Obama's Energy Folly

Cap and trade may soon be the law of the land. At a time when the economy is reeling, this scheme may put paid to any chance of sustained recovery and return to prosperity. Industry will find the new regulation so onerous, so burdensome, that they simply close or where possible, move abroad. Anyone hear Ross Perot's "giant sucking sound" of our wounded companies fleeing. The requirements on utilities to produce twenty percent of their power output by 2012 by wind or solar power will be impossible to meet. Ever heard of the doldrums-a nautical term sailors use when craft stagnate when there is no wind-you can not guarantee a turbine spinning to produce electricity-even if all the blowhard politicians exhale at once. With your solar array, are you going to just wish clouds away? Hydroelectric power from water is not considered green enough to be part of this scheme which will make Al Gore even richer, along with a few activists and corporations (including NBC parent company GE) who have tailored the legislation for their benefit at the expense of the rest of us. What about nuclear-even France and Japan, where the only A-bombs were ever dropped, have embraced clean, safe nuclear energy. Only the China Syndrome movie, misplaced fears about an American Chernobyl (US plants have always been designed with safety as the priority rather than the Russian design where it was an afterthought) that would actually kill many people, or hysteria about another Three Mile Island that killed no one, prevent America from implementing a massive program to build nuclear plants that would meet our energy needs cheaply and virtually pollution free while employing thousands. Prepare to pay more on your electric bill each month. Ready yourself for brownouts. Back up your data off site. A new national nightmare of jobs lost, punitive power bills, and suffering with blackouts with food spoilage, data loss, and the quality of life experienced in the third world, will soon fall upon us. Cheap, abundant energy creates prosperity and makes developed countries. Just as Islamists want to return to the seventh century, atavistic environmentalist want to reverse progress and send us back to a primordial paradise populated by plants, not people.