Obama is Not Smart On Energy

When a powerful nation elects a complete clown as its leader, there are bound to be unfortunate repercussions -- immediately, and for a long time to come. While the new US president is quite incompetent on the economy, he is a complete nincompoop on the issue of energy. Obama's fixation on carbon dioxide obscures his view of the critical issues of energy, and causes him to obsess on forms of energy that will never be able to deliver the growing levels of reliable baseload energy the country desperately needs.

--President Obama wants to hit the oil and gas industry with an additional $26 billion in taxes. He calls tax breaks for the industry "unjustifiable loopholes," though he has no problem with massive taxpayer-funded subsidies for unfeasible wind and solar power.

--The president's "cap-and-trade" plan to force massive cuts in carbon dioxide emissions would slap huge new costs on coal-fired power plants by making them buy allowances to emit more than they are permitted. Those costs -- in effect, an energy tax -- would be passed on to consumers.

--He has declared that Yucca Mountain -- an isolated area in Nevada which U.S. taxpayers have paid $14 billion to prepare to receive nuclear waste -- should not be allowed to store waste after all. That will complicate plans to expand nuclear energy production.

--He has proposed slashing a program that helps utilities plan and certify new nuclear power plants. If Mr. Obama wants to end subsidies, that's fine. But should he not start with the most impractical subsidies -- the ones going to unproven energy sources that cannot meet our energy needs? And why not dump the requirement that corn-based ethanol be added to our fuel supply? The 43-cent federal subsidy for every gallon of ethanol produced has raised food prices, and the fuel harms small engines and reduces mileage. _EnergyCurrent

Unfortunately, devastating the nation's energy supply in the middle of a depression is one of the worst possible things a leader could do. It is only what we expected of him, however.

An incompetent president would be manageable, if he were alone in his incompetence. Unfortunately, Obama is surrounded by incompetence of all varieties -- from the incompetence of inexperience to the incompetence of destructive ideological mind-binding.

Humans who care about the future will have to work through parallel channels to safeguard resources for the future, and to develop effective technologies for the day when a freer and more rational society can evolve.