President Bush had a press conference today in which he talked about energy. The Democrats responded with some comments of their own on the need for more government control over the energy companies instead of increasing energy.

The contrast between the two could not be more dramatic. The President is looking to the future and the demands that the future will bring. He sees that the country will need more energy and that we should be energy independent. The President then looks at what we can do now to help that vision of the future come to pass. We need to do a couple of things; increase our out put of oil and increase our ability to refine the oil we do find.

Increasing our output of oil is not going to be easy. The Arctic Wildlife refuge (ANWR) has some land set aside for energy production. There is enough oil there to greatly reduce our dependence on foreign oil for a number of years. We also have oil shale in the Rocky Mountains that has yet to be tapped for its oil. There are also known reserves in North and South Dakota that could be brought back into production. There is a lot of oil off the coast of Florida. It is about 23 miles away from the coast. Anyone standing on the coast would need a telescope to be able to see any of the oil rigs. That is about it as far as I know. It would achieve a measure of energy independence by greatly increasing our output. I do not know how long we could sustain the increased output, but it would last for 20+ years.

The second issue is refining capacity. We have not built an oil refinery in 30 years. The President is suggesting that we take some of the retired military bases and convert them into oil refineries. By building three or four new refineries, we could reduce the fluctuations in price that we get now.

Another way to improve our energy independence is to increase the use of nuclear power. We have not built a nuclear power plant in about 30 years. We need to build 25-30 to take the oil powered refineries off line. That would reduce the use of oil for uses other than for fuel. That should help in lowering the price of gasoline. I am not an economist so I am not sure how much.

The Democrats plan to reduce the cost of gasoline is to take some of the profits of the oil companies and use that to subsidize gasoline costs. That is more government. That will not work. It will mean higher gasoline prices in the future because the oil companies will not reinvest their profits into exploration. Our supply of oil will diminish and that will increase our dependence on foreign oil. The Democrat plan is a recipe for disaster. The Democrats only know how to play the wealth envy game and not how to run anything. This shows up whenever there is a real problem.

When there is a real problem, the Republicans come up with solutions to the problem and the Democrats come up with wealth envy government regulations to make the problem worse. The Republicans propose ways to solve real problems and the Democrats come up with ways to stop the problems from being solved. The Democrats blame the Republicans as being evil because they propose to drill an oil well where there is no wildlife. The Democrats claim that the wildlife will be severely damaged or destroyed when there is little or no wildlife there. Democrats claim that the Gulf of Mexico will be destroyed and visitors to Florida will be forced to look at oil wells off the coast. The wells will be so far away that it would require a high powered telescope to see them. The oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico now produce almost no pollution. The new ones would be more environmentally friendly than the ones currently in production.

To sum it all up: the Democrats will say that terrible things will happen when the experts know that what they are saying is not true. For example look at ANWR; the Democrats say that drilling in ANWR will severely destroy the refuge and prohibit its use by various types of wildlife. In reality, the drilling area in ANWR is so remote that nothing lives there. All of the wildlife the Democrats say will be displaced or damaged does not live in or near the area to be drilled. When the Democrats show pictures of ANWR they show pictures of high use wildlife areas. In reality the area in question is deserted 99.99% of the time. Also it has been discovered that in Alaska, wildlife thrive around the pipeline and other oil sites. This is because of the additional shelter provided and the additional warmth. Caribou populations have skyrocketed. We could probably expect something of the same from this area.

Where does this leave us? We are left with two options: a solution or adding to our problems disguised as soaking the rich. The uneducated may choose soaking the rich, but they are really soaking themselves. The people that own the oil companies are teacher’s unions and other groups that invest money for their members. People’s investments will grow slower under the Democrat plan and the energy problem will grow worse. Under the Republican plan the energy problem will probably not be solved, but it will be relieved to a great extent. It may even relieve our dependence on foreign oil enough that we can thumb our nose at Saudi Arabia. That would be a good thing to see.