David Harsanyi: Well, here we are. At $4 a gallon for gas, we already have a flailing economy. Isn't it glorious? And isn't it exactly what many environmentalists desired?
Of course it is. Most eco-pandering Dems were, only a few years ago, quite explicit in their desire for higher fuel prices, and I'm convinced that many of them secretly revel in the current high price. They see the current "energy crisis" as giving them the political cover to comprehensively regulate business and industry in ways that we've not seen since the 1940's--ways that have been completely discredited.
Harsanyi continues: Don't worry, though, congressional Democrats have a bold plan. Hold on for 10 or 15 years and they'll have a bounty of energy options. They promise. But no oil shale. No clean coal. No nuclear power. And definitely no more oil.
They will not enable your revolting, inefficient lifestyle. In the short-term, offshore drilling, especially, is a pie-in-the-sky fairy tale. Unlike, say, pond scum and hydrogen fuel packs.
(Ouch!)
What everyone, especially the Dems, seems to be ignoring is that the Law of Accelerating Returns ensures that we WILL move toward a solar and hydrogen economy even in the absence of government regulations, and even if carbon-based fuels are NOT inordinately expensive. The Law of Accelerating Returns predicts that, in only another 10 years or so, solar, hydrogen and other clean fuel technologies will be cost-competitive with today's carbon-based fuels (at today's prices), and will become exponentially more competitive each year thereafter until, only three to five years later, they will be competitive with carbon-based fuels even assuming that carbon fuels trade at prices of three to five years ago.
So, my point is that high petrol prices will only hasten the transformation of our economy to green fuel sources by three to five years, and yet they do much damage in the meantime.
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