Posted on 01/16/2014 8:50:52 AM PST by thackney
When we were children we learned, from Exodus, about the Children of Israel wandering in the desert for 40 years. When we were children, 40 years seemed like, well, a lifetime.
I’m 85 and 40 years still seems like a lifetime.
But it has been over 40 years since President Richard Nixon addressed the nation on the need for a national energy policy. That was on Nov. 7, 1973, during the Arab oil embargo precipitated by war in the Mideast.
“By the end of this month, more than 2 million barrels a day of oil we expected to import into the United States will no longer be available,” the president said, speaking from the Oval Office. “Our supply of petroleum this winter will be at least 10 percent short of our anticipated demands, and it could fall short by as much as 17 percent.”
If ever there was a chance to develop and implement a wide ranging energy policy, that was the time. But the Watergate scandal intervened and, as has happened so many times since, a national energy policy got pushed -- not just to a back burner, but completely off the stove.
Forty years and seven presidents later, we are no farther along with a cohesive energy policy than we were when Richard Nixon delivered that speech. In fact, we may be worse off. Energy leadership in our government is more fragmented today than ever.
Fast-forward to Jan. 24, 2012, when President Obama made energy a major point of his State of the Union address. “Imagine,” he said, “a future where we’re in control of our own energy, and our security and prosperity aren’t so tied to unstable parts of the world.”
That was nearly four years after I announced the Pickens Plan to get America off OPEC...
(Excerpt) Read more at realclearpolitics.com ...
“Comprehensive Energy Plan” means government-mandated ways established with favored political crony-capitalists to put money into T. Boone Pickens pocket. No wonder he’s all for it.
His article ends with:
“What I found was there was no person, department or agency in control of our energy policy at the federal level. The Departments of Energy, Defense and even State have a say in everything from carbon emissions to the Keystone XL pipeline. And they all take their cues from the White House.
With this in mind, American businesses and state governments have taken the map of our energy future into their own hands.”
As long as T-Bone has eschewed gov't subsidies (other than direct tax benefits), he may become rehabilitated.
As, imho, it should be.
As it was in the beginning, both now, and always..
If only...
I like t boone pickens.
I havn’t been able to find any hard numbers however on how fast is the uptake of natural gas vehicles.
Nixon set us back. Imagine where we’d be without an energy policy and all the interference and politics that came with it?
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