Paul Driessen: It's Really About Controlling Our Lives

What are you going to do when gasoline is $7.50 per gallon and it takes $112.50 to fill your tank? What will you do when your electric bill doubles? Since everything uses energy to produce, what are you going to do when the price of "everything" skyrockets? What will you do if you are one of the 4.5 million workers that will lose their jobs due to this bill?

If you listen to the liberals with Obama in the forefront, they don't care! It is necessary to reduce everyone's standard of living to save the planet. The only problem is, the science that this is based on is suspect. Too much carbon dioxide they say. Yet, from the beginning of time the earth has handled the CO2 that all creatures breath out, by using it to nourish our forests and grasslands. It is a necessary component for our life here on earth.

We have the resources right here in the USA to become energy independent through the use of coal, known oil reserves, nuclear energy, solar, wind, tidal and bio. The liberal agenda will not let us tap these reserves because it will prevent them from completing their total control of our lives. After all, as the article says: "Either Mr. Reid’s cadre doesn’t understand these basic facts – or they are so blinded by power, ambition, ideology and desire to control that they willfully ignore them."

Excerpt: The EPA, Energy Information Administration, White House and Mr. Reid insist that America can easily limit hydrocarbon use and switch to “eco-friendly” wind, solar and biofuel energy – at low cost and minimal harm to families, businesses and jobs. However, their self-serving, other-planet claims are flatly contradicted by a host of studies by reputable analysts with a solid history of integrity and accuracy.

The most recent is a June 17 report by Charles River Associates, examining the “Economic and Energy Impacts Resulting from a National Low Carbon Fuel Standard.” Prepared for the Consumer Energy Alliance, the study looked only at transportation fuels. (Including coal for electricity generation and other uses would dramatically increase its cost estimates.) Nevertheless, the study found that national standards implemented in 2015 would:

* Increase average gasoline and diesel prices by up to 80% in five years, and 170% within ten years – sending regular gasoline prices soaring to nearly $5 per gallon by 2020 and $7.50 per gallon by 2025 (assuming other international price pressures remain unchanged);

* Spur sharp cost increases for petrochemicals in plastics, pharmaceuticals and other vital products;

* Reduce employment and consumer demand significantly, by increasing the cost of transporting people, equipment, supplies, raw materials, food and finished products – for work, school, healthcare, business, manufacturing, vacation and other purposes;

* Cut business investment by $200-320 billion annually, compared to the no-LCFS baseline;

* Slash gross domestic product by $410-750 billion annually by 2025;

* Cost 2.3 million to 4.5 million American jobs, including up to 1.5 million in manufacturing and 3.0 million in the service sector; and

* Force household purchasing power downward by $1,400 to $2,400 for a family of four by 2025 – impacting minority, elderly and other low and fixed income families worst of all.

None of this should be surprising. As President Obama himself has said, the very purpose of energy and climate policies like LCFS is to ensure that prices “necessarily skyrocket.” It is to force people to use less fuel, compel companies to change power generation and use practices, drive coal companies and utilities out of business, and force the development of new fuels and technologies that may or may not work.

Read Townhall article here.