Just not in the United States. On his recent trip to Brazil, Obama encouraged that country to drill for oil off its shore and said the U.S. would aid with costs and buy the product. In contrast, Obama and his Department of the Interior and his Environmental Protection Agency seem to be doing all they can to impede development of our domestic natural resources. From de facto drilling moratoria, wild lands proposals, and rules to regulate carbon dioxide, the effect of Obama’s polices have been to make the U.S. more dependent on foreign sources of mineral products and deny good jobs to Americans. For instance, one estimate puts jobs lost from just the drilling moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico at 19,000 and lost wages at $800 million. Another study says that if current policy is not reversed, as many as 125,000 jobs could be lost and “as much as $70 billion in investment and $18 billion in revenue to government could be at risk (cumulatively from 2011 to 2022).”

 In several previous posts, I have accused Obama of being clueless on energy. However, I could be wrong about his cluelessness. If I am wrong, it means that Obama knows exactly what he is doing in perpetrating policies that weaken our position and cost us jobs. I will leave it to the reader to ponder the motives for his destructive policies.

Julian Simon, in his book, The Ultimate Resource 2, wrote: “Energy is the master resource, because energy enables us to convert one material into another. As natural scientists continue to learn more about the transformation of materials from one form to another with the aid of energy, energy will be even more important.”

In an essay, Paul Driessen notes that Obama’s science advisor John Holdren knows the importance of energy, “A reliable and affordable supply of energy is absolutely critical to maintaining and expanding economic prosperity where such prosperity already exists and to creating it where it does not,” says Holdren.

Driessen goes on to write, “Unlocking America’s still abundant hydrocarbon resources and unleashing our innovative, hard-driving free enterprise system would generate hundreds of billions of dollars in leasing, royalty and tax revenues for federal, state and local governments. It would put millions back to work … help stanch the flow of red ink … keep tens of billions of crude oil spending and investment in America … and create enormous new wealth, instead of redistributing a dwindling pool of old wealth.”

Yet Obama’s policies, rhetoric, and regulation are denying us this potential.