Energy politics

Here is a quote from Paul Ryan who is very knowledgeable when it comes to the budget. If you took all of the income from every millionaire in America today, it would run the government for about four months. Since the budget is 3.6 trillion that means it would take 1.2 trillion to run the government for four months. Since there are 300 million non-millionaires in America that means that if we took all of the income from all of the millionaires each of us would get $4,000. It is not difficult to see that you cannot solve the problem of income inequality by taking money from the rich and giving it to the poor. It is the same today as it has been throughout history and by that I mean, there are too many non-rich and too few rich. The best way to improve the lives of the non-rich is to grow the economy. A job is first and foremost and especially a good paying job and the way to do that is staring us right in the face. We here in the United States are sitting on a 200 year supply of oil and a 500 year supply of natural gas. The government should immediately open up federal lands for energy development and then get out of the way and let private investment take over. We are already in the process of replacing coal with natural gas and this process will continue in spite of the government. As we accumulate excess oil we ship that to China and allow them to replace their coal with oil. The same is true for India and Africa. As time passes the world will replace coal and oil with natural gas and this will go a long way toward reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Recent development show that when natural gas is extracted from methane hydrate on the ocean floor, it can be replaced with carbon dioxide which means we can use this natural gas without increasing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As good as that is, the long term future using hydrogen is ever better. By expanding the energy industry we create millions of high paying jobs, reduce our balance of payments to foreign countries like China and reduce the world wide threat posed by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This will be done at no cost to the government. The only thing keeping the country from moving in this direction is politics.