The Patriot Post® · The Long Road to Energy Independence
America’s energy outlook is changing significantly for the better, which is obviously welcome news … that you’re unlikely to hear from the mainstream media.
Last week, the United States officially became a net oil exporter, a dramatic shift for the country’s energy sector. It’s been 75 years since we could say that we ship out more oil than we take in.
Increased oil production in Texas, New Mexico, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania are responsible in part for this new state of affairs. And a recently discovered oil and natural gas reserve in Texas and New Mexico should keep the pumps going for years to come. The massive reservoir contains 281 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 46.3 billion barrels of oil. It’s the largest such resource ever assessed and is enough to fuel the United States alone for up to seven years.
President Donald Trump campaigned on American energy independence, and since taking office, Trump has initiated several steps to move toward that goal. Those include relaxed federal restrictions on oil and natural gas exploration and drilling, and lifting draconian Barack Obama-era restrictions designed to bring an end to coal production in the U.S.
True energy independence has been a stated goal of every president since Richard Nixon, but no one ever went about it correctly or whole-heartedly. Several Republican and Democrat presidents embraced a policy concoction of more regulation, a reliance on “alternative” energy sources, and austerity measures to manage America’s energy needs. Not surprisingly, all fell short of energy independence.
Meeting America’s energy needs means producing more energy (a.k.a. supply-side economics) — it’s as simple as that. Our last president, who laughably insists he is responsible for America’s current energy boom, was in favor of driving up energy costs for consumers to force less usage (a.k.a. demand-side economics.) The Obama administration was also in favor of betting the ranch on unproven clean-energy technologies that were prohibitively expensive and not all that efficient or clean.
The energy boom that we are currently experiencing makes us less reliant on foreign energy producers, which in turn improves our national security. It also means more jobs to produce energy here at home, and that means a strengthened economy. Good news all around. Well, except for the climate doomsayers.
At the recent climate conference in Poland, alarmists continued their tirade against CO2 emissions, claiming that the world has just 10 years to lower those emissions before we reach the point of no return on rising surface temperatures. They also literally mocked the Trump administration’s efforts to tout fossil fuels.
Many nations at the conference unquestioningly accepted the UN’s latest report, which calls for unspecified drastic changes to industrial emissions. The United States, joined by Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait, challenged the report’s findings, with each nation saying they would only note the report rather than accept it.
The U.S. also refused to reaffirm the Paris climate deal at November’s G20 summit, much to the consternation of ecofascists. Yet by following its own policies, the U.S. has lowered emissions during seven out of the last 10 years — something that none of the nations supporting the Paris accords can say. That proves as much as anything that Paris emissions-control standards are about control, not emissions.
Climate change is a ruse to hide a leftist takeover of the economy. America’s rising energy production, and the vigorous economy that comes with it, stands in the way of that goal. So expect leftists to continue targeting Trump’s energy policy and to continue screaming hyperbolic claims that he is destroying the Earth.
(Edited.)