Obama’s energy policy: Turn out the lights and pray

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Remember the song "And When I Die"? by Blood, Sweat & Tears

Remember the verse "I can swear there ain't no Heaven, But I pray there ain't no hell"?

Obama’s energy policy: Turn out the lights and pray for wind

Perhaps the Barack Obama campaign needs the services of a mathematician, but it doesn’t take differential calculus to determine that his energy policy doesn’t add up. Politico reports on Obama’s speech in Lansing, which officially served as the re-launch of his efforts to defuse public anger over Congressional inaction on domestic energy production. Obama wants to both transfer American transportation from oil to electricity and then cut electrical production as well:

Obama calls for 'clean energy' nation

By MIKE ALLEN | 8/4/08 12:51 PM EST Updated: 8/4/08 12:51 PM EST

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Monday called reducing the nation’s energy consumption "the great test of our time" and proposed billions of dollars in subsidies for business and consumers to encourage a "clean energy " future.

"We can do this," he vowed in Michigan, the nation’s car capital, promising to spend $150 billion over 10 years on the effort.

The plans include a $7,000 tax credit to drivers who buy advanced-technology vehicles and $4 billion in direct assistance to Detroit automakers to help them build hybrid vehicles in the U.S.

"I ask you to join me, in November and in the years to come, to ensure that we will not only control our own energy, but once again control our own destiny and forge a new and better future for the country that we love," he said at Michigan State University in Lansing.

— Get 1 million 150 mile-per-gallon plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads within six years.

— Require that 10 percent of U.S. energy comes from renewable sources by the end of his first term – more than double the current level.

—Reduce U.S. demand for electricity 15 percent by 2020.

(Well, far be it from me to point out the obvious, but the more cars we have that use “plug-in hybrids”, the more demand for electricity will increase. Apparently, this didn’t catch the attention of the Harvard-educated candidate, but it should catch the attention of the voting public. Transferring the burden of transportation from gasoline to electricity will vastly increase the need for more generating stations.)

"If I am president, I will immediately direct the full resources of the federal government and the full energy of the private sector to a single, overarching goal — in 10 years, we will eliminate the need for oil from the entire Middle East and Venezuela," Obama said.

"To do this, we will invest $150 billion over the next 10 years and leverage billions more in private capital to build a new energy economy that harnesses American energy and creates 5 million new American jobs."

To set an example, Obama is vowing to convert the entire White House fleet to plug-in hybrid vehicles within one year, and convert all federal vehicle purchases to plug-in hybrids or all-electric by 2012.

Obama also set several other ambitious national goals:

— Weatherize 1 million homes annually.

— Increase the efficiency of new buildings by 50 percent in the next decade through energy-efficient roofs and better-quality windows and ventilation systems.

— Increase the efficiency of existing buildings by 25 percent over the next decade through retrofitting that includes improved insulation and ventilation systems.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0808/12280.html

Even without the transfer of cars from gas to electrical power, how exactly does Obama plan on cutting electrical demand in the US? As the economy and the population grow, the need for electricity will continue to expand as well, in order to just maintain the current standard of living, let alone improve it. Perhaps we will hear more about the electrical equivalent of inflating tires, and Obama does plan to spend billions of dollars weatherizing homes — which Americans do when their energy bills increase anyway.

What happens when the demand doesn’t decrease by 15%? Where will Obama get the energy needed to power the economy? He doesn’t answer that question.

And why worry about electrical demand if Obama believes that we will have emission-free mass-production sources on line in the next 10 years? Electricity in and of itself is completely neutral to the global-warming debate; it’s the source that matters. If we have solar energy perfected, as an example, why worry about electrical demand?

This sounds like a Luddite philosophy, an energy-hostile policy regardless of its source or its benefits. Obama wants America to live in a shortage economy, where we become ever more dependent on government to ration energy and in which our standard of living decreases year after year. Obama talks about Hope, but he’s really selling Despair … and it has started to lose whatever luster it ever had as his energy policies come more into focus.

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