Offshore drilling = junkie looking for that last fix
Watching our esteemed president further tarnish his legacy is usually humorous in a morbid sort of way. I secretly enjoy opening the newspaper to discover whatever fresh outrage against decency and sound policy has been cooked up in the West Wing today for sale to the public. Here is a perfect example:
"President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling and open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, asserting that those steps and others would lower gasoline prices and “strengthen our national security.”"
It would take years for any oil discovered in these places to come on-stream, making the claim about current, high gasoline prices ludicrous on its face. This is another in a long list of blatantly outrageous claims that the Bush Administration knows it can foist on an American public that is insufficiently well-informed to understand and disbelieve them (kind of like the subtle and not-so-subtle linking of Iraq to 9/11).
The claim about national security is also meaningless. Oil is a commodity traded around the world. From the perspective of American consumers, it doesn't matter very much where supply is located, just that it exists (if it's not near us, consumption of it by the people it is near will displace their consumption of oil that is closer to us). The real question is whether the modest amount of oil that drilling in ANWAR and off our coasts would produce would have any more than a marginal effect on the world price of oil. And the answer is: No.
Our problem is our total dependence upon a non-renewable, dirty form of energy that is controlled by screwed up countries. (I was going to write "happens to be controlled", but having oil actually positively causes countries to be screwed up. This is not just coincidence or correlation, but causation.)
Sucking up a bit more oil from our parks and shorelines in a vain effort to decrease the world price by a few pennies is not the answer. Investing in technology and infrastructure to get us off oil once and for all IS the answer.
"President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to end a federal ban on offshore oil drilling and open a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil exploration, asserting that those steps and others would lower gasoline prices and “strengthen our national security.”"
It would take years for any oil discovered in these places to come on-stream, making the claim about current, high gasoline prices ludicrous on its face. This is another in a long list of blatantly outrageous claims that the Bush Administration knows it can foist on an American public that is insufficiently well-informed to understand and disbelieve them (kind of like the subtle and not-so-subtle linking of Iraq to 9/11).
The claim about national security is also meaningless. Oil is a commodity traded around the world. From the perspective of American consumers, it doesn't matter very much where supply is located, just that it exists (if it's not near us, consumption of it by the people it is near will displace their consumption of oil that is closer to us). The real question is whether the modest amount of oil that drilling in ANWAR and off our coasts would produce would have any more than a marginal effect on the world price of oil. And the answer is: No.
Our problem is our total dependence upon a non-renewable, dirty form of energy that is controlled by screwed up countries. (I was going to write "happens to be controlled", but having oil actually positively causes countries to be screwed up. This is not just coincidence or correlation, but causation.)
Sucking up a bit more oil from our parks and shorelines in a vain effort to decrease the world price by a few pennies is not the answer. Investing in technology and infrastructure to get us off oil once and for all IS the answer.
posted by Moses Kagan at
2:07 PM
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