Michael Giberson
Raymond J. Learsy, writing in the Huffington Post, is incredulous that “over a span of two weeks during the Aspen Ideas Festival and the Aspen Energy Conference” no one had the sense to bring up the one idea offering a solution to problems like our national security being at risk, our environment being in danger and “our economy held hostage to ongoing supplies of oil….” The solution to all these problems, Learsy apparently believes, is rationing of gasoline.
Oil rationing during WWll brought us a shared sense of mission and dignity to the home front. We didn’t fight and win that war to now become vassals of the oil barons!
Now I’m incredulous.
So let’s see, because he thinks we are metaphorically becoming “vassals of the oil barons,” he proposes as a solution that we become vassals of the state? That’s his idea of dignity for you: a government office telling you how much oil-based petroleum you are permitted to use.
Learsy doesn’t quite come out and say it, but doesn’t it sound like President Carter’s old “moral equivalent of war” theme to you? As it has turned out, with now nearly 30 years of experience with the Carter energy programs, the best parts of the Carter-era programs turned out to be the ones that most pushed the industry away from government restrictions on oil and gas and toward reliance on market forces.