By Christopher Booker, Daily Mail

Every day we hear that Britain is facing a ‘fuel crisis’. The world oil price breaks records every week. The cost of petrol and gas soars. Foreign suppliers of gas and oil are holding Britain to ransom and charging exorbitant prices.

Brent Crude Oil Weekly Market Prices

The average family, we are told, faces fuel bills of 1,500 pounds a year. Yet all this pales into insignificance compared with the real energy crisis roaring down on Britain with the speed of a bullet train as, within six or seven years, we stand to lose 40 per cent of all our existing electricity-generating capacity. Thanks to decades of neglect and wishful thinking by successive governments - and now the devastating impact of a directive from Brussels - we are about to see 17 of our major power stations forced to close, leaving us with a massive shortfall.

Even after 2010, the experts say our power stations cannot be guaranteed to provide us with a continuous supply, meaning that we face the possibility of power cuts far worse than those which recently - largely unreported - blacked out half-a-million homes. By 2015, when the power stations which meet two-fifths of our current electricity needs have gone out of business, we could be facing the most serious disruption to our power supplies since the ‘three-day week’ of the 1970s.

But the impact of such power cuts on the Britain of today would be far more damaging than they were in the time of Edward Heath 35 years ago. Compared with then,our dependence on continuous electricity supplies is infinitely greater - thanks, above all, to our reliance on computers. Read more here

Senator James Inhofe, EPW

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), Ranking Member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, criticized the Democrats Consumer First Energy Act as a “No” Energy bill in floor remarks today. Senator Inhofe voted against cloture on the bill today.

“Here we go again. As the price of gas at the pump continues to go up, Democrats are proposing yet another energy tax,” Senator Inhofe said. “The Democrats don’t appear to have learned anything from their stunning defeat of their climate tax bill last week, which over 20% of Democratic Senators could not even support. This week their attempted ‘solution’ to our energy challenges is to raise taxes again and further harm American families. 

The Democrats have introduced an energy bill which contains no energy. The Democrats’ bill does nothing to increase access to America’s extensive oil and natural gas reserves, does nothing for the promotion of nuclear energy, does nothing to increase refinery capacity, does nothing for electricity generation or transmission, and does nothing for the utilization of clean coal. 

The simple fact remains that until we explore and develop domestic energy resources and increase domestic refining capacity, the cost of gas at the pump will increase. Now is not the time for politics as usual - now is the time for common sense solutions. The Democrats’ bill increases taxes by $17 billion on America’s oil and gas producers and increases government bureaucracy.”

See also these FACT CHECKS on Senator Boxer’s Tax Claims.

EPW Senators Baucus, Warner, Boxer, and Lieberman

Wall Street Journal Review and Outlook

For months, Democrats and the environmental lobby promoted last week’s Senate global-warming debate as a political watershed. It was going to be the historic turning point in U.S. climate change policy. In the event, their bill collapsed in a little more than three days. Democrats failed to secure a majority, much less the 60 Senators necessary, for a procedural vote on Friday morning that would have allowed the real work of amending the bill to begin. By that point, Majority Leader Harry Reid had already made it plain that he wanted the bill off the floor as quickly as possible - despite calling climate change “the most critical issue of our time.” But not critical enough, apparently, even to let his Members vote on the merits, much less amendments.

The strange death of this year’s cap-and-trade movement was so unexpected that some are already predicting a shift in the politics of global warming. That’s premature. Still, the postmortem holds lessons for the next time this issue emerges.  Until last week, the Democratic M.O. on climate change was to lash the Bush Administration for its supposed inaction and then pass responsibility onto regulators and the courts. Proponents thought they had the whip hand. Yet this time they had to defend an actual piece of legislation – and once it was subjected to even preliminary scrutiny, the Democrats crumpled faster than you can say $4 gas.

Bad timing was the least of it. Republicans methodically dismantled the cost and complexity of “cap and trade,” which sounds harmless but would inflict collateral damage on the wider economy in lost GDP and higher prices up and down the energy chain. Conveniently, the Democrats would also bestow unto Congress (read: themselves) some $6.7 trillion in new tax revenues and carbon welfare handouts over the next four decades. Their task was helped along by the incompetence of the Democrats, especially floor manager Barbara Boxer. Environmentalists deemed it blasphemy that anyone would oppose their grand ambitions, instead of trying to persuade. . “I resent the Senator from Tennessee saying our bill is a slush fund,” Ms. Boxer said at one point, apparently serious.

Senators Baucus, Warner, Boxer, and Lieberman

Even Barack Obama and John McCain backed away from a bill they claim to favor. Mr. McCain said he opposed it because it didn’t do enough for nuclear power, while Mr. Obama blamed the failure on Republicans. But the word on Capitol Hill is that both Presidential candidates urged Mr. Reid to yank the bill, lest they get trapped into voting for higher energy prices. Read more here.