Will Green Energy Prevent America's Recovery?

The United States may be on the edge of a second recession. Given the anemic recovery from the last recession, a further downturn is something that we can ill afford. Unemployment is high and there are millions of workers who are desperately seeking employment. President Obama and the Obamacrats were unable to provide much of a boost for the economy coming out of the last recession. Obama is now casting about with his tax increase "jobs" plan in order supposedly to help the economy grow. Much of the new plan is like the last one. Both the stimulus bill and the current jobs bill shovel money to support basic Democrat constituencies like teachers unions and other public workers. In fact, the only place where the Obamacrats seem to want to put public money that could actually promote growth is in so called green energy projects. We have seem billions in subsidies go to wind and solar energy. Obama now wants more. Similarly, Obama wants to develop high speed trains in order to reduce the numbers of cars on the road. He also pushes energy savings that would result from federal programs to winterize homes.

Of course, the problem is that none of the green energy initiatives from Obama have worked. We have seen Solyndra where more than half a billion dollars was given to solar panel manufacturers who just could not produce a product that could compete on the market. We have seen state after state refuse the high speed rail money because the system, once built, will require an ongoing and expensive subsidy to compete with cars. We have seen programs that spent millions of dollars to improve the insulation in local homes, except that almost no homes were so upgraded. One program in the Northwest spent over five million dollars but upgraded only three homes. Almost all the funds went for administration, and who knows how much was siphoned off through graft. So, after all of this effort by Obama and the Obamacrats, we still have no solar or wind energy industry to speak of. We have no jobs created to man solar or wind energy industries. We have no lowering of energy costs due to the green energy push. All we do have is an enormous increase in the national debt.

The sad thing is that conventional energy from fossil fuels could be providing a major boost to the economy. There is enough natural gas in the USA to fuel our needs for the next century. There is also enough oil to make us close to self sufficient if we could find a way to produce it efficiently. Indeed, there are enormous new oil fields that are coming on line despite the best efforts of the White House to stop any increase in production. The Bakken field in and around North Dakota is reputed to be twice the size of the Alaskan North Slope fields; that means 25 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Does the government therefore encourage this production? No, quite the contrary is true. Obama has dramatically slowed the process of approving permits for drilling in these fields. His EPA has threatened to take action against the natural gas drilling in the shale beds. Obama personally stopped drilling in the offshore waters and now only allows it in the smallest amount. All of the Obama actions have resulted in increasing the cost and the risk of drilling for new sources of supply. Obama is even now pushing for removing the tax treatment that oil companies receive which puts them in the same position as any other company. In Obama's world, oil and gas companies are evil. They are like cigarette companies; their products defile people. They are an enemy to be attacked. The fact that these same oil and gas companies also produce the product that allow the entire American economy to run simply does not matter to Obama.

In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, Steven Moore wrote about his interview with Harol Hamm, the CEO of Continental Resources, one of the larger oil companies in the USA. Hamm and Continental discovered the Bakken field and have created an enormous flow of oil where there was none before. Moore reports on Hamm's exchange with president Obama at a White House meeting on charitable giving:

"When it was Mr. Hamm's turn to talk briefly with President Obama, 'I told him of the revolution in the oil and gas industry and how we have the capacity to produce enough oil to enable America to replace OPEC. I wanted to make sure he knew about this.'

The president's reaction? 'He turned to me and said, 'Oil and gas will be important for the next few years. But we need to go on to green and alternative energy. [Energy] Secretary [Steven] Chu has assured me that within five years, we can have a battery developed that will make a car with the equivalent of 130 miles per gallon.' Mr. Hamm holds his head in his hands and says, 'Even if you believed that, why would you want to stop oil and gas development? It was pretty disappointing.'"

What Hamm calls disappointing, I call delusional. Obama is sticking to the green energy push even if the market will not support it. Oil and gas production in the USA is increasing despite Obama's actions because the market forces are too strong for him to control. Nevertheless, Obama keeps his boot on the neck of the oil and gas companies and shovels cash to the bogus green energy companies run by his contributors. Were the president to recognize reality and turn to promoting the development of American energy resources, we could see an increase in employment of a million jobs in just a few years. We could also see a major increase in government revenues and a decrease in the cost spent on the bogus green energy push.

I doubt that Obama will ever turn from the green energy idea. It is part of his ideology that oil and gas companies are inherently evil. He has to see them replaced. Hopefully he will be removed from office in the next election before he can do too much more damage in this regard.