The Supply-Side Cure to the Energy Crisis

Here is a specific agenda: Federal legislation should provide that half the royalties from offshore drilling in federal areas more than 3 miles at sea go to the states on whose coasts the drilling occurs. The other half should go into a pool to be distributed to the other states. This would give coastal states a sufficient incentive to overcome unreasoned local opposition to such drilling.

Federal legislation also should seriously streamline the process for building new nuclear power plants. All new construction stopped on this front because the regulatory approval process was starting to drag out more than ten years. One big problem was that extremist groups were allowed to sue and become party to regulatory approval proceedings, at which point they followed a practice of trying to talk the approval process to death with scare tactics and uninformed claims.

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