Get serious about energy

Oil is the lifeblood of our industrial society.

But it’s been under attack since the early 1970s.

Environmentalists told us we’d all choke from the exhaust fumes back then.

Then they lied to us about the dangers of nuclear power and succeeded in shutting down plants and averting the construction of new ones.

Then they lied about global warming.

Then they lied about the ozone hole.

Then they complained about oil drilling in Alaska.

Then they complained about drilling for natural gas.

Then they complained about oil drilling offshore.

Then they complained about reliance on foreign oil and told us we must conserve. (They’re right about the dangers of foreign oil. We don’t need it. We ought to be energy independent.)

More recently, some environmentalists have so convinced themselves of their own lies about global warming that they now say building nuclear energy plants is the only way to save us from catastrophe.

They want us to build windmills and solar plants – totally inefficient, unsightly and way too costly.

In other words, they don’t want America to grow. They don’t want it to prosper. They don’t want us to live any better than people live in the Third World.

But just watch how these people scream when their air conditioning goes off. Just watch what happens when they turn on the light switch and nothing happens. Just watch how they try to point fingers of blame at others.

We’ve seen it in California. That’s why Gray-out Davis is no longer in office. Last summer, thousands died in Europe because of a heat wave and because Europeans don’t think air-conditioning is an important, essential life-saving device for the elderly and infirm.

We all believe in conservation. We all believe in good stewardship of the earth’s resources. But we don’t need to listen any longer to people who use these good ideas and common-sense notions to cripple our economy and the American way of life.

America is at war with Islamic terrorists who believe in a false religion and ideology that calls for mass murder of infidels – all those who hold other beliefs.

But there’s another group of subversives who have been attacking America’s productivity for much longer than Osama bin Laden. They, too, are religious fanatics – followers of a neo-paganistic strain of Earth worship. It’s tempting to call them terrorists. It’s true only of some. But most of the eco-extremists do their damage not with bombs, but with equally destructive public policies.

They, too, hate America for religious reasons. They believe in Gaia – the concept that the Earth is a living organism capable of regulating itself and regenerating itself. Ironically, they have less faith in the world’s ability to withstand activity by man than most Jews or Christians do. They believe we are headed for a cataclysm over global warming because of industrial activity. Apparently Gaia is not as powerful as they profess.

The truth is the Earth is very resilient, not because it is a living organism, but because that’s the way God made it. Activity by man is not capable of destroying the Earth or, short of an all-out nuclear war, making it uninhabitable for man.

It is because of these green extremists and the politicians too easily intimidated by their lobbying efforts that no major oil refineries have been built in the U.S. since 1976, although the number of vehicles in use has doubled and plants are running at capacity.

Even more than the war in Iraq and instability in the Middle East, these extremists are responsible for the rising cost of oil and gas.

It’s time to get serious about energy in this country. We need it. We need it to preserve our freedom, our way of life. It has to come from somewhere.

The green machine has forced us to get too much from foreign sources. That puts America at risk of international political blackmail. Young men and women may be forced to die in foreign wars someday to keep that oil flowing. It doesn’t have to be that way.

America should strive for energy independence. We can’t do that through conservation alone. We can’t do that by harnessing solar power. We can’t do that with windmills. We need potent energy sources that need to be discovered through exploration, piped out of the Earth and refined here at home.

It’s a matter of national security.