Obama on Energy

Today Politico Arena asks:

What will the president’s reelection mean for gasoline and electricity prices over the next four years?

My response:


Unless Obama takes some extraordinary measure like imposing price controls, which is possible but not likely, his reelection will probably have little effect on energy prices over the next four years. Oil prices are determined largely by international markets, over which an American president has little if any control. If anything, the domestic shale oil boom that leads the news in the Wall Street Journal this morning is likely to result in lower energy prices.


But there’s a caveat, and that’s the global warming agenda of the environmental zealots. Al Gore, Governor Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg are only the latest to promote as conventional wisdom the idea that global warming causes more and more severe hurricanes, despite the lack of credible evidence supporting the claim. Thus, as less expensive fossil fuels promise to help our sluggish economy out of recession, environmentalists will be urging the president to wean the nation away from those fuels and toward far more expensive renewable energy.


We shouldn’t be surprised, therefore, if cap and trade and other such measures are again before us—perhaps through lawless executive order. Reaching vast areas of life, like Obamacare, the president’s energy agenda could, as he promised four years ago, “fundamentally transform e United States of America.”