Carter’s … er, Obama’s speech

President Obama appeared on television Wednesday to address the nation and outline a problem jeopardizing this country's very future -- our addiction to imported oil.

"Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you about a problem unprecedented in our history. ... The energy crisis has not yet overwhelmed us, but it will if we do not act quickly," the president said.

"Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the president and the Congress to govern. This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war."

He went on to say that if we fail to act immediately, the demand for oil will exceed the world's output by the 1980s.

Oh, wait, that wasn't President Obama. That was Jimmy Carter's televised speech on April 18, 1977.

Meanwhile, America's dependence on foreign oil has grown from about 20 percent in the early 1970s to more than 65 percent today. President Obama's answer: "It is time to do what we can to secure our energy future. So today, I'm setting a new goal: one that is reasonable, achievable and necessary. When I was elected to this office, America imported 11 million barrels of oil a day. By a little more than a decade from now, we will have cut that by one-third."

This was from the same mouth that a week earlier promised billions of dollars to a group of Brazilian business executives: "We want to help you with the technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely. And when you're ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers." Customers for imported energy?

The president also tried to shunt blame for the lack of domestic production off the administration and onto the oil industry by saying the industry holds tens of millions of acres of leases "where it's not producing a drop -- sitting on supplies of American energy just waiting to be tapped."

He fails to mention that the companies spend millions of dollars and years of time testing the geology of a lease site to see whether it is likely produce oil before drilling expensive wildcat dry holes that certainly put people to work -- digging holes one day and filling them the next.

Then there are the years of waiting for government permits and environmental studies.

Jimmy Carter's plan didn't work. Barack Obama's sounds amazingly similar. The biofuels program he outlined is just another word for synfuels. He talks about dreaming big, but offers little more than subsidies for nonviable, job killing solar panels and wind farms.