The Need for Vital Energy vs. the Giant Green-Industrial Complex

...in the U.S., new technologies such as hydraulic fracking and vertical drilling have vastly increased estimates of North America’s energy resources, particularly natural gas. By 2020, the United States, according to the consultancy PFC Energy, will surpass Russia and Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil and gas producer. _Kotkin

All healthy, modern industrial economies require abundant supplies of energy. Any organisation or institution which obstructs the supply of energy to a modern nation is the deadly enemy of that society and those people. Today, the huge, well-funded green-industrial complex is exposing itself as opposed to all reliable and affordable forms of energy. This means that there is a war, of sorts, taking place in modern industrial nations, between the pro-prosperity forces and the energy-starvation forces.

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The divide between the fossil-fuel industry and the green movement is increasingly dividing the country by region, class, and culture....President Obama in recent days has gone out of his way to sound reassuring on energy, seeming to approve an oil pipeline to Oklahoma this week after earlier approving leases for drilling in Alaska. Yet few in the energy industry trust the administration’s commitment to expanding the nation’s conventional energy supplies given his strong ties to the powerful green movement, which opposes the fossil-fuel industry in a split that’s increasingly dividing the country by region, class, and culture.

...No single sector affects more people and industries than energy, and none is more deeply affected by the disposition of government. Energy divides the nation into two camps. On one side there are the regions and industries dependent on the development and use of energy. They include the increasingly expansive energy-producing region stretching from the Gulf Coast and the Great Plains to parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and the Appalachian range.

...Nine of the 11 fastest-growing job categories are related to energy production, according to an analysis by Economic Modeling Systems Inc. Energy jobs pay an average of $100,000 annually, about the same as software engineers earn in Silicon Valley.

Perhaps more important politically, this bonanza is now spreading to historical battleground states Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Long-depressed areas like western Pennsylvania are reversing decades of decline as new finds and advances in natural-gas drilling have opened up vast new stores of domestic energy. The new energy wealth has created new jobs, enriched property owners, and provided states with potential huge new sources of revenue.

...Given the success in the other energy states, California—with double-digit unemployment—might reconsider its policies, but this is unlikely. “I asked [Gov.] Jerry Brown about why California cannot come to grips with its huge hydrocarbon reserves,” John Hofmeister, a former president of Shell Oil’s American operations and a member of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technical Advisory Committee, told me recently. “After all, this could turn around the state."

Brown’s answer, according to Hofmeister: “This is not logic, it’s California. This is simply not going to happen here.’”

...If all [national] energy subsidies were removed, the fossil-fuel industry likely could shrug off the hit, while the heavily subsidized green-industrial complex would markedly diminish. Yet even if Congress refuses to continue the green subsidies, it’s probable that administration regulators would find ways to slow fossil-fuel expansion in a second Obama term. Responding largely to the Democratic environmental lobby, they have already overruled the State Department to delay the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada.... _Joel
Kotkin

It is slowly sinking into Barack Obama's mind that he confronts perhaps the first real political test of his charmed career. This time, the abysmal economic condition of the country can be laid squarely at his feet. With a real unemployment rate of 11% and an underemployment rate above 20%, the housing market continuing to decline across large swathes of the country, and 73% of the US population saying the country is "on the wrong track" -- Mr. Obama's spin machine has its work cut out for it.

Canada, on the other hand, appears to have been taking a more rational pro-energy approach from the very start of its current administration.

The [Canadian] government’s notion of an energy strategy — emphasize the power and efficiency of markets, get rid of red tape, finger environmental radicals, and remind the U.S. how secure Canadian supplies are — received a double boost this week...

...the main reason for both the strong Canadian dollar and high petroleum prices is that government money factories from the U.S. Federal Reserve to the European Central Bank are trying to bail out their political masters by debasing their currencies. It’s got little or nothing to do with Fort McMurray.

The good news on the policy front is that this spat helps put paid to the notion that Canada is ever likely to get a comprehensive and intrusive energy strategy of the kind usually embraced by left liberal governments _GWPF Peter Foster

Countries across the western world had best get out the disinfectant, to remove the green rot which is eating away at their industrial and economic strength. The alternative to such vigorous spring cleaning is a progressive sinking into the twin quagmires of debt and demographic decline.

You are not likely to enjoy that alternative.