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The presidential candidates want to thrive in the campaign season. The country needs a comprehensive strategy to reduce our use of oil
Published on Wednesday, Jun 25, 2008
McCain wants to appear responsive, and his new position has more merit than his earlier pandering, calling for a summer holiday from the federal gas tax. Barack Obama rightly has resisted the summer holiday, yet he pushes his own misguided idea, a windfall profits tax on oil companies, something that was tried and failed in the Jimmy Carter era.
The national moratorium on off-shore drilling dates to roughly the same time. McCain and others argue the energy landscape has changed dramatically enough that a reassessment of the ban is necessary. The country won't soon, if ever, break free from oil. With that in mind, and knowing, too, the development could take two decades, why not opt for domestic sources, as opposed to depending further on Saudi Arabia and others, keeping the oil wealth here rather than transferring the riches abroad?
Norway and Britain have tapped into oil off their coasts without environmental calamities.
Troubling, of course, is that short of calamity is the steady degradation of the ocean environment, the drilling generating much waste and pollution. More, estimates are the available oil amounts to 19 billion barrels, or seven months of global consumption, a seeming spit in view of the many decades framing the debate. Finally, there are the political hurdles, and they extend beyond the concerns of the Sierra Club. Jeb Bush (not long ago the Florida governor) has opposed off-shore drilling. Even Republicans want states to have the final word. Think California, and its Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, soon will embrace drilling in coastal waters?
Ever since President Bush pressed the Democratic Congress to reverse the moratorium by July Fourth, Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and others have reminded the White House about the president's declaration that the country must address its addiction to oil. By taking another big swig of the black crude? The point is, any discussion of off-shore drilling must take place in the context of developing a comprehensive energy and environmental policy (yes, with climate change in mind).
In that way, $4-per-gallon gas represents an opportunity to develop a credible market for renewable sources of energy, for demanding greater energy efficiency, for thinking anew about mass transit and nuclear power plants. Americans have little leverage for easing the current squeeze. The country can get smart now about facing the inevitable energy challenges of the next decade and beyond.
Get the full article here.
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