President Barack Obama tours the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Arcadia, Fla. Photo by Gerald Herbert: AP

It was a rubbing-the-eyes-in-disbelief headline even from an administration whose energy secretary, Steven Chu, suggested that America's energy dilemma could be solved by painting roofs white, and whose interior secretary, Ken Salazar, talked of garnering 3,000 megawatts of wind-power capacity off the East Coast. (The current total electricity capacity from all U.S. energy sources is about one million megawatts.)

Under the title "U.S. raises concern over China oil policy," David Shear, deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, told the House Armed Services Committee on Jan. 13:

"We are pursuing intensive dialogue with the Chinese on the subject of energy security, in which we have raised our concerns about Chinese efforts to lock up oil reserves with long-term contracts."

Shear was responding to Republican Rep. Roscoe Bartlett of Maryland, who said he was "worried that the Chinese were aggressively buying up oil all over the world and might not share it with other countries in the future."

Well, what do you know? The Obama administration, whose entire energy posture going back into the presidential campaign has been both ideologically and practically stridently anti-oil, both as an industry and as a form of energy, has suddenly become "concerned" about China's oil grab.

This is, to say the least, disingenuous.

The U.S. government under Barack Obama has yet to acknowledge once, in spite of widely held estimates, that oil will continue to account for 40% of world energy demand 25 years from now — this while total world energy demand will increase by 50%, at least.

Nor has the administration, mired in Kyoto and Copenhagen global climate rhetoric, acknowledged that fossil fuels, oil, gas and coal will still account by then for over 85% of world energy demand, a largely unchanged contribution from what it is today.

Instead there is constant rhetoric about solar (the president's favorite during the campaign), wind and "advanced biofuels" which, when combined, are not likely to account for more than 1% or 2% of the world energy demand over the next several decades.

In a Newsweek editorial last April 4, Chu expressed the administration's energy philosophy and policy: "We must move beyond oil because the science on global warming is clear and compelling: Greenhouse-gas emissions, primarily from fossil fuels, have started to change our climate. We have a responsibility to future generations to reduce those emissions to spare our planet the worst of the possible effects."

The Americans should not be surprised by the Chinese moves. A far more pragmatic nation, China is acutely aware that energy, in short domestic supply, will be the "choke point" in its future development unless resources are secured throughout the world.

That's why the very capable Chinese oil companies — CNPC, Sinopec and CNOOC — have fanned out in dozens of countries, making hundreds of billions of dollars of oil and gas investments, including in America's backyard, Argentina, Venezuela and Canada and a country America presumably dominates, Iraq. Their quest does not preclude unsavory countries such as Sudan or Iran.

The major Chinese oil companies have the full support of the Chinese government and, very importantly, they are admired and praised by the vast majority of Chinese people.

In discussions with Chinese intellectuals, government officials and company executives, the Chinese are often incredulous, all asking essentially the same question: Why is America letting us have a free and uncontested ride in all these energy ventures?

In contrast, American "Big Oil," (ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips and Chevron — the only companies really able to play along and compete with the Chinese) not only are not supported or encouraged by the U.S. government, they've been routinely vilified by politicians. To the sizeable portion of the American public that's unaware of the role energy plays in the modern world, they are the devil incarnate.

What the world is witnessing is the largest peaceful transfer of power in history. Energy means power, and while the U.S. is consumed by environmental ideologies and climate rhetoric, it is committing economic hara-kiri in the process. China, riding on energy acquisitions with little competition, will propel itself into the economic stratosphere.

The U.S. should be concerned, but doing something about it will require an unlikely sea of cultural change in the Obama administration.

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