It's Alive!

by Ronald Bailey - June 2009 Edition - Reason Magazine

In 1979, as lines at gas stations snaked for blocks, the House of Representatives, by a vote of 368 to 25, created the U.S. Synthetic Fuels Corporation, an “independent” federal entity charged with creating new fuel sources by spending $20 billion in seed money ($57 billion in 2009 dollars) during its first five years. Originally, the Synfuels Corporation was projected to spend $88 billion ($250 billion in today’s dollars) over 12 years to build the capacity to produce the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day from coal.

That was just one element of Carter’s ambitious energy plans. In July 1979 he announced, “I will soon submit legislation to Congress calling for the creation of this nation’s first solar bank, which will help us achieve the crucial goal of 20 percent of our energy coming from solar power by the year 2000.” In 1980 Congress authorized the Department of Energy to spend $1.3 billion on ethanol research and loans to produce fuel for automobiles. In May of that year, Carter declared, “For the first time in our nation’s history, we will have a national energy program to put us on the road to energy security. It’s more ambitious than the space program, the Marshall plan, and the Interstate Highway System combined.”

Sound familiar? During the 2008 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Barack Obama declared almost daily that developing new energy sources and breaking our addiction to foreign oil would “take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy.” He explicitly compared his plan to putting a man on the moon and building the Interstate Highway System.

The "monster" is alive and well. That monster is cheap energy that continues to be found as natural resources on our planet. Cheap energy is something that liberals are pathologically unwilling to use. After billions of dollars have been spent in search of "green" energy, Democrats are so frustrated with the lack of success that they regularly insist, "It is time for America to start investing in 'green' energy." That statement is the statement of idiots or morons (Oops! I am sorry. I forgot that only liberals are allowed to insult people and only conservatives can be the target). It ignores the fact that hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on "green" energy over the last 50 years with constant failure to accomplish the goals the only common thread.

There is always some unintended consequence that liberals try to hide. The latest incompetent fiasco is ethanol. The "green" substitute for petroleum has now been found to create more "greenhouse gases" than petroleum and also includes the minor annoyance of DRIVING FOOD COSTS UP BY ASTRONOMICAL AMOUNTS.

Always these liberals ignore history, ignore science, ignore common sense... and LIE to get their way (Oops. There I go again. Only liberals are allowed to say that someone lies. I keep forgetting these rules to assure decorum can only be violated by those on the left). Liberals always start the argument with "It is time that we blah blah blah" always ignoring the fact that they have been "timing" us again and again. Do they think we are too stupid to remember all their previous efforts to abandon petroleum and convert to "green" fuels? Some of us do. Synfuels, solar, wind, fuel cells, electric, forced conservation, ocean tides, ethanol... every few years their is another liberal passion for the "new" green fuel that will finally break through and kill petroleum and coal. So they pour hundreds of billions of dollars into some program and it fails again. How many times can they play the same con game and get away with it?