Putting Obama’s Money Where His Mouth Is
Obama wants to break the country’s addiction to oil. He has floated a $150 billion proposal to curb our petrol appetites. Yet is he willing to put his money where his mouth is?
Here are some proposals for Obama to consider, and they may be extreme, but he and his environmental friends are willing to ask a lot of us in order to cut our use of oil, as if it is some kind of evil act:
- Immediately cease flying all over the world and getting chauffeured around in a motorcade of 20 SUV’s. How much of a carbon footprint is Obama leaving as he campaigns? Probably enough to offset any benefits to his energy policy, which is strangely sounding more like the policy espoused by the right. Given the technology that is available, he can campaign remotely with webcasts and satellite links to campaign events and fundrasiers. This would be radical, but boy would it show his leadership. Walk the talk (kinda tough for our socialist friends, much less for politicians in general).
- Does Obama use transit, a bicycle, or a fuel efficient Smart Car or hybrid to get around when he is not campaigning? Probably not, and probably never. Does sustainable transportation trump personal security while biking around? Likely not. But how is Obama leading by example in this arena? It is hard to ascertain that he is doing anything different than the rest of the hoi polloi.
- Rather than being open to limited offshore drilling, be open to exploiting every energy source we have available to the fullest extent. Do so with sensitivity to the environment (which contrary to the environmental left, is completely possible) and with enterpreneurial innovation. Get the government out of the way. Along, he has opposed off-shore drilling, but now he is relenting if only slightly. Useless, and just a false gesture of responding to focus-group driven politics.
- Cultivate an environment of risk and research for new technologies that improve fuel efficiency, environmental sensitivity and safety. How? Dump capital gains taxation. Incentivize research. Encourage private firms to innovate with contests (like the XPrize for private space flight, which awarded a huge sum of money to the company to carry off the first private manned flight into space).
- Stop acting like using fossil fuel is evil. Instead, find ways to boost its efficiency and burn it cleaner. The first automobiles were fuel inefficient and polluted significantly more than they do now. Technology has allowed us to squeeze up to 120 HP out of a liter of displacement (the Honda S2000 touts this spec as the highest on the planet). And it gets around 20 MPG. Materials are lighter, combustion technology is improving and emissions are minimizing. We need to continue to pursue this.
- Stop perpetuating guilt about energy use. The US does in fact use much of the energy that the world uses. We are a developed nation, and significantly large. Underdeveloped nations that live in poverty are not noble. In fact, China, which is rapidly developing, is starting to become one of the largest fuel users. And India is not far behind. Yet the both countries are far more polluted than ours. The is not the sole source for the problems of the world (though we don’t lack in our contribution to them). The problem is tyranny, which stifles creativity, innovation and healthy financial opportunity. And the bigger problem is lack of people and cultures redeemed of God. Without this, we are patently unable to care for each other and the world, which leads to pollution, environmental exploitation, and depraved self-interest.
- Set free nuclear power. It’s here. It’s clean. Other far more socialistic and environmentally extreme countries use it (France is 80% powered by nuclear power). Why can’t we? Because we have a small, self-appointed, strident minority that is attempting to deconstruct a world that runs on power out of chicken-little fear.
I am a proponent of creation care. God created this wondrous place, and I for one would like to enjoy it. But I do not believe a strong economy and environmental care are mutually exclusive. God created us with brains to discover fossil fuels, and he certainly has given us brains to steward our resources with wisdom and knowledge in order to come up with new and better ways of using them. What I do not condone, is the idea that we have to stop using the resources we have in order to avoid some kind of environmental apocalypse. We need to care for this earth, but not be fatalistic, guilt-inducers.
The environmental ideas put forth by the current left have become mainstream, and are thus likely passe and lacking in innovation. There are better ideas out there, but they will likely come from nowhere near the government. It just ain’t possible.
