In the Energy Debate between Palin and Obama…Obama Lost

Ben Voth @ American Thinker:

You  know we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices. If we’re going to take control of our energy future, and can start avoiding these annual gas price spikes that happen every year when the economy starts getting better, world demand starts increasing, turmoil in the Middle East or some other parts of the world, if we’re going to stop being at the mercy of these world events, then we need a sustained, all-of-the-abovestrategy that develops every available source of American energy – oil, gas, wind, solar, and nuclear, and biofuels, and more.

President Obama made these remarks in February of 2012 at the University of Miami.  The President was criticizing the longstanding argument of political rival Sarah Palin, who urges the nation to “drill, baby, drill.”

Palin expounded on these sentiments in 2010:

Although the Left chooses to mock the mantra of “drill, baby, drill,” and they ignorantly argue against the facts pertaining to the need for America to responsibly develop her domestic supply of natural resources, surely they can’t argue the national security implications of relying on foreign countries to extract supplies that America desperately needs for industry, jobs, and security. Some of the countries we’re now reliant upon and will soon be beholden to can easily use energy and mineral supplies as a weapon against us.

In 2011, in an interview with the CBS affiliate WTKR in Hampton Roads, Virginia, the president contradicted his own remarks suggesting that oil prices cannot be lowered by arguing:

We’re talking to oil producers around the world and letting them know it’s in their interest to make sure that high oil prices don’t end up hurting the world economy.

Of course, in this case, anyone can increase drilling and lower oil prices — as long as it is not the United States.  In fact, while tightening the moratorium on the U.S. Gulf of Mexico drilling, the federal government provided money for foreign governments to use the same deep drilling techniques in South America to increase global oil supplies.  The rhetorical license the Obama administration has to take all sides of this debate is an important political advantage.

Nonetheless, Palin has proven to be the more prescient and intelligent advocate on energy policy.  Drilling in the United States is increasing dramatically; it has already transformed our economic outlook and almost everything we know about global geopolitical realities.  Palin’s simple energy creed portends the following stunning results:

1. The U.S. is on pace to become the largest producer of oil in the world by 2017 and will be an oil exporter by 2030 — according to the New York Times!

2. The U.S. has taken an overwhelming global lead on the production of natural gas.

These shocking realities will transform American and global life in several important ways:

1. With natural gas, the United States is on target to become one of the first major industrial nations to meet the CO₂ goals of Kyoto — without ever becoming an official signatory.  Natural gas replacement of Obama’s “all of the above” strategy has dramatically reduced CO₂ emissions in the United States to 1992 levels.  It is quite possible that this trend will reduce CO₂ to 1990 levels — the goal of the Kyoto protocol on climate change.  Currently planned power plant changes will reduce the levels below 1980 levels!

2. The abundance of natural gas has so lowered energy prices that the United States is poised to become a resurgent global manufacturing power.  Energy costs are one of the most central and crucial aspects of manufacturing.  The United States has lower energy costs than China and many other rival manufacturing nations, and those costs are headed lower.  The unthinkable is happening: America will rise again as a manufacturing power in the course of this next mega-energy decade.

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