by Nick Stone of Drawnlines Politics.
“Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.”
So said literary author Samuel Taylor Coleridge in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the poem, the mariner was cheered by his shipmates for casting away a nasty storm which he referred to as a great Albatross flapping its wings, bringing about a vicious wind and nearly drowning the ship in crashing waves.
But after the winds calmed and the waves receded, the mariner soon realized in his haste to slay the albatross that the monster also served a purpose. Without the Albatross to flap his wings, no wind was left to move the boat nor to stir the seas. Soon, his crew was to suffer in drought, aimlessly lost at sea.
‘God save thee, ancient Mariner,
From the fiends that plague thee thus! –
Why look’st thou so?’ – “With my crossbow
I shot the Albatross.”
…Ah! well-a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
The tale of the Ancient Mariner could be the mother of all cautionary tales, particularly with regard to scarce resources. Do you suppose that the leader of the free world, the known academic and smartest man in the veritable room might have learned the lessons of the old sailor? Or is President Obama doomed to get the evil looks of the American people? A brief look at our energy policy gives one pause.
Indeed, President Obama has managed to slay the albatross that washed an oil slick upon Gulf shores by imposing a moratorium on drilling in –perhaps- our most oil rich waters. The “perhaps” is emphasized because the president’s energy policy is hostile not only to the extraction of energy from our land, but even the exploration for energy. Really, even the suggestion of exploration.
No one argues that the Gulf oil spill was good. For locals, it was a huge blow to both the economy and ecology of the region. Tourism and fisheries both collapsed. But we did clean up the oil from our shores, the fish are safe to eat, and tourists have returned. And we learned a lot in the process.
One of the lessons learned from the oil spill is that even in the most heavily regulated energy sector in the world – ours – accidents can happen. Blowback preventers can fail. Rig operators can miss alarms. Batteries can die, paperwork can be shoddy. Sometimes multiple failures result in catastrophe, no matter how many safeguards are put up. C'est la vie.
The other lesson learned is that of unintended consequences brought about by good intentions.
The oil rig that bled goo onto our precious shores was a result of regulation run amok, not a result of laissez-faire economics. It was in fact a glaring exclamation point on the failure of government to watch over our every move and protect us from ourselves.
Imagine for a moment that BP had been allowed to drill on shore or in the shallows as energy companies have been allowed in other regions. If a leak had sprung in 50 feet of water instead of 5000 feet, how would the response have been different? Would the leak be out of reach of divers? Would the well pressure have been so immense? Would the chemistry necessary to cement the hole be so complicated? That oil rig was out of sight and mind because Uncle Sam pushed it out to sea. As a result, an otherwise minor mess was turned into a several-month-long disaster of epidemic proportions.
There is a final lesson learned from the Gulf disaster that we must not overlook: We need oil from somewhere, so it might as well be from America. Instead of rededicating ourselves to domestic energy, political backlash has resulted in government issuing a moratorium on Eastern Gulf energy permits in addition to a freeze of new wells in other areas of the country. Meanwhile the Oval Office has protected energy rich lands by designating millions of acres national monuments. New nuclear plants? Not likely. Clean coal? Nope. Our supply is stagnant as demand rebounds.
The result: High energy prices.
As usual, federal over-reach has been followed by disaster for the consumer. Already oil prices have soared to over $90 per barrel and Americans are paying $3.10 an average for a gallon of gasoline. This figure is rising with no end in sight.
High energy prices trigger inflation, widen our trade deficit, and ultimately
cripple economic recovery. They are a disaster for consumer and producer alike. They are a boon to oil rich Arab states which have few regulations, consistently pollute their land and waters, and use the profits to fund terrorists. Send Uncle Sam a "Thank You" note for that.
Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink: the legacy of government over-regulation in our times. Ponder the irony as you visit your local BP station this week.
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