No Energy Alternatives

So far there is no information about the cause of another oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico, but some are already making political hay out of it.  The longstanding theme that oil companies are malevolent and predatory grows in power every time there is an accident.

(Update: CNN reports that all 7 wells at the platform have been closed off and that any fire or leakage will come only from oil in storage.  This appears not to be the dramatic vindication of anti-oil extremism that some were hoping for.)

Trouble is, exactly zero of the anti-oil zealots have offered a meaningful alternative for energy production for the foreseeable future.   Wind and solar power are often bandied about as alternatives to oil, especially by global warming true believers.  But the problems with this shallow approach are manifold.  Most importantly, neither wind nor solar power can produce a meaningful reduction in the need for oil.  The majority of oil is used for transportation, not to power or heat homes.  And notwithstanding grandiose claims about electric cars, they are simply not practical for the vast majority of the country where 40-mile range is not adequate for passenger cars nor is electrical propulsion even vaguely practical for the trucking industry upon which the entire American economy rests.  Also, environmental activists often avoid coming clean about their own obstructionist role in inhibiting the deployment of many wind and solar power projects.  What they offer as an alternative in rhetoric, they often turn around and obstruct in court.

The Obama Administration and its supporters are happy to paste the oil industry with a “moratorium” supposedly in the interests of “safety” and are more than happy to eliminate tens of thousands of jobs in the process, even while elsewhere pretending to champion the idea of putting America back to work.  But cutting off exploration and drilling, either in the short term or (as many suspect) for a much longer period of time, will only accelerate the real problem of trying to maintain adequate energy supplies.  No amount of “green energy initiatives” (most of which only exist in political rhetoric anyway) are going to power millions of semi-trailer trucks and passenger cars nor are they going to put tens of thousands of newly-unemployed oil workers (and hundreds of thousands more on the Gulf Coast’s broader economy) back to work during the combination of the nationwide recession and the artificial depression in the oil industry imposed by the Obama Administration’s mandate.

The anti-oil crowd seems to have nothing to offer except cheering others’ tragedies.