Conservation, efficiency and renewables will not soon bridge this enormous energy gap. Hobbling the energy system we have – and claiming we can replace it with costly technologies that don’t yet exist – puts people’s livelihoods, living standards and health at risk.

Locking up the oil and gas in our Outer Continental Shelf, Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and western states would force us to continue spending $300-500 billion a year on foreign oil – and forego up to $3 trillion in lease bonus, rent, royalty, and personal and corporate tax revenues.

Eliminating hydrocarbons and creating wind and solar jobs would require dismantling an existing infrastructure that provides abundant, reliable, affordable energy for homes, businesses, factories, hospitals, schools, and millions of jobs – and replacing it with a largely experimental system that would require legislative mandates, cost a trillion taxpayer dollars in subsidies, and likely result in net job losses.

Advocates of a carbon-free economy need to explain how we can ignore hydrocarbon revenues, spend enormous sums subsidizing renewable-energy and green-job programs, and operate homes and factories on expensive intermittent energy. They must prove America will be able to compete with a Europe that is backing away from green-energy and CO2-reduction pledges, to protect jobs – or with China and India, which are building new coal-fired power plants every week to power expanding industries.

They need to show how they will compensate American workers, families, business owners, investors and pensioners who will be adversely affected by anti-hydrocarbon and anti-nuclear policies. They must demonstrate why draconian global warming rules are needed, when global temperatures have been stable for nearly a decade, even as carbon dioxide levels have continued to rise.

The recent “stimulus” was signed into law without any hearings or debates – even without any member of Congress or the White House having an opportunity to read the legislation beforehand or understand what earmarks, subsidies, political payoffs, or major healthcare and energy policies were buried in its 1033 pages. As Fortune magazine has noted, the Administration has put a “premium on speed” – speed to “take advantage of a crisis to put in place a Democratic vision of government’s role, speed to pass major legislation while the President is riding high in the polls.”

However, for reasons just noted, transparency, discussion and debate on energy, environmental and economic issues are essential. That is why Maine-based Exception Magazine, Washington-based DC Progress, and other analysts and public policy groups are committed to investigating claims about renewable energy, green-collar jobs, global warming and other current issues.

“Trust but verify” is as vital now as during the Reagan years. A vibrant, innovative America is far too priceless to sacrifice on the altar of environmental ideology.

We need more green-collar jobs. But we also need to safeguard existing jobs, examine claims carefully and dispassionately – and avoid killing the energy we have, while we develop new energy for the future.