Natural gas currently satisfies nearly a quarter of the country’s total energy needs. Gas is clean-burning and has less environmental impact than either oil or coal. We have a secure and abundant supply in North America, the technology to drill and produce it efficiently, and a robust distribution network to deliver it to market. Natural gas drilling could generate new, good-paying jobs by the thousands, and not two years from now, but now. At current prices, gas delivers the same energy as a barrel of oil at a third of the cost. What’s not to like?

Policy makers have conflated natural gas with oil and coal as “fossil fuels”, fuels of a bygone era. When candidates intone, “We must end our dependence on fossil fuels,” most of us nod and uncritically accept the notion. We project oil’s perceived shortcomings onto natural gas (”Peak Oil”, dependence on the Middle East, balance of trade deficits, and the environmental threat of spills), when none of those issues is relevant to natural gas. With the arguable exception of nuclear fission, the steady blue flame of natural gas represents the closest thing we have to an ideal fuel.

Until now, the Obama Administration’s “Green Jobs” rhetoric and the stated commitment to wind and solar had the future for natural gas looking mighty bleak, despite the obvious advantages. Just last April, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that using natural gas as a transportation fuel “will put a strain on natural gas for industrial uses, for heating, and other things“.

Lately, however, there are signs that the Obama Administration might be changing its tune.

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Bluntly?  Because they say stupid things like this.

When it comes to greenhouse-gas emissions, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sees Americans as unruly teenagers and the Administration as the parent that will have to teach them a few lessons.

Speaking on the sidelines of a smart grid conference in Washington, Dr. Chu said he didn’t think average folks had the know-how or will to to change their behavior enough to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

“The American public…just like your teenage kids, aren’t acting in a way that they should act,” Dr. Chu said. “The American public has to really understand in their core how important this issue is.” (In that case, the Energy Department has a few renegade teens of its own.)

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We’ve heard it before. Last month, as the Federal Government was becoming an 8 percent owner of Chrysler and 50 percent owner of General Motors, President Obama feigned disinterest:

I don’t want to run auto companies. I’m not an auto engineer. I don’t know how to create an affordable, well-designed plug-in hybrid.

Moments later, Obama revealed his actual intent:

“But I know that, if the Japanese can design an affordable, well-designed hybrid, then, doggone it, the American people should be able to do the same,” he said. “So my job is to ask the auto industry: Why is it you guys can’t do this?”

So we shouldn’t be surprised when President Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, goes to Iowa and says:

All cars made in America should be able to burn ethanol (E85).

Chu made the E85 statement yesterday, even though he has previously admitted that, corn is not the right crop for biofuels.”

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Via Tim Blair comes this gem (h/t Skanderbeg):

One of the world’s greatest minds comes up with one of the world’s greatest ideas:

Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by US President Barack Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white.

A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more of the Sun’s light and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.

It would be interesting to get Chu’s estimate on the percentage of the earth’s surface that is covered by roofs, roads and pavements.

As Erick posted on Twitter, “When all it takes to solve global warming is painting my roof white, global warming isn’t a serious problem.”

I have to echo that statement, with the simple addition that, if Chu is serious in his suggestion, then the people who promote AGW as an issue are, quite simply, fundamentally unserious.

To Blair’s last sentence, I can only add this: Guess what already reflects sunlight better than white paint?

Water, snow, and ice.

I wonder what the ratio is of the water-covered portions of planet Earth to the pavement-and-roof-covered portions of planet Earth. Certainly Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu has a formula to figure that little problem out, doesn’t he?

More pieces fell into place today regarding the new Administration’s desire to end America’s access to low-cost energy, and replace it with high-cost wind and solar power.

Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee heard from Treasury Secretary Geithner, who said that it’s the wrong policy choice to “subsidize” oil, gas and coal producers by allowing them to operate as they always have.

Today, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that using the Yucca Mountain underground repository for storing nuclear waste is no longer an option. In fact, the Administration’s proposed budget eliminates all but token funding for the site.

Senator McCain sharply questioned Chu, who replied smugly that “we have better options” than Yucca Moutain (conveniently located in Senate Majority Leader Reid’s state of Nevada) for storing commercial nuclear waste.

The waste storage problem has long been considered a key barrier to the expansion of nuclear power generation in America, and there are no clear alternatives to the Yucca site. Today, America’s nuclear plants store their waste on-site, above ground.

What Chu and his boss, the President, are saying in veiled language, is that they have no intention of allowing nuclear power to stage a comeback. If these guys get everything they’re looking for, America faces a future of much higher energy costs. On top of the powerful disincentives to business investment and expansion that are also contained in the new budget, the net result will be a severely underperforming economy in the years ahead.