Obama Administration: Hydrocarbon-Deniers

There's a new term for you: Hydrocarbon-Deniers. Those are people who think that we can magically walk away from fossil fuels and everything will be a-okay and all Americans will have good jobs as a result.

That is, until reality kicks in and we see what really happens. The truth is that oil and other fossil fuels are what we need to get our economy back on track. Why the Obama Administration and other leftists are stuck in some fantasy world, I can't even begin to guess.

Investor's Business Daily notes the following:

With an economy struggling to regain sound footing, Chu advocated a starvation diet devoid of additional fossil fuels that are to remain under the ground and seabed. Instead, he supports 53% more funding for wind research and a 22% jump for solar research. Subsidizing alternative energy fits the classic definition of insanity. Despite huge subsidies, it has proved to be neither cost-effective nor a reliable, significant contributor to our national power grid. Yet we keep subsidizing it, expecting a different result. "Oil is an ideal transportation fuel, so it will be with us for decades," Chu conceded, even as the administration forbids us from getting more of it here, creating energy jobs, lowering energy costs and cutting our trade deficit. Instead we'll rely increasingly on foreign and often unfriendly suppliers.

How much more money are we going to waste a) researching energy sources that won't fulfill our needs and b) buying oil from Islamic nations so those governments can turn around and give that money to terrorist groups to attack us?

If the left keeps getting its way, we will waste that money forever.

More:

Equally unimpressed with Chu's presentation was another speaker. "Gas is more than a bridge fuel," said James Mulva, CEO of Houston-based ConocoPhillips, noting that huge gas discoveries in recent years in North America in shale and other unconventional rock formations could provide more than a century of supply. "It is part of the long-term energy solution." "We must overcome the opposition of the 'hydrocarbon deniers,'" Mulva said, playing off Al Gore's term for climate-change skeptics. Hydrocarbon deniers, he said, are those who "believe that renewable energy will quickly and easily replace hydrocarbons and cure all that ails us." The headline above a story in the New York Times read, "Oil Execs Chortle as Obama Admin Promotes Renewables." Except that it's not funny; it's tragic. To leave vast stores of domestic energy untapped while Americans are looking for cheap energy and jobs is irresponsible. Unfortunately, this administration has no long-term energy solution, other than hoping for a lot of cloudless and windy days.

But the Obama Administration is set to put a 3 year ban in place for offshore drilling. Such bans will only serve to keep the cost of energy high and the prospect of economic recovery low.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Chortling At Chu
IBD Editorial
March 15, 2010