Apocalypse postponed
By George Will
In 2011, for the first time in 62 years, America was a net exporter of petroleum products. For the indefinite future, a specter
is haunting progressivism, the specter of abundance. Because progressivism
exists to justify a few people bossing around most people and because
progressives believe that only government’s energy should flow unimpeded, they
crave energy scarcities as an excuse for rationing — by them — that produces
ever-more-minute government supervision of Americans’ behavior.
Imagine what a horror 2011 was for progressives as
Americans began to comprehend their stunning abundance of fossil fuels — beyond
their two centuries’ supply of coal. Progressives responded with attempts to
impede development of the vast, proven reserves of natural gas and oil here and
in Canada. They bent the willowy Obama to delay approval of the
Keystone XL pipeline to carry oil
from Canadian tar sands; they raised environmental objections to new techniques
for extracting gas and “tight” oil from shale formations.
An all-purpose rationale for rationing in its many
permutations has been the progressives’ preferred apocalypse, the fear of
climate change. But environmentalism as the thin end of an enormous wedge of
regulation and redistribution is a spent force. How many Americans noticed that
the latest United Nations climate change
confabulation occurred in
December in Durban, South Africa?
The futility of this nullity signaled the end —
probably for decades, if not forever — of a trivial pursuit that began 14 years
ago with the Kyoto Protocol, which the U.S. Senate would not even bring to a
vote. The pursuit was for a 194-nation consensus obligating a few nations to
transfer enormous wealth to many other nations’ governments, to be politically
distributed by them, with the supposed effect of ending global warming, if such
proves to be.
Meanwhile, back in the nation that probably would have ponied up the largest
portion of this money, sales of the electric-powered Chevrolet Volt were falling short of General Motors’ goals even
before reports about fire hazards in crash
tests. And a Wall
Street Journal headline proclaimed: “Americans Embrace SUVs Again.”
Because of the Energy Department’s myriad scandals and
other misadventures as a venture capital firm (Solyndra,Beacon Power Corp., etc.), it is probable that 2011 will be remembered
as the high-water mark of industrial policy. This is another way in which
events are draining the Obama presidency of some of its power for mischief. If
in November Republicans capture the Senate, which must confirm many senior
officials of the executive branch and agencies, only weakness of Republican
will can prevent, for example, the Environmental Protection Agency and the
National Labor Relations Board from being unconstrained instruments of
presidential decrees.
Political logic suggests that this year Obama will try
to rekindle the love of young voters with some forgiveness of student debts.
But one-third of students do not borrow to pay college tuition. The average
debt for those who do borrow to attend a four-year public institution is
$22,000, and the average difference between the per-year earnings of college
graduates and those with only a high school diploma is . . . $22,000.
It will be interesting to see how such a bailout of
young and privileged borrowers will appeal to voters, who will begin to be heard
from in Iowa. Before this year is many months old, discerning conservatives may
decide that Obama probably has been rescued by the Republican nominating
electorate and hence it is time to begin focusing on two things other than the
2012 presidential election. One is capturing the Senate. The other is preparing
the ground for a better presidential nomination competition in 2016.
In any case, nothing that happens this November will
bring an apocalypse. America had 43 presidencies before the current one and will
have many more than that after the end of this one in 2013 or 2017. Decades
hence, it will look like most others, a pebble in the river of U.S. history
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