March 24, 2012

I. Advantageous Ambiguity

In the President’s Weekly Address on March 10, 2012, Barack Obama stated, “You and I both know that with only 2% of the world’s oil reserves, we can’t just drill our way to lower gas prices – not when we consume 20 percent of the world’s oil. We need an all-of-the-above strategy that relies less on foreign oil and more on American-made energy – solar, wind, natural gas, biofuels, and more.” This rhetoric is superficially appealing, but the President’s claims aren’t entirely accurate. The Institute for Energy Research says that Obama is creating the impression of scarcity by focusing on the technicality of proven oil reserves whilst neglecting to mention that the United States has enough recoverable oil for the next 200 years. Although I agree with the President that we need to encourage American ingenuity and switch over to alternative energy sources, there needs to be a transitional period. Nikola Tesla once said that it is only a matter of time until “men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” I believe that innovation will yield phenomenal gains for the energy needs of mankind, but I also believe that brilliance can be broken down into incremental progress.  read more »