing our energy production. If we did develop it there would be a substantial reduction in the costs of energy to our country but there is a greater reason for developing our energy especially considering oil for much of the world‘s production of oil comes from the volatile middle east and oil is an absolute necessity for us.
Our security is threatened by our past actions and by our lack of internal energy sources.
Much of the blame for this problem is placed with the environmental movement. It seems that the environmentalists are against energy development as well as wanting to save the environment. They opposed nuclear power development even though nuclear is the cleanest and safest way to produce energy. They place more value on trees, varmints, animals and birds than on people. Many of their programs have financially harmed businesses and individuals to save some obscure critter. Man is the greatest thing God created and the Bible admonishes us to love our neighbor and not to value some fish more than man.
The environmental movement has lots of money and can advertise and write articles and books and hire lobbyists but they do not pass the laws that have led to our problem. The Congress passes those laws and the regulatory agencies they created have established issue rules and regulations that have prevented our energy development. We may conclude that the environmental-wackos are completely, totally wrong but that does not explain why our government has led us to our present situation. One possible explanation is that all of our government people responsible for this are insane. That is a better conclusion than thinking that they are deliberately doing this to harm our country and our people. It is possible that some environmental-wackos would like that but certainly not our own government.
That leaves us with some hope for if they are insane then we have a system that enables us to replace them. That is why this book is being written – we need to replace all of those responsible for interfering with our energy production – whatever reason they may have.