Last week a proposal to lift the moratorium on shale oil extraction was narrowly defeated in a Senate committee. The vote was along strictly party lines, Republicans for lifting the ban and Democrats against. What a surprise.
All of this despite the fact that everyone pays lip service to the idea that we need to get closer to that dream of energy independence. And this despite the fact that oil prices have gone through the roof and then some, raising the motivation (and cost-effectiveness) of developing our own reserves.
Many people have come to distrust oil companies, and think everything they do is suspect and perhaps even evil. And many people—especially of the Democrat persuasion—would like nothing better than to for us to go back to some golden age of low energy needs, although how this would happen without a huge culling of the present population I can’t quite imagine. Short of that, they would prefer us to do without oil entirely, to develop alternative energy sources that are clean and have the blessing of environmentalists, although none of these promise to be any more than slight adjuncts to the task of meeting our current and future energy demands (and why alternative energy companies, if successful, would be any less profit-motivated or venal in the end than the oil companies are perceived to be is anybody’s guess. Maybe because they’d be run by Democrats? [/sarcasm]) Continue reading →
