US Energy Public Alliance Committee
We are the American people, and we are the greatest, most self-reliant, most generous people on earth.
What does that have to do with energy? A great deal, actually.
We turn on the TV or radio. We pick up our newspaper every day. What do we see? A debate over our economic crisis: a crisis that centers on energy and energy production.
In this volatile election year we have an on-going debate over our involvement in Iraq, and that too gets caught up in the debate over energy
Oil is at the center of the energy debate. No matter how much we may dote on alternative fuel sources, they are still in a more limited supply and are more expensive to produce than oil.
The experts argue about whether or not we are technically in a recession. Meanwhile we go to the pump, pay $4.00 per gallon for gas, and, for the first time in our lifetimes, calculate the price of gas in deciding when and where to vacation, plow our fields and heat our homes.
We go to the grocery store and are shocked by the rising price of our weekly food bill.
And this too is part of the energy question. In the pursuit of energy self-reliance we are turning our food stuffs into fuel, thus creating rising prices at home and riots abroad over the cost of tortillas made from corn grown in the United States.
In the midst of all this we continue to debate whether we should be drilling for oil.
Energy independence? It really isn’t a problem. We have vast oil fields in the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). We have vast oil fields in the Bakken Formation of North Dakota. We have vast shale oil reserves in the Green River Basin of the Western U.S. We have oil off the cost of California. We have oil in the Gulf of Mexico, currently being mined by Cuba with the help of China.
So why aren't we tapping into these resources? Mostly because of decades-old laws passed at the behest of organizations like the Sierra Club who want to protect our “pristine places.” Their approach is not based on scientific or ecological facts, but on a fundamentalist environmental ideology that ignores modern drilling technology and deems any oil production here to be destructive to the earth’s ecology.
We have not put a new drill in the ground in 30 years. We have not built a new refinery in 35 years. Yet we wonder at the price of gas?
Our forbearers came from all over the world. Finding an American culture that they could contribute to, taking what worked and changing what didn’t within the context of their own experience.
These people came to make a new life. They came to build a future. And they succeeded. As a result, we are a sympathetic and generous people. When our military might is needed to fight tyranny, we're there. And when disaster strikes others — even in China — we're there.
We can also be energy-independent. Do we need oil? Let’s go get it here at home. Do we want to feed the world? We can do it.
Do we want to make these things affordable? We can do it.
We have the resources. Let’s USE them. We don’t have to be at the mercy of others. We can set our own prices on our own commodities.
It’s time for America to rise up once again and show the rest of the world it can be done.
