Yep, Obama’s at it again, saying one thing and doing another. This time it’s An Energy Head Fake, as today’s WSJ calls it. The litany of State of the Union promises included “a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants” and “new offshore areas for oil and gas development.” Hooray! The guy is really serious about reducing our energy dependency.
NOT! Since that time Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, halted the plan for leasing the energy-rich Outer Continental Shelf. But this wasn’t a military command “halt,” it was more like death by a thousand cuts, including:
- extending the public comment period by six months,
- taking “several weeks” (which turned out to be five months) to analyze comments,
- informing Congress that he was scrapping the lease plan,
- informing Congress that leasing will not begin for another two years,
- failing to comply with the deadline for submitting a court-ordered EIR for new leases off the Alaskan coast, and
- rebuffing Virginia’s request to allow offshore drilling.
Onshore, Salazar is canceling oil and gas leases in Utah and Wyoming. He also plans to have Obama designate 10 million of acres of western lands as “monuments” under the Antiquities Act putting them off limits for mineral rights. Nevada is impacted in this effort.
On the nuclear front, Obama’s promised $8.3 billion loan guarantee for two nukes in Georgia while nice is meaningless in the absence of regulatory certainty according to Mike Morris, CEO of American Electric Power. And of course Obama continues his head fake by putting the kibosh on Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository.
Growth and attendant energy demand in China and India are all too certain. Continuation of our serious energy dependency is painfully assured. As long as we ignore real energy resources at our disposal and waste taxpayer money on subsidies for wind and solar we are endangering our economic future.
Unfortunately we are stuck with a president caught up in himself and his last “teleprompted” rhetoric. To put it kindly, “he doesn’t walk the talk.” I sometimes wonder if he listens to it at all!
Tom Motherway