It seems to always come around like an unwanted neighbor; two or three times a year, it seems to slowly increase without explanation. No, I’m not talking about insects or weeds in the grass; I’m talking about gas prices.
Gasoline prices in the U.S. have increased dramatically in the last month. According to the American Automobile Association, the nation’s largest car service organization, as of Feb. 26, prices have gone up every day for the last 33 days and the average price of a gallon of unleaded gasoline rose to more than $3.70 in most areas of the country. That compares to about $3.57 a gallon a year ago.
These price increases are unacceptable and dangerous to the nation’s already fragile economy. The need for a new national energy policy is now more apparent than ever. It seems like every year, at the beginning of March and end of August, the gasoline prices go up, sometimes with an explanation — like a crisis in the Middle East, but most of the time without any given reason.
The average consumers, whose personal finances are squeezed with each sudden increase at the gas pump, have become the victims of a wrongheaded energy policy. In states whose governments have imposed cumbersome regulations on fuel — like Hawaii, California and New York — consumers are forced to pay upwards of five dollars a gallon, in some areas.
Appropriately named ‘the Pain at the Pump” by local media outlets like WSVN and the Miami Herald, it has become an unnecessary recycling of the same issue year after year.
David Yahn, the former opinions editor of The Current, wrote about this topic in the March 13, 2012 edition of paper, with an article entitled “High oil prices ache the head and the wallet”. It’s dismaying that absolutely nothing has changed in American energy policy since then.
The Obama administration’s current energy policy rests on the principles of creating new “clean energy” technology, reducing carbon emissions and taxing fuels, so they are used less frequently by consumers. This current approach is the wrong approach. We cannot have a policy in which the government wants consumers to pay high prices for gasoline, as it will only further increase the cost on the consumer.
The president’s current policy ignores the fact that the nation is nowhere near being able to meet its massive energy needs. With all the currently available wind, solar and biofuel power combined, America won’t be able to meet its needs for decades to come.
It’s time for the Obama administration to put in place an energy policy that will not only take care of the nation’s energy needs, but will look forward and plan for the future. A possible solution would be to create a partnership of developing viable alternative energy while taking advantage of the oil and gas reserves available.
Moreover, the administration’s refusal to drill for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which is estimated to possess six to 16 billion barrels of recoverable crude oil and natural gas, hasn’t helped in making the nation energy independent. Federal actions like the blocking of the building of the Keystone pipeline system — which would deliver Canadian crude oil to the Midwestern states, and the long delay to give federal approval to the building of new oil refineries have only allowed foreign sources of oil to dominate the U.S. market.
Additionally, the administration has made only 2.2 percent of the federally controlled offshore Outer Continental Shelf available to drilling. The Shelf is coastline under federal control and is considered U.S. territory on both the eastern and western seaboards. This further limits the nation’s ability to meet its own energy needs, especially when only six percent of onshore federal lands are available for oil exploration.
The current plan of sitting and hoping that wind and electricity will somehow power our vehicles is unsustainable. Pressured by powerful environmental special interest lobbies, Obama continues to sit on the fence, calling for more studies on “new energy” as gas prices rise and the nation’s dependence on foreign oil continues.
The time for studies is over. Year after year of the same thing happening should be proof that something needs to change. Powerful environmental lobby groups that seek to influence legislation and policy, like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resource Council, have little regard for the plight of the consumer. Their supporters wish to import the very worst of the European model on energy.
Burden by overregulation and taxes, oil prices in Western European nations, like Spain, France and Germany, go through the roof during times of energy crisis. In Great Britain, the average price right now is about £1.34 per liter, equal to be about $7.75 per U.S. gallon. That is not something that needs to be imported to the United States.
This country is unique in its vast, diverse landscapes. It is rich in resources from coast to coast. The time has come that those resources are used to make the nation stronger. It is time for a new energy policy that takes into account the realities of the nation’s immediate energy demands while developing alternative energy sources for the future. Otherwise, next year, we will be still complaining again about how high gas prices are.
