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Jewish World Review April 26, 2011 24 Nissan, 5771 Are Sky-High Gas Prices Good? By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Are high gas prices a good thing? That is not as dumb a question as it sounds. Examine a few revealing past remarks from President Obama and the Cabinet officials who are now in charge of the nation's energy use and oil leases on federal lands. Then decide whether the current soaring gas prices are supposed to be good or bad. In 2008, then- From 2007 to 2008, In other words, During the 2008 campaign, Obama himself had strange ideas about the prospect of expensive prices for fossil-fuel-generated energy: "Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." Then-candidate Obama also elaborated on the envisioned role of his administration in ensuring such high prices: "So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It's just that it will bankrupt them." As for consumers' plight in paying skyrocketing gas prices, the president, now and in the past, has sounded ambivalent. He recently told a questioner, "If you're complaining about the price of gas and you're only getting eight miles a gallon, you know, you might want to think about a trade-in." Few large passenger vehicles today get only eight miles a gallon, and many squeezed Americans in recessionary times cannot so breezily think of "a trade-in" In 2008, Obama addressed consumer fears about climbing gas prices: "But we could save all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling, if everybody was just inflating their tires and getting regular tune-ups. You could actually save just as much." Note again the fantasy. Few of today's cars have distributor points. New-generation spark plugs and computerized ignition usually ensure 75,000-100,000 miles without a so-called "tune-up." There is no evidence that Americans' tires are chronically under-inflated, or if they were, that such negligence would waste more gasoline than all that could be recovered from new offshore oil drilling. What explains the weird rhetoric from Obama and his administration? First, not long ago they considered high energy prices as not that bad. Government-sponsored mass transit and alternative energy projects -- from wind and solar to the federally subsidized Chevy Volt -- pencil out only when gas gets expensive. And if you believe in man-made global warming, then the less coal, gas or oil that Americans use, the better for the planet. Second, a president who believes that modern cars get eight miles per gallon or need frequent tune-ups, and that proper tire inflation can substitute for drilling oil, has never run a business that hinged on having moderately priced gas to power a truck, tractor or car fleet. In fact, most in the Obama administration came to So much of this administration's talk about energy sounds similar to a bull session in the faculty lounge, or what we would expect from lifelong bureaucrats and public functionaries who have never experienced long commutes or struggles in the harsher, profit-driven private workplace. Now the global economy is recovering and energy use is climbing, as the U.S. dollar sinks. The oil-rich Its answer? Simple: Since re-election looms, the administration now insists that high energy prices are no longer good, but suddenly bad. And the evil oil companies are mostly to blame!
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. Comment by clicking here. © 2011, TMS |
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