By David Linton
I would hate to count the number of times I have
heard over the course of the past year how we need to develop a national energy
policy to insure our national energy security.
Sure, this sounds great. Today
the primary sources of our energy are those entities that hate America and its
way of life. We do need to move to a
posture in our nation that seeks secure domestic sources of energy so as to
prevent constraints to the flow of energy by those who hate us.
We have vast amounts of energy resources: coal, oil,
natural gas, petroleum, wind, and solar.
We have been discovering surprising new sources of energy over the past
few years. It is far past time to move
in a direction to develop these resources.
What policy should we implement?
What energy sources should we develop?
How should we go about developing them?
While we talk about developing a coherent national energy
policy, we should be clear that we do have a national energy policy now. It may be haphazard. It may be a patchwork. But there is a national energy policy. Our national energy policy is being forced on
us by a restrictive national government.
EPA is threatening power generation with stringent emission limits. The global warming pseudo science would ban
the use of coal. We subsidize many forms
of green power. The national government
is prohibiting the development of the Keystone Pipeline. Regulations and threatened regulations
discourage energy development all across the nation. Like it or not, this is a national energy
policy.
Certainly, there are many voices that champion new
energy policies. The Republican Party is
pushing the Keystone Pipeline. There are
those in Oklahoma and in the Dakotas that are encouraging gas development in
those regions. Wind power is making
gains in the mid-west. So which of these
policies do we embrace?
I hope in this last question you see the circular reasoning
of the whole fallacy of a “national energy policy.” Any “national energy policy” suggests a
policy set by our national regulators.
Discussing a “national energy policy” inherently suggests giving the power
to make the call on what to pursue to those who regulate us. We should have learned the lesson by now that
those that regulate our lives do not make the best calls. Our constitutional republic, for good or ill,
is not designed to develop a good consistent policy on anything. Our system is designed through power checks
and balances to guard the liberty of the citizens against the power of the
central government.
If we are to achieve
a good energy policy that will insure national energy security, we must adopt
the goal of having no energy policy at all.
We must approach the problem in a manner that is consistent with the way
our system is designed. We must handle
it though government guarding liberty and not the policy developed within the interests
of the regulators. We must remove the
regulatory shackles that restrict industry and the ingenuity of a free market
place. Our slave masters in Washington,
D.C. are driven by control and reelection.
Our private industries are driven by profit. Profit motive in this context is a good
thing. Allowing each individual entrepreneur
assess the profit potential for each energy source in this nation will be the
quickest way to energy independence. By
the very nature of the free market, each entrepreneur will seek to develop the
most beneficial, efficient, and profitable form of energy available. This is
the best energy policy and will bring us energy security.
Posts
