As the latest demonstration of his lack of economic depth, President Obama put forth a series of falsehoods in the form of a press conference. The indispensible Jeff Dunetz pointed out the tsunami of falsehoods, so Go Read That.
But the president also used his typically bad logic to push his green agenda.
Because even if we were to grant his false claim that the US has only 2% of the world's oil and uses 25% of it, there would be nothing wrong with that. We are the world's biggest economy, and there is a world market for oil. We are just as much at the mercy of that market as anyone else.
The unspoken premise is that there is some fair amount of oil to which we are entitled. The implication is that our oil ration bears some relation to the amount we produce. But if that were so, then countries that produce little or no oil at all, such as Japan or the Koreas, would not be entitled to any.
The fact that President Obama believes this argument to be persuasive, even dispositive, demonstrates further his socialist mindset. We do not have a ration, and there would nothing wrong with the United States using up every last drop of oil the rest of the world produces, as long as we're willing topay for it.
And if there is some ration of oil to which we are entitled, whether based on our production or not, who determines that ration? Should the United States unilaterally disawow any more oil, or should some outside body such as the United Nations alot us our proper share?
Barack Obama has opted for the former. It is the clear policy of this administration that the United States should not use as much of the world's oil as its people would like to use.Yet in his disingenuity, he claims only to be trying to wean us from foreign oil.
But weaning us from foreign oil contraindicates the death grip by which the administrative state holds the domestic oil industry. While this president speaks of ending our dependence on foreign oil, his every policy move has the opposite effect.
Why should the United States not use every last drop of oil it can find, whether from domestic supplies or purchased on the world market?
There are only three possible reasons. To allow it for the use of others, to preserve oil for future use, or to keep it from being used at all.
In the Obama socialist mindset, fairness and sharing are values above almost everything. If two people prosper unequally, the suffering of the one who doesn't prosper as highly is measured not by the physical state of their existence, but by their situation relative to the one who is better off. Likewise, if two nations prosper unequally, the actual level of development and well-being of the cultures doesn't matter, only that by some measure there is disparity. So oil use must be equalized, or clearly someone is doing better than someone else and a grave injustice is done.
Future generations, either at home or abroad, may not need oil at all. To them, internal combustion and the attendant need for lubrication, as well as direct burning of petroleum for heat, may be as unnecessary as most of us today find wood or whale oil. With advances in robotics and other technology, future generations may be able to extract oil from places and in ways we currently cannot. It is as likely that they have more abundant energy supplies as less abundant, whether they get their energy from oil or not.
But the real goal of keeping the US from using oil is not to dis-empower the oil-rich nations of Southwest Asia who have such enmity for us, but to keep it in the ground. There is a confluence of Global Warming hysteria (still affixed in the leftist hymnal), the religious desire for clean air and water (as if ours were unbreathable and undrinkable), and a sneaking suspicion that the Earth somehow needs the oil. How the Earth will use the oil if we don't is unclear.
The President also notes that drilling for oil won't solve our whole problem. Accepting that arguendo, just because something isn't the entire answer doesn't mean it should not be done. The teleprompter makes regular use of the strawman argument, and so its reader gets a lot of mileage from it. Drilling and exploring for more oil would be helpful, and not doing those things is most certainly unhelpful to anything but the green, socialist agenda.
In granting that the US produces 2% of the world's oil, we are forced to note the incredible array of constraints placed on oil production and the reasons for it. With his boot still firmly on the neck of the oil industry, Obama need not remind Americans how little we actually produce
Also at The Minority Report.
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This amount of arrogance, the sheer impardonable pretension, is bound to be popular.
