the dumbest thing yet

[topaz]

crouchback alerted me to what he and I think have to be the dumbest thing anyone has said yet in this year's Presidential race.  Mike Huckabee, talking to Katie Couric about climate change:

I think we ought to be out there talking about ways to reduce energy consumption and waste. And we ought to declare that we will be free of energy consumption in this country within a decade, bold as that is. (Sierra Club)

Emphasis mine.

This really puts the left on notice.  We have to come up with a new game plan.  Clearly our wimpy "renewable energy" and "sustainable living" approaches are not going to cut it any more, not now that Huck has laid down the law.  Maybe we can pledge a program of free photosynthesis classes to all public school kids?

I really am more pleased every day at the thought that the Republican party might actually nominate this wingnut for the Presidency.

Comments

[wotw]

To be fair, I'm sure that what he really meant was
"energy self-sufficient".

To be fair in the other direction, what he really
meant was almost as bozorific as what he actually said.

[wotw]

That's what I get for replying before reading the other
replies. Apologies to lhn.

[harimad.livejournal.com]

It seems obvious to me, and has since I was 10, that the more heavily we tap our domestic energy sources, the sooner we will be utterly dependent on foreign suppliers.

Am I missing something?

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Strictly speaking, I don't think that would happen for the foreseeable future-- converting coal alone to gasoline would get us somewhere between one and several centuries for vehicle fuel, and we have a fair amount in the way of shale oil deposits as well. Our coal and uranium would probably do fine for electricity for quite a while as well. (IIRC, we have enough uranium and thorium to last for literally thousands of years if it came to it.)

Which isn't to say that volunteering to pay extra for domestic oil or other energy sources would accomplish any obviously desirable policy goals, whether that's impoverishing bad guys with oil reserves-- our biggest oil import sources right now being notorious terrorist supporters Canada and Mexico-- or reducing domestic consumption, which could be done with energy or carbon taxes without getting into a trade war with anyone or subsidizing inefficient local production.

"Energy independence", like any autarky, doesn't seem to me to benefit anyone but the particular sector that will receive the subsidies. But I don't think it's literally impossible if it were something we desperately wanted-- and were willing to enforce with draconian penalties. (Otherwise, I suspect that it would be too easy and profitable to launder fungible non-US oil into the system.)

In market terms, we're already utterly dependent on foreign suppliers, in the sense that the floor price is whatever the world market price for oil is, and all we can do is raise it from there. We can't insulate ourselves from oil shocks from OPEC or Mideastern instability or whatever, except by preemptively "shocking" ourselves by raising the prices first. And if we want to do that, then it's easier to do it with tax policy than import policy.

[wotw]

The more food you eat from your refrigerator, the sooner
you'll be utterly dependent on grocery stores. So what?