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Rather than whining about all of the predictable market pressures that are out of his control, the president should have spent his time planning ways to counterbalance them so that consumers would not get slammed. This he could have done, in both the short term and the long term. Short term efforts like pushing drilling in the Gulf and encouraging more development of more wet shale gas production would have helped stabilize prices immediately. Longer term projects, like Keystone XL and opening up federal lands like ANWR for drilling, would have taken the winds out of the sails of speculators, along with generating billions in tax revenue and tens of thousands of jobs.
Instead, the president continues to funnel tax dollars into ridiculous, pie-in-the-sky, money pit energy projects. For example, during his University of Miami speech, the president announced that his administration was committing $14 million to help develop algae-based fuels. He expects that will sound terribly cutting edge, but here’s the punch line: we know how to make algae-based fuels already. There’s no magic about doing so. There are no secrets to be uncovered. We’ve known how to turn algae into fuel for decades, but there’s a reason that we haven’t done so: it’s not even close to being cost competitive compared to traditional fuels.
At least it’s not cost-competitive to undertake such projects unless one is determined to game the system such that using less-expensive energy alternatives is no longer allowed. In that case, tossing money at ridiculous, expensive and unreliable forms of power generation under the guise of developing “clean energy” makes all the sense in the world. That is, if your ultimate objective is to make sure that your friends cash in on the scheme, no matter what happens to the average consumer.
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