{"id":3154,"date":"2009-02-06T18:16:26","date_gmt":"2009-02-06T23:16:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/?p=3154"},"modified":"2009-02-06T18:16:26","modified_gmt":"2009-02-06T23:16:26","slug":"obamas-extreme-team-on-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/2009\/02\/obamas-extreme-team-on-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama’s ‘Extreme Team’ On Energy"},"content":{"rendered":"

FoxNews<\/a> | Ben Lieberman | Feb. 6, 2009<\/p>\n

One of them wanted to see Americans paying $8 a gallon for gasoline. Another tried to block access to domestic oil reserves that could one day exceed those in Saudi Arabia. Another thinks global warming is a dire crisis justifying a massive crackdown on energy — decades after saying the same thing about global cooling. Yet another had a position in the one of the world\u2019s top socialist organizations.<\/p>\n

Meet the Obama administration\u2019s energy team. <\/p>\n

Forget everything you\u2019ve heard about the president\u2019s moderate picks on the economy, national security and other issues. When it comes to energy policy and related environmental concerns, this group is off-the-charts extreme. Too bad the issue will be a critical one over the next few years.<\/p>\n

Consider Obama\u2019s choice for energy secretary, Nobel prize-winning physicist Steven Chu. \u201cSomehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,\u201d The Wall Street Journal quoted him as saying last September. In most Western European nations, gas taxes alone come to around $4 a gallon and are designed to make the pump price so high that people are forced to drive a lot less. At the time of Chu\u2019s comment, the \u201clevels in Europe\u201d were near $8 a gallon.<\/p>\n

Chu has also said that electricity prices are \u201canomalously low,\u201d though he neglected to indicate how much higher he wants them to go. Instead of a secretary of energy, it sounds like America is getting its first secretary against energy. Chu backed off such rhetoric after being nominated, but his true feelings seem obvious.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ken Salazar (D-Colo.) is Obama\u2019s choice to head the Department of the Interior, the agency that handles energy leasing on federal lands and most offshore areas. As a senator, Salazar has opposed much of this leasing, based on overblown environmental fears. It looks like \u201cdrill, baby, drill\u201d isn\u2019t going to survive to adulthood.<\/p>\n

In addition to opposing domestic drilling for conventional oil, Salazar was also responsible for legislation blocking the development of oil shale. America has vast amounts of this oil-containing rock, mostly beneath federal lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. The process of efficiently extracting this oil is still being improved; oil shale is a long-term project with uncertain prospects at this time. But if successful, it could provide literally hundreds of billions of barrels, exceeding the reserves in Saudi Arabia and providing enough oil to supply the United States for many decades.<\/p>\n

As secretary of the interior, Salazar will have even more chances to stop cold any progress on oil shale, and with it our best hope for a dramatic increase in domestic oil production.<\/p>\n

As with Chu, Obama\u2019s choice for science adviser, John Holdren, has impressive academic credentials but some very strange energy and environmental policy views. Even Al Gore can\u2019t match Holdren\u2019s global warming gloom-and-doom rhetoric, including the claim that it could kill as many as 1 billion people by 2020. Holdren\u2019s a veteran at making such alarming predictions, but back in the 1970s he worried more about whether man would survive the \u201cthreat of making the planet too cold.\u201d<\/p>\n

But whether it\u2019s warming or cooling, Holdren has consistently advocated the same heavy-handed crackdowns on the economy and energy use, including the need for a \u201cmassive campaign … to de-develop the United States.\u201d Good thing he\u2019s not in charge of the stimulus package.<\/p>\n

Rob Bradley, chairman of the Institute for Energy Research, has compiled an amazing list of Holdren\u2019s favorite policy prescriptions, including the \u201climitation of material consumption,\u201d \u201credistribution of the wealth,\u201d and even \u201cmovement toward some kind of world government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Apparently, Holdren isn\u2019t alone on the world government stuff.<\/p>\n

. . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FoxNews | Ben Lieberman | Feb. 6, 2009 One of them wanted to see Americans paying $8 a gallon for gasoline. Another tried to block access to domestic oil reserves that could one day exceed those in Saudi Arabia. Another thinks global warming is a dire crisis justifying a massive crackdown on energy — decades … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[74,18,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-leftist-lunatic-fringe","category-politics","category-totalitarian-democrats"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3154"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3154\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}