John Kerry blames the Bush administration for this week’s higher
gas prices. Kerry’s authority on this matter is nil to comic. He is
a chronic gas-tax hiker and a Sierra Club-style enemy of domestic
oil drilling. Since when has he been in favor of increased oil
production? Kerry led the Senate filibuster against oil production
in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. What’s more, his own energy
policy treats higher gas prices as a useful tool in encouraging
less gas use. The policy aims not at increased gas production but
at decreased oil usage.
“The solution is not in ANWR — it’s in less dependency on oil
itself,” Kerry said in a 2002 speech. Kerry’s policy emphasis on
less oil dependency lends itself to higher gas prices. “I see a
world,” Kerry said, where “our primary focus shifts to cajoling and
exciting a new market place for those alternative and renewable
energy sources because there are compelling reasons to do so.”
Kerry sees a world, in other words, where Americans drive tiny
cars and take the city bus. It is certainly not a world in which
politicians search for new drilling opportunities so that Americans
can pay lower gas prices.
Toward this world without gas, Kerry has proposed to “make our
overall transportation system more efficient by reinvesting in
public transit and rail.” If people take public transportation, he
says, a “billion gallons of fuel” can be saved annually. He sees
hope in that cities “are expanding rail and bus systems,” with
“nearly 1,500 miles of new rail lines” planned. “We need to get
this rail in place and then go further,” he said. “Congress should
help states and cities to finance backlogged projects, and to
rebuild both intra and inter-city systems to curtail U.S. oil
dependence, cut traffic congestion and create jobs.”
The specter of “100 million new cars” guzzling gas over the next
decade has led Kerry to call for crackpot government schemes to
promote “alternative fuel vehicles.” Do Americans want to pay
higher taxes for “hybrid cars”? Kerry thinks they do.
“Honda and Toyota already sell some hybrid cars, and Ford is
developing a hybrid SUV for 2003. Hybrid technology combines a
traditional engine with an electric engine to achieve greater fuel
economy,” he said. “But right now, hybrid engines cost more, and
they will until the technology reaches full production scale.”
Kerry proposes to encourage full production of hybrid cars by
giving their makers government subsidies.
He also wants taxpayers to fund “a large-scale commitment to
research and development of hydrogen fuel cells, which offer the
greatest promise to revolutionize our energy system. The potential
is so great and so transforming that all the major energy and auto
companies are racing to develop this technology. Fuel cells can
power cars, trucks, buses, trains and ships — and free standing
fuel cells can power homes.”
Kerry wants Americans out of the “oil age,” free of
gas-inefficient SUVs (he criticized Trent Lott for his support of
SUV “hogs”), tooling down the road in electric cars and using
Amtrak.
“I don’t believe that we are about to run out of oil,” he has
said. “But I do believe that the consequences of remaining
dependent on oil are too great, too dangerous and wrong for this
nation, and that now is time for national action.” We should, he
said, “power our vehicles on natural gas, biomass and fuels other
than oil,” and “offer Americans the chance many desire to
participate in creating a safer, cleaner, more reliable and secure
system of rail and public transportation.”
“I know that, for some, it may be hard to conceive of a world
where fossil fuels, and especially petroleum, are not the dominant
sources of fuel,” Kerry said. But the glorious day is coming. “We
are pursuing a day when a barrel of biofuel might trade no
differently than a barrel of oil, except for one all-important
difference: the money used to purchase that barrel of fuel would
flow not outside our nation, but to American farmers, suppliers and
refiners,” he said.
Kerry is doing his best this week to appear troubled at rising
gas prices. But in his energy policy, higher gas prices are not a
problem but a solution — a wake-up call for Americans to exit the
oil age.
