American Frackers, Not Wind and Solar, Increase Our National Security

America has the strongest military might in the world. We have 3,476 tactical aircraft, 760 attack helicopters, 637 unmanned drones, 157 bombers, 2,831 tanks, 93 cruisers, destroyers, and frigates, 10 aircraft carriers, 68 submarines, 31 amphibious ships, and probably more supply trucks than you can shake a stick at.

The one thing these military vehicles have in common? They ain’t running on wind and solar. They’re running on oil.

In fact, the United States military is the single-largest consumer of oil in the world, using more than 100 million barrels every single year. Fortunately, the oil used to keep America safe is increasingly coming from the United States.

Few people in Minnesota celebrate this, but the United States is undergoing an energy renaissance that has absolutely zero to do with renewable energy. It has everything to do with oil and natural gas.

Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, the United States is now the largest producer of both of these fuels in the entire world, and this gives us an enormous military advantage, as long as we capitalize on it.

This gives us a huge military advantage because it makes us far less dependent upon countries who may not particularly like us. I don’t think there are many liberals who have a favorable opinion of Russia, so you would think they would celebrate the fact that American oil producers are making us less dependent upon Russian oil every single day.

But can’t wind and solar make the U.S. less dependent upon foreign oil, too? Hardly.

Remember, wind and solar generate electricity, and oil is primarily used as a transportation fuel. There are no electric warplanes, warships, or tanks, and there probably never will be, so the electricity generated by wind and solar will probably never actually be much use for the military.

Some people might argue that wind and solar could be used at military buildings, command centers, hospitals etc, but these buildings will never rely solely on wind and solar because they simply cannot generate electricity on demand.

Hawaii recently learned the hard way that solar panels cannot always provide electricity in the event that another power plant goes down. America’s security is too important to leave to part-time, unreliable energy sources like wind and solar that only show up to work when the weather cooperates. We need deployable sources of electricity like coal, nuclear, oil, and natural gas to ensure America’s military always has the energy they need.