Liberals standing athwart history, yelling 'Stop!'

For years, conservatives were said to be "standing athwart history, yelling 'Stop!' " But a federal judge's ruling Friday points to the new reality that those who are now seeking to stop history -- or at least the development of new energy technologies -- are liberals, led by President Obama. Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled against Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and regulations implemented by two agencies within his department. The regulations -- designed to slow down energy development -- came from the U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Bureau of Land Management. Attorneys for the government argued that the Western Energy Alliance, an energy industry advocacy group that filed the suit, failed to show the regulations caused hardship such as added costs or unnecessary delays.
Freudenthal disagreed, saying "Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury. Those injuries are supported by the administrative record." As a result, regulations issued in 2005 under President George W. Bush that were supplanted by the Obama rules are back in force. The Bush regulations were designed to speed up federal reviews of applications to explore and develop hundreds of millions of acres of federally owned lands in Western states believed to hold vast untapped quantities of oil and natural gas. Developing such resources could reduce U.S. dependence on imported oil and reduce costs for American consumers.

But global-warming-obsessed liberals don't want Americans to have access to cheaper oil and natural gas, and they are determined to use federal laws and regulations wherever possible to force us to use "clean" energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass. Unfortunately, it will take as long as three decades, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, for the alternative energy forms to be able to replace oil and natural gas. And the liberals' plans for getting there from here -- epitomized by the regulations skewered Friday in federal court -- will, according to Obama, "necessarily cause energy prices to skyrocket."

Meanwhile, the U.S. energy industry continues its remarkable record of finding and producing domestic oil and natural gas resources in more efficient and environmentally safe ways. Natural gas, which was growing more expensive due to declining supplies only a few years ago, has experienced an extraordinary revival in this country, thanks to hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") to get at supplies trapped in shale thousands of feet below the surface. Water and tiny amounts of chemicals are injected into shale formations, allowing the oil and natural gas to be extracted.

Horizontal drilling of multiple wells from one site minimizes the physical impact on the surface environment, and, because fracking is done thousands of feet below the water table, without risk to drinking water. Not one confirmed example of groundwater contamination linked to fracking has been found, according to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson. So why is Obama's Department of Energy moving forward with new regulations to "ensure the protection of public health and the environment?" Because Obama and the liberals are yelling "Stop!"

http://washingtonexaminer.com:80/opinion/2011/08/liberals-standing-athwart-history-yelling-stop