Typical left-wing liberalism from Time magazine. Note how their criticisms of US energy policy leave Clinton untouched. They don't even mention his lame duck executive orders restricting over a million acres from any natural gas extraction.

To make their bias even worse, they hardly mention the power of the environmental lobby, yet the oil men get their due. If the left wing environmental lobby were so insignificant as to not merit any attention in a wrap up of 30 years of energy policy, then why is there no drilling in ANWR? Clearly the fact that American oil companies cannot get their dirty hands on ANWR is proof that the left wing environmental lobby is worthy of mention for their sway over D.C politicians.

Yet more proof of the uncritical liberalism of the Time article is how they quickly dispense with just another of the energy bogey-men on the left, nuclear power:

"The Senate bill also contains an assortment of goodies. It would hand out $3.5 billion to revive America's moribund nuclear power industry—even though the last order for a plant that actually went online was placed in 1973."

So this is how they deal with the method of energy that fuels most of France? Nuclear power is to be eschewed because the last order for a plant that actually went online was in 1973? Why don't they discuss why it has been 30 years since the last order for an online nuclear plant was placed? Might it be because the left and the collectivist environmental movement have demonized nuclear power? Now I am not saying we should construct nuclear plants without a constructive debate on how to safely do so, but it is entirely irresponsible and points at the underlying agenda of these hacks at Time to dismiss nuclear power with haste.

In the end, I do believe we have a pending energy crisis. The price of natural gas has risen steadily. The greatest damage has not been to citizen consumers but to industry. With large chemical manufacturers fleeing the States due to the high cost of doing business, largely attributable to stiff environmental laws and the rising cost of natural gas, it's the economy and job rolls that suffer. I also think there is some value to conservation. I agree with Cheney that it is not the basis for an energy policy, but it is a component. The more salient issue, though, and the reason why this article from Time is irresponsible and points to the agenda of the limousine liberals at AOL/Time Warner, is that any reasonable view of at least the near future understands that energy use is going to increase in this country and that any commentary that avoids the impact of the far left environmentalists and the heavy restrictions on energy production in this country is far more deceptive than Bush's "16 words."



TIME.com: Why U.S. Is Running Out of Gas -- Jul. 21, 2003