Walter Williams writes today in the Washington Times about how so many of the so-called solutions being imposed by government are the very things generating the problems.

Congress, doing the bidding of environmental extremists, created our energy supply problem. Oil and gas exploration in a tiny portion of the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would, according to a 2002 U.S. Geological Survey’s estimate, increase our proven domestic oil reserves by about 50 percent.

The Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and eastern Gulf of Mexico offshore areas have enormous reserves of oil and natural gas. Congress has also placed these energy sources of oil off-limits. Because of onerous regulations, it has been 30-plus years since a new refinery has been built. Similar regulations also explain why the U.S. nuclear energy production is a fraction of what it might be.

Congress’ solution to our energy supply problems is not to relax supply restrictions but to enact the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 that mandates that oil companies mix more ethanol with their gasoline. Anyone with an ounce of brains would have realized that diverting crops from food to fuel use would raise the prices of a host of corn-related foods, such as corn-fed meat and dairy products.

Wheat and soybeans prices have also risen as a result of fewer acres being planted in favor of corn. A Purdue University study found the ethanol program has cost consumers $15 billion in higher food costs in 2007 and that it will be considerably higher in 2008.

Higher food prices, as a result of the biofuels industry, have not only affected the U.S. consumer but have had international consequences as seen in food riots in Egypt, Haiti, Yemen, Bangladesh and elsewhere.

What’s the congressional response? On May 1, Sen. Charles Schumer, New York Democrat and chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, convened a hearing on rising food prices saying, “The anxiety felt over higher food prices is going to be just as widespread, and will equal or surpass, the anger and frustrations so many Americans have about higher gas prices.” Congress’ proposed “solutions” to the energy and food mess it created include a windfall profits tax on oil companies, a gasoline tax holiday for the summer, increases in the food stamp program and foreign food aid. These measures will not solve the problem but will create new problems.

Watching what’s going on in America and the world today in relation to issues of energy, food and environmentalism is like being forced to helplessly watch a car go up on a sidewalk and steadily drive along, running people over as it goes, with no one being willing or able to stop it. Politicians claim they want to bring down the price of gasoline, even while they fervently oppose drilling for oil or building refineries. They piously talk of alternative sources of energy, while the real-life replacement for fossil fuels — nuclear energy — has been effectively sidelined thanks to a Jane Fonda movie from 1979. They fret and gnash their teeth over the utterly hypothetical effects on human beings of alleged global warming, while the policies they have instituted to combat it are right now contributing to the real misery and starvation of actual people.

It does make one prone to despair. And especially so in a year when the race for the presidency is currently down to three candidates who all appear to buy into the false premises that have gotten us to this point.

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