In a 2008 “Meet the Press” interview, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said, “I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.” She may have slipped on a banana peel of the mind, or perhaps she really didn’t know that natural gas is a fossil fuel. Either way, it was clearly a harmless error not intended to confuse or deceive. Apply that to President Obama’s State of the Union address, and his remarks on energy policy. Harmless error, or damaging duplicity?
Obama tried to take credit for the current employment and economic success of the natural gas boom. “We have a supply of natural gas that can last America nearly one hundred years,” he said, “and my administration will take every possible action to safely develop this energy.”
The duplicity lies in the weasel word, “safely.” Big Green’s minions insist there’s no safe way to develop fossil fuels. They make up a lobbying and regulatory roadblock sufficient to heap mountains of delayed and rejected drilling permits on sites properly leased by oil and gas companies. They have Obama’s ear — and apparently the keyboards of his speechwriters.
The oil and gas industry, furious with three years of Obama delay, obstruction and obfuscation, isn’t suffering in silence anymore. They have begun to discard the maxim, “Take care not to spit against the wind – or on your regulator.”
According to the Washington Post, Virginia Lazenby, chairman of the Independent Petroleum Association of America, offered this response to Obama’s hubris: “The truth behind the veil is that this tremendous broad-based economic and energy security success is largely in spite of this administration’s, at times, harshly anti-oil and natural gas policies, not because of them.”
Lazenby and everyone else in the industry was still smarting from last week’s outrageous Obama duplicity. On Tuesday, he agreed with his Jobs Council that America needs more fossil fuels. On Wednesday, he killed the Keystone XL Canada-to-Gulf of Mexico oil pipeline project.
Sen. John Thune, R-S.D. said, “In rejecting the job-creating Keystone XL pipeline, President Obama today chose to try and save his own job by pandering to his anti-pipeline environmental extremist voting bloc.”
Within the past month, scientists, trial lawyers and industry leaders have recognized the long-term role of formerly invisible foundations that back these extremists. Jon Entine, health and risk expert, wrote in the New York Post that New York-based Park Foundation “is the national funding center for anti-natural-gas research and campaigning.”
Two other New York funds are pouring millions into “anti-fossil fuel obsessives” – the Moore Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller family’s American Conservation Association. They have previously stayed below the radar by splitting up their gifts into small grants to small groups, like Park’s $35,000 to the Bay Area activist group, As You Sow and Moore’s $5,000 to Catskill Mountainkeeper.
It is encouraging to see that more people are becoming aware of this money and where it is coming from, and of what’s really going on behind the political pep talks and bureaucratic bragging sessions.
The strong reaction to this extremism from those who live and work in the private sector has given unintended meaning to this year’s State of the Union message. The day Obama killed Keystone, his re-election campaign released a TV ad titled “Unprecedented,” defending his energy record with all-too-familiar “veils.” The 30-second ad is running in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin — all swing states, most of them mentioned by name in his speech. It may be a sign of where Obama is vulnerable.
Perhaps a politically significant slice of the electorate has responded with a new version of the usual “We heard you, and we don’t agree with you.” Perhaps some are saying, “We heard you, and we don’t believe you.”
Examiner Columnist Ron Arnold is executive vice president of the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise.
