The Obama caliphate is angry that the Senate has rejected his 10 dollar a barrel tax on barrels of oil in the United States. The price of oil today is $48 dollars a barrel, so that would amount to a 20% + increase on gasoline. Economists are not thrilled with Obama’s plan because all the costs fall on consumers and will cost them $65 billion dollars a year. The money would go to major Obama donors who are cashing in on government subsidies for ineffective and extremely costly “green energy.”
Obama says the money is needed to fulfill the US commitment to the UN. That’s a lie. The US has never committed to any such program, Obama has. That’s the problem with being a dictator, it makes it much harder to blame your mistakes on others. Obama claims the money will be used to reduce carbon emissions in the US. Like everything Obama, this is a lie. The reduction in emissions since the high point in 2007 is due to fracking for natural gas. Natural gas produces 45% less emissions than coal.
Even the ultra liberal Slate Magazine admits that fact:
But, beyond this well-trodden battlefield, something amazing has happened: Carbon-dioxide emissions in the United States have dropped to their lowest level in 20 years. Estimating on the basis of data from the US Energy Information Agency from the first five months of 2012, this year’s expected CO2 emissions have declined by more than 800 million tons, or 14 percent from their peak in 2007.
The cause is an unprecedented switch to natural gas, which emits 45 percent less carbon per energy unit. The U.S. used to generate about half its electricity from coal, and roughly 20 percent from gas. Over the past five years, those numbers have changed, first slowly and now dramatically: In April of this year, coal’s share in power generation plummeted to just 32 percent, on par with gas.
America’s rapid switch to natural gas is the result of three decades of technological innovation, particularly the development of hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” which has opened up large new resources of previously inaccessible shale gas. Despite some legitimate concerns about safety, it is hard to overstate the overwhelming benefits.
Fracking has been responsible for lowering the cost of energy. Although Obama has fought against increasing fossil fuel output since his election, the fracking on private land, that he cannot obstruct, oil output in the US has increased from 5.4 million barrels a day in 2009 to 8.7 million barrels in 2015. And remember, Obama has cut oil production on public lands and offshore drilling.