An expert look at the energy "crisis": an accomplished scientist share his perspective on America's supposed energy crisis and what can be done to remedy the situation.

Dr. Arthur B. Robinson is a biochemist who conducts research on protein chemistry, nutrition, and predictive and preventive medicine. Dr. Robinson is a former faculty member of the University of California at San Diego, and was president and research director of the Linus Pauling Institute. He is a founder and faculty member of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, editor of the newsletter Access to Energy, past president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, and author/publisher of the popular Robinson Self-Teaching Home School Curriculum.

THE NEW AMERICAN: Skyrocketing fuel prices have forced energy once again to the forefront of public concerns. What are several of the most important measures that can be implemented to most immediately address our present energy needs?

Dr. Arthur Robinson: Well, our principal energy problem is the same as with virtually all American economic problems: taxation, regulation, and litigation. In the case of the immediate rise in energy prices--specifically automobile fuel prices--there is a terrible shortage of oil refineries. The United States hasn't built any new oil refineries in the past 35 years. In fact, refining capacity has diminished slightly. Yet the oil refining industry spends huge amounts of capital complying with government regulations, only to have the bureaucrats and politicians change their minds and change the rules and require the companies to spend even more to comply with regulations that continue to change and will never be satisfied.

The bottom line is that all the capital that should have gone into new oil refineries went into regulation compliance, a large amount of which has had nothing to do with sound science or the putative goal of solving environmental problems.

Then there is taxation. Oil company capital that would and should be going into exploration, extraction, and refining is instead being consumed by government taxes.

Then, of course, litigation is a major problem because no matter how much a company spends on compliance, regulatory bureaucrats and/or environmental activists can be depended on not to be satisfied and to launch another costly delaying lawsuit.

It gets down, simply, to the fact that political decisions are suppressing technology and restricting our access to energy resources.

The politicians, government bureaucrats, and environmental activists won't let U.S. companies drill in huge tracts offshore or in Alaska.

There's a thousand years worth of natural gas out there, but they won't let them drill. They can't drill in the continental shelf, they can't drill in hundreds of millions of acres of land--it's just idiotic. Natural gas could replace all the gasoline and diesel now used in the cars, as well as oil-fired electricity generation plants. It costs about $2,000 to replace or convert a car to natural gas. Now you shouldn't have to do that, because there's plenty of oil available here, but, again, government policies are preventing us from drilling and extracting it. But there's no question that if we were allowed to drill and develop the known natural gas resources inside the country, probably in four or five years we could be entirely off foreign oil. In essence, free enterprise has been completely co-opted by government.

Government decides what energy sources are going to be developed; they regulate the producers; they tax them; they put constraints on them--and it goes on and on and on. Then the American consumer turns around and says, "Hey, gasoline's three dollars a gallon." Well, it could soon be going to four and five dollars--or it might go to 10, who knows? If we don't take the constraints off industry and let free enterprise develop energy, we're not going to have any.

TNA: Many politicians are using the current energy crisis to herald the importance of hybrid fuel cars. Is this a viable, credible solution for our transportation future?

Dr. Robinson: Well, people sometimes are referring to two different things when they talk about hybrid cars. Usually people are referring to hybrid cars that combine electricity and gasoline propulsion. The other reference is to hybrid fuel, which is pouring ethanol in the fuel--and this is pure, politically driven nonsense. It's not sensible to be using diesel oil to grow corn to make ethanol--that's all political, and inefficient and wasteful. In any case, the government subsidizes it all, so the idea of making the American people burn something other than what free enterprise would have generated for fuel is a further problem.

The hybrid cars are a mixture of electricity and hydrocarbon burning, but how does the electricity change anything? You have to make the electricity in a power plant, and the power plant runs on gas, coal, oil, or nuclear energy, and of course the hydrocarbons you burn at the power plant replace the hydrocarbons you had previously burned in your engine.

Granted, there have been a few developments. For example, when you brake you can put some of the energy back in the battery and not lose all the energy because of braking. This is one more step the industry's taken that makes hybrid cars a little more fuel efficient. It's like putting out a car that gets a few more miles per gallon out of a gasoline engine. But it's no solution to our larger energy problem; it doesn't substantially change anything because first you have to get this power.

TNA: What about solar energy? Have the technological advances solved the economic problems of relying on solar energy for any significant replacement of our current energy supplies?

Dr. Robinson: Neither solar energy nor wind power are economical--they only work if the government pays a huge part of the cost, and of course, that's just transferring the cost to the taxpayer. Currently, there are no practical substitutes for hydrocarbon and nuclear energy. Solar power and wind power are simply too dilute and too costly. They are suitable in certain circumstances for minor uses. Solar power is great if you are in a rural location and it's hard to get electricity in by some other means. But to count them as substitutes for oil, gas, coal, and nuclear for the major power needs in the United States is nothing but politics. They just can't do it.

A recent study by Stanford University supports this assessment, though I'm sure the professors who did the study thought their results were great: they concluded that they could generate the electric power of the United States if 750,000 windmills were built at 2,400 locations! This is umpteen trillion dollars worth of windmills! It would probably double the cost of the power because of the expense of operating them. It's just silly. Neither solar nor wind technology currently can provide energy in the quantities the American people need. In a free market these things would remain tiny contributions to the energy supply for practical reasons.

The above has been edited for space. To see the full version of the interview, go to thenewamerican.com/ and search for "Arthur Robinson."