Save the Planet 2/29/2012

“No, the overall goal is [not to get the price of gasoline down, but] to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy.”

“Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

“What I’m doing since I became Secretary of Energy has been quite clear. What I have been doing is developing methods to take the pain out of high gas prices.”

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Americans don’t like oil spills.  Americans don’t like the potential of an oil spill no matter how remote.  American don’t like strip mines.  Americans don’t like refineries.  The US has the strictest regulations and safety standards for energy exploration and production in the world  Oil drilling and mining is banned all across the country and offshore.  Where it is not yet banned, those who oppose this kind of thing are attempting to use whatever means they have to delay or stop the projects.  So other countries do it for us.

But we have no control over the other part of the planet.  So no other country has to comply with our EPA regulations, environmental impacts injunctions and they don’t.

In Nigeria, for example, every year since 1969, oil operations in the Niger Delta have spilled as much oil as the 1989 Exxon Valdez. Chad has no environmental laws whatever.

So what do the misguided do to save the planet?  They take the responsibility of protecting the environment out of the hands of those who are the best at it and export it to those who have no interest in keeping things clean.  The revelation that the planet exists beyond the borders of the U.S. has yet to hit some.

On the other hand, exporting pollution is OK if the agenda is to eliminate fossil fuel altogether.  By keeping the cost of oil up, the people who are the most suspicious of markets are attempting to use those very markets and the hard earned American money to advance the alternative fuels to a market that is not quite ready for it.