Energy – What is our focus?

Posted Mar 15th, 2009

As President marches through his pre-election campaign, some of us are asking, “What about energy?” The energy policy that exists now is from George W. Bush and his oil buddies. Where’s the common sense approach that’s needed in order to solve our problem today and tomorrow?

A nation as diverse as the United States of America has many options. If we don’t feel we have enough with our own resources, companies around the world will fight for the chance to help us out. They already do that with oil.

An old cartoon from the 70’s shows the President of a major oil company talking to a salesman proposing solar energy. The President of that oil company says, ” . . . and we don’t believe it’s reliable.” Clearly this has “not invented here,” written all over it.

If we truly want to lesson our dependence on foreign oil, why don’t we offer adequate exploration and drilling incentives? We don’t. If we gave incentives the old “wildcatters” mentality would come back once more. Further, if we gave incentives that would eliminate taxes on the initial production of oil, gas, solar, wind and any other form of energy until the cost of bringing it online could be recovered by the investors, there would be even more incentives to explore, find and produce energy.

Many of us have said on more than one occasion, “If only they would deploy common sense.”

Mr. President, many of us believed that your leadership would bring common sense back into fashion. Please don’t let us down.

What are your thoughts?