President Obama’s February 23 speech at the University of Miami supplemented his energy views in the State of the Union address and his 2013 Fiscal Year budget submitted to Congress. Playing defense in the face of high gasoline prices and an oil and gas boom not of his making, Obama’s pitch was long on misdirection and spin and short of true market-base reform.

Make no mistake: the President’s energy universe centers around curtailing the use of fossil fuels, in particular coal, due to fears that carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from combustion will cause catastrophic global warming.  This motivation will guide future energy policies until the Obama era is over.

The United States has the most abundant fossil fuel reserves in the world, the greatest agriculture system, and the most innovative population, all of which should ensure prosperity for centuries. …

“The oil and natural gas that we rely on for 75 percent of our energy are simply running out.… World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years. But sometime in the 1980’s, it can’t go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that.”

“To some degree, the sacrifices will be painful—but so is any meaningful sacrifice. It will lead to some higher costs and to some greater inconvenience for everyone. But the sacrifices can be gradual, realistic, and they are necessary.”

“We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and our grandchildren.”

– Jimmy Carter, Energy Address to the Nation, April 18, 1977

Will Obama and his ilk learn the lessons of history?…

Editor note: The first post in in this three-part series was titled A Free Market Energy Vision (Part I: Worldview); the third is“Federal Energy Policy for America (Part III: Cato’s priorities–and a few more).”

The Obama Administration has been implementing an anti-energy agenda since coming to Washington. From day one, Obama and his “dream ‘green’ team” have worked to increase the cost of traditional energy to reduce usage and try to make uneconomic consumer-rejected energy (wind, solar, ethanol, electric vehicles) more economic.

The effects of these policies are now playing out in front of the American people: rising energy prices, tens of thousands of jobs destroyed, and increasing dependence on foreign state-owned energy companies. In response, the free market community has been playing defense.

But even before Obama, multiple-hundred-page interventionist legislation has been signed time and again by Republican presidents.…