Obama Energy Secretary is a Capitalist’s ‘Worst Nightmare’

bpoi — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:01:57 +0000

Barack Obama has announced his major Energy appointments, and the news isn’t good. Our new Energy Secretary under Obama will be a professor of physics at the University of Berkeley named Steven Chu. Liberals will be quick to point to his Nobel Prize as one of his strengths, but I will be quicker and point out that his Nobel Prize is in physics, which has nothing to do with energy policy. Despite the fact that climate science is not his academic expertise, Chu has made finding solutions to global warming into something of a “passion,” according to the New York Times.

What is his solution to the “problem” of global warming?

We need to alter the playing field with tax and fiscal polices… Developed countries have made this step with air and water pollution by enacting outright regulations and installing a cap and trade system.

Uh huh. So the new Energy Secretary has no plans on how to create new energy in the United States? Just more regulation and taxes on energy that we already have?

Mr. Chu has called for gradually ramping up gasoline taxes over 15 years to coax consumers into buying more-efficient cars and living in neighborhoods closer to work. “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe,” Mr. Chu, who directs the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal in September.

The new Energy Secretary is not interested in energy independence. In the strictest sense of the word, he is looking to foster a new energy dependence– not a dependence on foreign suppliers, like in the past. No, Chu’s new energy plan is to socially-engineer the American people towards a further dependence on the government. The state will decide what kind of cars we drive and how close we live together.

The media is taking much enjoyment in pointing out that Obama disagrees with Chu on gas taxes. Its true. In the past, Obama has opposed a raise in the gas tax, but it is likely that his reasons were rooted in political pragmatism (remember gas prices in the summer?). But now that he’s got the top job, Obama can appoint ideologues like Chu to high-level positions in his cabinet and let them make all of the hard decisions for him.

In addition to wanting to dictate to oil companies what they should charge for their products, Mr. Chu has referred to coal powered energy as his “worst nightmare,” and has said that even clean-coal technologies will not be enough. “It’s not guaranteed we have a solution for coal,” he said.

Take a look at this graph of where our electricity came from in 2007. As you can see, coal power makes up about half of all of it. That’s a good thing; and Steven Chu wants a “solution” for it.

In summary:

The Middle is Always Evil » global warming solution

Obama Energy Secretary is a Capitalist’s ‘Worst Nightmare’