America Is Losing the Resource Race
In effect, Obama has sold out his country to every special interest group opposed to resource development and economic growth. Sadly, Americans will be paying for price for this administration’s enslavement to these special interests for decades to come.
By Jeffrey Folks at American Thinker
EXCERPTS:
Although the Obama administration seems completely oblivious of the fact, the U.S. has now embarked on a race of global proportions, one that will have even greater consequences than did the space race of 50 years ago.
From iron ore to coal, from farmland to oil and gas, Chinese state-controlled companies are determined to acquire the energy, minerals, and food supplies that will be necessary to propel China into the forefront of nations by the middle of the 21st century.
In 2011 the Chinese are expected to acquire five times the amount of overseas resources as they did in 2004. In April 2010 the Chinese oil company “Sinopec” purchased a large stake in Canadian oil sands. Chinese companies have bought up iron ore rights in West Africa and acquired massive Australian coal reserves. In October 2010 CNOOC, a state-run Chinese oil company, acquired substantial lease rights from Oklahoma City-based Chesapeake Energy.
In other words, America has an Energy Secretary who is fixated on subsidizing technologies that supply only one percent of our nation’s energy needs. Meanwhile, he is ignoring — and, worse than that, undermining — the development of the other 99%. He believes that by starving America of fossil fuels, intentionally driving up the price of gasoline to $4 a gallon and more, he can force the public to espouse less efficient but politically correct green technologies.
Unlike China, which is pursuing a well-coordinated policy of securing resource rights, America is hobbled by an administration that is ideologically hostile to the exploitation of natural resources. Obama’s fetish for green solutions has created a regulatory climate that has blocked the development of domestic resources, including mountaintop coal and offshore oil.
The anti-growth regulatory actions of the Obama administration are far too numerous to cite here, but they include EPA’s finding that carbon dioxide is a pollutant; EPA’s apparently baseless investigation of groundwater pollution from hydraulic fracturing; EPA’s “war with Texas” over state-level environmental regulation of industry; the raising of CAFÉ standards for cars and trucks and the subsidy of electric vehicles; the SEC’s proposal that all listed companies must assess the potential effects of climate change in their annual reports; the presidential directive to extend wilderness protections to as much as 140 million acres of public land; blocking of offshore drilling along both coasts and offshore Alaska; and on and on.
In effect, Obama has sold out his country to every special interest group opposed to resource development and economic growth. Sadly, Americans will be paying for price for this administration’s enslavement to these special interests for decades to come.
FULL ARTICLE
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