Energy Strangulation: The Obama Game Plan Emerges

A clear strategy is emerging from the Obama administration’s recent moves on the energy front: not-so-slow energy strangulation.

The pattern is hard to miss:

To ensure that nuclear power does not grow (even while claiming he supports it), President Obama is de-funding the long-studied Yucca Mountain Repository, increasing uncertainty about waste disposal and scaring off potential investors.

To guarantee that coal becomes too expensive to burn (even as Obama pretends to support it), Obama’s EPA just suspended permits for mountaintop mining of coal, a move that could affect 200 coal mining operations in the Appalachians. (Now that’s job creation for ya!)

Finally to ensure that we don’t develop our own oil and natural gas resources (which Obama claims to support),Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has voided some leases in Utah and initiated a “review” of other oil and natural gas leases sold under the Bush administration. Congress is planning to sock another 2 million square miles of land away as “wilderness areas,” and – surprise – many of them are known reserves of oil, natural gas, and oil shale.

Meanwhile, environmentalists at the state level continue to oppose the “renewable” projects that are supposed to replace fossil fuels. In California, there is a pitched battle over plans to build solar power facilities in the desert, not to mention the power lines that would carry the power to California’s cities.

And of course, one should not forget the ridiculous situation with the Cape Wind project, where eco-celebrity Robert Kennedy Jr. has opposed offshore wind that might taint the view from the Kennedy compound. Kennedy is all for wind power, so long as it’s not in any place a) windy, or b) disturbing to his delicate sensibilities.

There can be only one accurate description of what is going on here: this is a strategy of intentional energy strangulation. The Left environmental movement, now running the show in Washington, is determined to put America in an energy-straitjacket in order to limit our ability to harm (or benefit from) the resources of the Earth, which they view as holy ground. Protecting the Earth is, to them, far more important than protecting human health and welfare. And at times they’re not afraid to say it. As Paul Ehrlich, mentor to Obama science advisor John Holdren, once wrote:

“[G]iving society cheap abundant energy at this point would be equivalent to giving an idiot child a machine gun.”

That seems to be Obama’s philosophy as well.