$4 A Gallon: We Did It To Ourselves

I just bought my first $4-plus gallon of gas today. My wife’s car takes premium, and there it was; $4.05 per gallon at the Arco on Bristol Street. The price of oil hit $126 per barrel this week. That is a 650% increase over the $22 per barrel we paid just six years ago. But we have nothing to complain about as Americans and especially Californians — this is exactly what we asked for.

Through our legislators we have decided that we do not want offshore oil drilling, nuclear power, oil refineries, power plants, power lines, pipelines, faster freeways or windmills that spoil our ocean views.

Well, we might consider windmills if we don’t have to see them. Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska is completely out of the question. God forbid, if we drill on 1% of it during the winter, it might affect Caribou mating patterns.

Bottom line, we have done everything we can to thwart the discovery, production or distribution of energy in this country, especially here in California.

The energy problems in California are self-imposed. Like self-indulgent children we stomp our feet until we get what we want. We want to drive our cars, air condition our homes and watch our energy-sucking, 52-inch, flat-screen TVs. But how we get the energy is someone else’s problem. Of course when we are given solutions to supply the energy we complain. Recently, when the residents of Ladera Ranch were told they needed a small peaker power plant to avoid summer blackouts, more than 500 people protested. They want it built somewhere else — like, say, India.

I talked to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher regarding his recent comments in the Daily Pilot on how to bring down oil prices. For the readers who do not know, some full disclosure is in order: Dana and I have been close friends for 18 years. I have volunteered on his campaigns, given and raised campaign funds for him and celebrated our children’s birthdays together. So to say I am a little biased would be an understatement. “Before we send our young men and women in uniform overseas, to ensure that our supply of energy is not controlled by radical Islamists who hate us, we should be drilling for oil in our own country and that includes [the Alaskan wildlife refuge] as well as offshore.”

Rohrabacher must be kidding. He can’t actually be thinking of drilling off our coast. Not Newport Beach. Does he really want us to lose our unspoiled coastline view just to save the lives of some unknown soldiers? Could you imagine how traumatic it would be for us to look out over the ocean and see an oil platform five miles off the coast? The horror could cause a collective mental disorder. The fact that someone’s son or daughter might get killed protecting our strategic interests is minor when you compare it the beauty of an unblemished ocean view. The parents will get over the loss, but a view is forever. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m being sarcastic, OK?

We could save millions of barrels of oil a day if we built environmentally clean nuclear power plants like the French and Japanese. But where are the screams of support for Assemblyman Chuck Devore’s bill to start building nuclear power plants in California? The silence is deafening.

I can already hear the pseudo environmentalist’s peanut gallery screaming all we have to do is conserve energy, take mass transit or car pool. Unless you carpool or take a bus to work, have solar panels on your roof and live like Ed Begley Jr. save your comments for someone who cares. For the people who tell me, “I would use a mass transit system if it would take me where I want to go when I want go,” they already have that — it’s called a car.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for conserving energy and pushing technology as far as we can to come up with solutions to our energy needs. But I am also a realist. There is no perpetual motion machine. Unless you want to live in the dark ages, we need energy. I would rather we produce energy here than send billions of dollars to foreign dictators and despots who hate our way of life. So, at the risk of being politically incorrect, here goes: Let’s start drilling the wells, building the nuclear power plants and windmills. It is time grow up and start acting like adults.