Sometimes public opinion doesn't flow smoothly; it shifts sharply when a tipping point is reached. Case in point: gas prices. $3 a gallon gas didn't change anybody's mind about energy issues. $4 a gallon gas did. Evidently, the experience of paying more than $50 for a tankful gets people thinking we should stop worrying so much about global warming and the environmental dangers of oil wells on the outer continental shelf and in Alaska. Drill now! Nuke the caribou!
Bob Schaffer's opponents have spent the past two months tarring him as "Big Oil Bob," an advocate of oil drilling and an energy-industry insider. Maybe he should thank them.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other liberal leaders on Capitol Hill are gripped by cold-sweat terror. If they permit a vote on offshore drilling, they know they will lose when Blue Dogs and oil-patch Democrats defect to the GOP position of increasing domestic energy production. So the last failsafe is to shut down Congress.
WHY NOT have a vote on offshore drilling? There's a serious debate to be had over whether Congress should lift the ban on drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf that has been in place since 1981. Unfortunately, you won't be hearing it in the House of Representatives — certainly, you won't find lawmakers voting on it — anytime soon.
Comments and reports about global warming are getting silly and even ridiculous. Al Gore says we have ten years left. We’re told cooling is due to warming. More rain and flooding and less rain and drought are both due to warming. More hurricanes are predicted while fewer occur. Global temperatures declined as much in the first few months of 2008 as they increased in the previous 100 plus years due to warming. Recently we were told global warming is causing an increase in kidney stones in a travesty of geographic correlation assuming cause and effect. One blogger who began recording, with tongue in cheek, all the events attributed to global warming was John Brignell.
The Arctic may hold 90 billion barrels of oil, more than all the known reserves of Nigeria, Kazakhstan and Mexico combined, and enough to supply U.S. demand for 12 years, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
Public transportation is often wearisome. Today, for example, I missed my metro train from Northern Virginia to Washington, DC because a portly tourist took ten minutes to pump a roll of nickels into the ticket machine. Yesterday, the bus I take from outside my residence to the metro station failed to arrive altogether, which left me sweating in the mid-Atlantic July heat and humidity for forty minutes. And last weekend, engineers were performing track work on both the metro lines I use to get to my other job, so the fifteen mile trip took more than 2 hours.
But I’m not complaining. Instead, this is a story about hope. Specifically, it’s about my hope to emulate Al Gore. I want to be like Al Gore for the same reason I listen to rap stars—I covet their conspicuous consumption. Al Gore was born into wealth, but he has made even more money by talking about global warming.
Al is so rich that he doesn’t have to use public transit like me. His main form of travel is a luxurious Lear jet. When he does have to drive around, he uses 2 big black SUV’s, which he leaves idling outside wherever he stops to make speeches about global warming. That way, he can keep the AC on.
I am thankful that I have heroes like Al Gore and rap stars in my life, because they give me hope for a better world, one in which I’ll never have to use public transportation.
Advocates claim that ethanol mandates and subsidies protect our planet, enhance U.S. security, and ease our pain at the pump. In fact, ethanol policy hurts all Americans except for the tiny slice of the population that grows corn or distills it into ethanol.
Former Vice President Al Gore recently took his climate-change show on the road for the benefit of liberal bloggers, Sunday morning TV aficionados and other innocent bystanders. This week he laid out his demand for a miraculous transformation in U.S. energy use over a mere 10 years. As for drilling for more oil? "Absurd," the Nobel Laureate scoffed. "When you're in a hole, stop digging."
The Associated Press was shocked to discover that, gasp!, the oil companies actually pay back their investors. A new AP story is headlined: “AP IMPACT: Big Oil profits steered to investors.”
Who would have imagined! The horrors of capitalism, again! What is next? Companies meeting unnecessary and wasteful consumer demand? Destroying small businesses by competing against them with ruinously low prices? Developing frivolous new products that promote consumerism? Will the devastation wrought by free markets never stop?
What happened to the wonderful Soviet model when we really need it?
RSS Updates 
RSS E-Mail Updates 
CEI.org