Well, it turns out that I failed to read the fine print yesterday before I published an article praising Obama’s new energy policy. I read the President’s speech and agreed with many of the proposals he recommended, but I also warned that the devil was in the details.
Upon reviewing the administration’s more detailed, Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, it turns out there was more than just one devil. It also leads me to believe that some in the administration probably thought no serious conservatives would bother to read the President’s plan.
In this context, the President’s speech appears to be more about improving his reelection prospects than making an actual bipartisan effort to support sensible energy independence measures.
My post today on Big Peace provides the specifics of why the President’s policy will likely not do what he claims it will do.
Reflections of a Rational Republican 
Did you pay no attention at all to the BP Gulf oil disaster last spring and summer (the long-term effects of which we still don’t know about)? Wasn’t that a “heads-up” warning about the true cost of uncontrolled drilling? Drill-Baby-Drill is a great sound bite, but since oil producers sell to the highest bidders on the global market, there’s no guarantee that domestic oil drilling will reduce US oil imports. On the contrary, its just as likely to be China and India that buys this oil. Isn’t it obvious that the only people who really benefit from DBD are the oil companies?
Sure it has its risks, but so does $10 a gallon gasoline. I’d rather suffer through 10 of those spills than a global economic meltdown.
The bottom line is that the more we produce, the larger the supply and the lower prices will be. Not drilling or exploring domestically is like cutting off one arm to solve the energy problem. You cannot afford to invest in alternative energy if a larger percentage of the nation’s dollars are being diverted to pay higher oil prices.
Clean energy technologies are still not cheap, so we need a stop gap measure to get there affordably. This is why we need a bipartisan policy, because left’s dreams of a clean energy economy will never be achievable as that are completely unrealistic.