[Editor Note: Tomorrow’s post,”A Free Market Energy Vision,” explains the philosophy behind the Institute for Energy Research/American Energy Alliance.]
The New York Times is upset with “Big Oil,” including the advocacy group American Energy Alliance (AEA). This is evident in their Saturday opinion-page editorial, Big Oil’s Bogus Campaign, subtitled “Industry spends heavily to preserve tax breaks and blame Mr. Obama for rising gas prices.”
What is the philosophy behind AEA, what are the Times’s complaints, and what is a free-market response?
American Energy Alliance
The American Energy Alliance is the C4 (advocacy) arm of the C3 (educational) Institute for Energy Research. I am founder and CEO of IER.
AEA’s “About” section on its website reads as follows:
…Founded in May, 2008, The American Energy Alliance (“AEA”) is a not-for-profit organization that engages in grassroots public policy advocacy and debate concerning energy and environmental policies.
“During Human Achievement Hour, enjoy the benefits of capitalism and human innovation. To celebrate participants need only to spend the 8:30pm to 9:30pm hour on March 31 enjoying the benefits of free enterprise and human innovation: gather with friends in the warmth of a heated home, watch television, take a hot shower, drink a beer, call a loved one on the phone, or listen to music.”
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) is a feisty bunch. Their global warming realism team of Marlo Lewis, Myron Ebell, Chris Horner, and William Yeatman is crack.
And really, who would you rather have a beer with: Marlo Lewis or that guy Joe Romm over at Climate Progress? Heck, Marlo might bring his Mandolin and Old Town Tradition band to entertain you!
I think we win the ‘good guys’ award in the highly contentious global warming debate, not only the intellectual case for climate livability and public policy inactivism.…
“As long as I’m President, we’re going to keep on encouraging oil development and infrastructure, and we’re going to do it in a way that protects the health and safety of the American people. We don’t have to choose between one or the other, we can do both.”
Will Obama’s audacious oil play prove to be a Dukakis-in-a-tank moment, as his political opposition believes? Whether it is or not, the climate-alarmist Left is steamed. Why? Because the President’s paean to petroleum sets back the idea that big bad oil is on the way out. Game-set-match for the robust continuing carbon-based energy age.
We have come full circle from George W. Bush’s anti-oil moment in his 2006 State of the Union speech when he opined:
…We have a serious problem. America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.