Obama's Words Ring Hollow In His Energy Speech

By Phil Kerpen

President Obama’s speech Wednesday can’t obscure the fact that his is the most adamantly anti-energy administration since at least Jimmy Carter.

Today, Obama touted a tiny number of permit approvals and said that proves his administration isn’t anti-energy. Give me a break. Between the lengthy, unlawful moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico, the de facto moratorium in Alaska that is being challenged by the state in court, the EPA’s astonishing regulatory agenda to “skin the cat” of imposing huge energy taxes, and a slew of insane land policies from the Department of the Interior designed to cut off access, this administration bears significant responsibility for surging energy prices.

Consider the words of the man Obama hired as his top adviser on science and technology, John P. Holdren:

“A massive campaign must be launched to restore a high-quality environment in North America and to de-develop the United States. . . . Resources and energy must be diverted from frivolous and wasteful uses in overdeveloped countries to filling the genuine needs of underdeveloped countries. This effort must be largely political.”

A president who would hire such a man cannot credibly deny, as he did today, that his administration has been extremely anti-energy.

Obama also touted a so-called Clean Energy Standard, and by “clean energy” he means politically-favored, economically-questionable, and highly-unreliable windmills and solar panels. Of course, the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. You can’t run a modern economy without affordable coal, oil, and natural gas. Countries that have tried — like Spain, Germany, and the U.K. – have ruined themselves economically. (And of course green groups will sue to block “clean energy” the same way they sue to block everything else.)

The biggest irony of Obama pretending to be pro-energy today of all days is that the Senate is debating whether or not to stop his EPA’s astonishing global warming power grab. As this new web video shows, the EPA agenda amounts to Obama’s same extreme, anti-energy, high-tax effort that was decisively rejected in the past election.

Until Obama calls off the dogs at EPA, fully lifts the de facto moratoria on drilling in the Gulf and Alaska, and green-lights development of our abundant natural resources on-shore, his words will continue to ring hollow, and Americans will continue to suffer as energy prices continue to increase and jobs continue to be lost.

Phil Kerpen is vice president for policy at Americans for Prosperity and the author of the forthcoming book “Democracy Denied” (BenBella Books, October 2011) on Obama’s extreme regulatory agenda.

Read more at The Audacity of Logic