The Gop Energy Raid

FOR YEARS the liberals have been telling us that we needed to end our addiction to oil. We needed to do this because energy use harmed the environment. It paved over the nation. It released greenhouse gases. Anyway, there was a finite supply of fossil fuels, and pretty soon we would hit the “peak oil” moment and oil production would go into irreversible decline. And we needed a national energy plan to prepare for a future of solar power, wind power, bio-fuels, and renewables.

All along, conservatives have been saying that liberals had it all wrong. Energy wasn’t a question of fixed or finite anything, it was an expression of human ingenuity. We could keep using oil—or maybe tar sands or oil shale—for centuries into the future. Or we could build nuclear plants. Or we could develop coal. Sure, we said, the planet is heating up—for now—but we don’t know enough about the future to start making wrenching changes in energy use.

By and large the American people have been going along with the liberals on this, and it is not hard to see why. If you get your information from the TV news or from newspapers and magazines they all agree with the liberal line.

Even as recently as last weekend, Sen. Barack Obama the uniter was peddling the liberal line, saying:

We can’t drill our way out of the problem.

You see, even if we did drill, it wouldn’t make much difference, and then we have to ask ourselves “if is worth it for us to damage the environment permanently” and so on.

Of course, this sort of black-and-white thinking is exactly what Democrats are always accusing the Republicans of doing.

But the problem is that energy and environmental policy involve predictions about the future. That means that they are uncertain. That means that they are almost certainly wrong. Suppose you develop an national energy plan. Suppose it was the most brilliant energy plan imaginable. One thing would be for sure. The day after it was announced, it would be out-of-date.

How do we deal with the future in society? We make bets on the future. Entrepreneurs and investors start new companies to develop new technology. Existing companies make decisions about whether to open a mine, or drill for oil, or build a power plant. Maybe they are right. Then they will make a lot of money. Maybe they are wrong. Then they will lose a lot of money. That is what the capitalist system is all about.

But conservatives don’t get a chance to talk to the American people about this until gas shoots up above $4.00 a gallon. Then all of a sudden when we say “Drill,” the American people agree with us and say “Yeah!”.

There is no use getting resentful about this. The fact is that liberals own the culture. They get to control pretty well what is said on the air and in print. But sometimes things go wrong. Sometimes they look like they don’t know what they are talking about, like right now when they seem to be expecting the working class and the poor to suck it in so liberals can feel good about saving the planet. That is the moment when conservatives can execute a daring raid into liberal territory shouting “Drill, Drill, Drill!”

And that is what President Bush did yesterday when he called for Congress to end the ban on drilling in Alaska and on the outer continental shelf.

So maybe we will be able to stampede the Democrats into letting the evil oil companies do what they want to do, the only thing they know how to do: Drill. For. Oil.

Then we can go back to global warming, polar bear extinction, and solar and wind power, and all the other silly stuff that liberals go on about all the time.

I tell you. This ain’t rocket science.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.