New energy bill makes no sense, unrelated to our use of oil

President Obama has called for a new energy bill and for using renewables because of the BP oil spill. Linking the BP oil spill to renewables and cap and trade surpasses P.T. Barnum at his best.

Wind and solar don't produce oil, they generate electricity. Less than one percent of electricity is generated using oil, and much of this is in Hawaii where other fuels are not available. Wind and solar can't reduce our use of oil.

Biofuels are virtually nonexistent in the scale required to replace gasoline. There isn't enough available land in the conservation reserve to produce a fraction of the biofuels needed (even if the technology existed) to replace the 8 million barrels of oil used daily for gasoline, let alone the other 12 million barrels of oil used by industry, airlines and elsewhere in the economy.

Cap-and-trade legislation calls for cutting C0 emissions 80 percent by focusing on eliminating the use of coal and reducing the use of electricity, neither of which has anything to do with our use of oil.

The BP oil spill is no excuse for passing cap and tax legislation. By linking the two, the president has outdone P.T. Barnum.

Donn Dears

Geneva