Cap-And-Trick

President Obama says the oil disaster proves the need to get off fossil fuels. But before we save the planet, let's save the Gulf and stop exploiting crises to deny America the energy it needs.

Saving the planet is nice, but just how do we plug the hole again? With an abundance of hand gestures, the president didn't really say in his speech Tuesday night. He did say fossil fuels were bad and green energy is good, but the people of the Gulf states don't need wind turbines right now.

Contrary to Obama's assertions, our "addiction" to foreign oil no more caused the Deepwater Horizon oil spill than any addiction to nuclear energy caused the reactor accident at Three Mile Island.  If we're addicted to anything, it's energy in all its forms. We also are addicted to jobs and economic growth, and nothing in the speech offered either. Instead we were told we have to forgo fossil fuels because they're dangerous — the same reason given after TMI to stop expanding clean and safe nuclear energy.

Never mind the dead zones for aquatic life in the Gulf of Mexico caused by agricultural runoff from the accelerated farming of corn to feed the mandated use of ethanol. Never mind the rain forests cleared worldwide to grow biofuel crops. Or the birds that will never be soaked in oil because they've been sliced and diced by wind turbines.

The irony is that if the incident at Three Mile Island had not similarly been exploited by environmentalists, we might not be so dependent on fossil fuels today. We'd have electricity for all those electric cars as billions of tons of carbon dioxide never entered the atmosphere.

The desire to make BP pay for the direct damage of the oil spill is understandable. The desire to exploit this crisis to make us all pay is not. The president noted that "the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill — a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America's businesses."

Horsefeathers. The imposition of renewable energy standards, as cap-and-trade is now called, would raise electricity prices, lower GDP and eliminate jobs. The only thing that wouldn't be capped is the Deepwater Horizon well.

If the president's argument is that the Gulf oil disaster is traceable to our reliance on foreign oil, let's exploit our vast domestic resources. If the argument is that BP went too far and too deep, that its reach exceeded its grasp, then it's the administration and its green allies that forced them to do so.

courtesy of Investors' Business Daily