With all the controversy and discord between the two major political parties about energy policy there seems to be no disagreement at the level of principle. This entire debate boils down to a skirmish between those who advocate energy socialism without drilling and those who advocate energy socialism with drilling. Neither major presidential candidate is advocating a free market in energy. The rallying cry for the Democrats is conservation, i.e. forcing or incentivising people to go with less, and ?investment,? i.e. government subsidies, in renewable energy sources like wind and solar power. The rallying cry for Republicans is ?do everything? which means do what the Democrats want plus drilling and nuclear. Clearly the Republicans have abdicated all conservative principle on this issue. Both parties are laying out Soviet style multi-year plans for ?energy independence? with mercantilist talk about ?keeping dollars in America.? Both parties are talking about massive subsidies for the trendy technology of the moment, like electric cars, hybrid cars, and of course the long-standing money pits of wind and solar power. Both parties see energy production and consumption being centrally planned from Washington.
The one approach that is not being advocated by either party is energy freedom. The energy problems that we are currently facing have all been caused by previous government policies and the solution is to abandon those policies and replace them with nothing. Get rid of all subsidies and punitive taxes on all possible energy sources and get rid of all so called ?energy efficiency programs? which really amount to social engineering and life style control. This would include laws regarding average fuel economy for automobiles (CAF? standards) and the kinds of light bulbs people can use. In North Carolina it would include repealing Senate Bill 3, which attempts to control the amount of electricity people can consume. The only energy policy our government should have is to let freedom of choice and enterprise decide what is efficient, how much we import and who we import it from, how much profit companies should earn, and, just as importantly, how large the losses are they should sustain. In other words, we need to abandon the socialist energy policies, brought to us by both political parties, that have gotten us into this mess. Unfortunately it appears that neither major party is offering us a non-socialist alternative.
