Lachlan Markay in the Washington Free Beacon:
Oil and gas production on federal land continues to decline even as the United States experiences unprecedented growth in overall fossil fuel extraction, according to a federal report released on Monday.
The Congressional Research Service found that oil production on federal land declined by 10 percent from 2010 to 2014 while production on private land increased by nearly 90 percent.
Gas production on federal land decreased by 31 percent during the same period, while production on private land increased by 21 percent.
(Via the API SmartBrief)
The current regime is the embodiment of an ideology which is fundamentally hostile to much of the defining structures that make up American society. It opposes development of energy resources, other than the corrupt grants to crony greens for trendy “renewable” energy initiatives that either collapse into bankruptcy when the government money is spent, or require continuing subsidies to survive.
This hostility is a derivative of an overall antipathy toward any industrial or technological developments which move society away from the mythical “pastoral” ideal that progressives dream of, but which never existed.
So many people are mystified by the seeming contradictions between what this regime says it desires to accomplish and what it actually does. That confusion goes away when one ignores the rhetoric and evaluates their actions based on what these policies actually accomplish.
When the results, time after time, are to weaken the country and retard our continuing development, then it is clear that those are the true purposes all along.
The need to hide those purposes is the reason so much of what this regime and its followers say are lies.
Surprise – both Jonathan’s note and Veryretired’s comment are no less disastrous because we expect them.
Does the future look less gloomy or more if Iran controls more of the waterways?
And, like the Iranians, isn’t this administration hostile to the ideas of individualism and natural rights as well as industrialization and productivity, the scientific method and reasoned argument, the Scottish version of the Enlightenment. Dissing religious beliefs is not a sign of depth or even modernity.
VR…”This hostility is a derivative of an overall antipathy toward any industrial or technological developments which move society away from the mythical “pastoral” ideal that progressives dream of, but which never existed.”
Interestingly, quite a few people in the “tech” industry…ranging from programmers to CEOs and venture capitalists…pretty much buy into this. There does not seem to be a good understanding of the degree to which the “virtual” world relies on physical-world infrastructure, and even among those who do understand this, there is a lot of wishful/magical thinking that solar panels and high-speed trains will solve everything.
DF—If you check back through the past essays by Victor Davis Hansen, you will find several relating to just this problem among the urban elites in California and elsewhere. Far too many people are so distant in both their experience and their knowledge from any of the hard, grinding work required to produce the food, energy, or other basic goods and services our society needs to function.
I have an advantage over some because I was very close to my grandparents, who were both born at the end of the 19th century. My grandfather was from a farm family of 5boys and 3 girls, while my grandmother was a butcher’s daughter from Chicago. Both learned about hard physical work from childhood, and my family life revolved around the need for hard work,and hard study for me as well, as a requirement for any possible future success.
What I see in our culture today, at all levels and ages, is a strange mode of thought that finds wanting something is the only essential element in deserving to get it, and that luck or connections are a valid substitute for the years of effort most people used to put in to achieve something.
Perhaps my interest in some sports is a reaction to the fact that teams are some of the last holdouts using merit as the main criteria for choosing the players, and the refrain common in all sports that hard work is always the key to any success.
I’m afraid that far too many people have absolutely no idea of the complexity of the systems that deliver food, water, energy, and other vital goods and services to their urban environments on a daily basis.
Magical thinking has become a very dangerous norm, and reality has a tendency to get very serious in judging whether the magic being invoked has any connection to the way things really work in this world.
Unicorns win very few Kentucky Derbys.
“there is a lot of wishful/magical thinking”
This is standard for the left which thinks that beef comes from Whole Foods and, like Bill Cosby used to joke, electricity comes out of the wall.
Magical thinking is the norm for humanity. Reason is a wonderful tool for optimization, but in times of crisis or change the game goes to those who are quick and decisive, and reason, which always questions and doubts, is left to rationalize the aftermath.
Success will obviously go to a particular solution that is at least aligned with reality, but that alignment will only be clear after the fact. Faith preceeds understanding, engineering comes BEFORE science.
The left is not a disaster because it is built on wishful thinking. It is a disaster because it insists on UNIFORM thinking. Most ideas are wrong, most businesses are failures, but the market succeeds because it allows many to try, and rewards the ones that work.
like Bill Cosby used to joke, electricity comes out of the wall.
Mike,
I work in the power plant biz, specifically nuke, and after 35 years in it I have heard it all from idiots who have no clue on how a grid operates and how the power is generated. I caused a big spat at a party a few years ago when one there stated they had gone with a “green” electricity company for their power. I told him just how stupid he was for paying a premium for electricity that most definitely did not come from a windmill or solar panel. More than likely it came from a coal fired plant nearer to his home in Cook County.
Made the wife madder’n’hell, but I enjoyed rubbing his nose in his idiocy.
Magical thinking by the lefties is ruining the nation.
It seems likely that an increasing number of people and businesses will “go green” by installing PV systems and maybe also the Tesla batteries for limited storage. But of course there will be hours and days when there is little or now output from the PV system and the batteries are exhausted…and then, they will expect the grid to be there for them…as will millions of other people at the same instant in time. But most of these people will indignantly reject any kind of “readiness to serve” charge to keep the grid with peak capacity levels which are higher than *typical* peak demand…
No surprise here, unfortunately. During an unscripted moment in the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama revealed to the world his gross ignorance of energy issues.
Obama’s energy plan: drilling tires
Which is why Obama and his handlers try to avoid unscripted moments, where Obama gives out his candid opinion. What is even more amazing is that after various sources documented the absurdity of Obama’s claim that tuneups and inflating tires could save as much oil as would be gained from increased drilling, Obama doubled down and still claimed he was right.
For further indication of Obama’s gross ignorance of energy issues, consider this gem from 20122012
You can’t drill your way to lower energy prices? As they say in Venezuela, tell me another cowboy story[decime otro de vaqueros].
The most salient example of Obama’s hostility to the domestic drilling industry is from the Macondo blowout in 2010. The leading reason for the blowout was the BP- the company that billed itself as “beyond petroleum”- had not followed accepted industry procedures. It was thus no surprise that an expert panel did not recommend suspending drilling in the Gulf. Just follow accepted procedures- which is precisely what BP did not do repeatedly. Obama’s Energy Secretary misrepresented the expert panel’s recommendations, and used this misrepresentation to suspend drilling in the Gulf.
The irony about all this is that Obama later had the cheek to claim that his policies were responsible for increased domestic production. Decime otro de vaqueros, pues.