Iowa Energy Forum has posted a new video of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain outlining his energy policy in response to a question from a voter.
Transcript of Herman Cain discussing his energy policy:
Question: What do you envision as the energy policy for this country?
Herman Cain: I believe that the federal government with this administration, as well as to some extent the previous administration – the Bush administration to some extent, because I believe that Bush could have pushed harder on some of these things…
My energy strategy is:
#1 Remove some of the barriers that are preventing oil companies from maximizing the oil that we have right here in this country.
Start with the EPA. The biggest complaint I here from people in the oil business is how tough it is to get approvals and permits through the EPA and the Interior Department.
So the way we remove that barrier is I’m going to appoint a Regulatory Reduction Commission for every federal agency to take a look at all the regulations and hoops that people have to jump through.
And for the EPA commission, the members of that commission will all be people from the oil business, the energy business, the coal business, the natural gas business who have been previously abused by the EPA.
Those will be the people on that committee. They will tell me how to fix it.
Secondly, a lot of the lands out west that the federal government confiscated when they found these deposits of shale oil. Let’s issue 99-year leases to entrepreneurs to go out and develop that. In some instances, let’s sell these public lands.
So this is how you remove these barriers.
Let a business organization go out there to develop it and create a private-public partnership. As a federal government, we shouldn’t try to do it. So if the government technically and legally owns the land, I would work with an oil company or a natural gas company and say, “Okay, make us a proposal where the government will get some revenue off of this, you get revenue off of this. So it’s a win-win.”
Get the government out of the way.
The other thing I would do is, in addition to reducing the regulations, in order to maximize our oil, maximize our coal, our natural gas and our shale. If we do that and maximize what we have here, you would be amazed at how quickly the world market will respond to the fact that we’re serious about energy security. So I will look and find ways to speed up the process.
This doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have responsible regulations. But you and I know there are a lot of regulations that are useless and all they do is to serve to be a barrier to us moving forward.
How to solve the school bully problem: appoint a commission composed of the bullies to hear any complaints. I assure you the incidence of complaints will be almost completely eliminated. QED.
ReplyDeleteI personally think it's time to STOP sending billions upon billions of dollars to brutal, fanatical regimes and dictators in the middle east who then use that money to fund Islamic fundamentalist ideology and terrorist activities (who brutalize and terrorize their own citizens, neighboring countries, citizens around the world and lead to the constant military involvements in the Middle East).
ReplyDeleteLet's do EVERYTHING we can to gain total energy independence - solar, wind, new technologies as well as oil, coal, nuclear, etc.
It's ridiculous to be focused on protecting the environment at the expense of millions of human lives so I say take advantage of all of the US's energy resources while investing in the alternative technologies of the future.
I'm all for the environment. One of the reasons I voted for Obama (a mistake I will NOT make again) was because of his vision of the Green economy. However, I'm much more for human life. It's a matter of the right priorities.
The key to understand is that saving human life ultimately requires saving the environment. Protecting the environment has nothing to do with saving the Earth, it's about saving human life. The Earth was here long before humans and will be here long after. We are such a small insignificant spec in the history of the Earth. If you don't believe me, look at a timeline of the Earth. We'll be the fossil fuels of some species to follow.
ReplyDeleteHaving said that, mining for and refining shale oil takes far more water (essential to human existance) than the western states have available. Research it. Government has not got in the way of shale oil production and has actually subsidized it in the past. It is just not economical. Shale oil production has been tried numerous times and each time it's been an economical disaster. Ask Exxon and Shell how well they fared. Again, that is with subsidies from the Federal government.