Drilling For Ignorance

Maybe it's time for Republicans to lighten up on the energy debate.

With gasoline prices rising again, Republican presidential candidates are accusing President Obama of not doing enough to get prices in the opposite direction, suich as drilling for more oil. Obama shot back today in Miami, pointing out that his administration has drilled, baby, drilled - all over the place, with drilling increasing fourfold since he took office in January 2009. But with demand for oil in countries like China and India rising, Obama points out, gasoline prices are bound to go up based on global market demand. And generous subsidies still keep gasoline half as expensive as it is in European countries. If gasoline were sold in the United States at prices genuinely based on the free market that Republicans worship, we'd be paying as much as the French and the Germans.

Republicans, of course, are going to ignore these stubborn facts. They will also ignore the huge profits oil companies are raking in, as well as the fact that the U.S. now exports more oil than it imports - qualifying us for OPEC membership. They'll continue to insist on two-dollar-per-gallon gas. Of course, if we hadn't gotten addicted to big cars, if we had more mass transit, if Republican governors didn't keep canceling high-speed rail projects (as has happened twice in Florida in the past fifteen years), if more people could walk to work, and if more people could bike to work, as the mayor of Montclair, New Jersey does, how likely would Republicans even be starting conversations based on such asinine talking points? As I type, the House is pushing for dedicated spending for highways only, and mass transit projects like the Second Avenue Subway in New York City are aberrations rather than norm in this country.

Texas populist Jim Hightower once said that if ignorance were as valuable as oil, he'd want drilling rights on George Bush's head. He was referring to the elder George Bush. But if ignorance were as valuable as oil, the combined heads of both George Bushes wouldn't even pay half as many dividends as those of the four remaining candidates for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

By the way, I have a message for those who bitch about high gas prices but won't ride a bus: Get a subcompact. You'll find a subcompact more nimble and fun than your SUV. Get a Chevrolet Sonic, and help an American autoworker keep his job.

You Know The Drill

I wish this were an April Fool's Day joke, but it's really true that President Obama is opening the waters off the southern Atlantic coast of the United States, parts of the Arctic Ocean, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico to offshore oil drilling. He says it will help the economy and produce more jobs. Did a Sarah Palin mole replace environmental employment expert Van Jones as a White House point man on energy policy?

President Obama defended his decision as being part of a wider picture, saying that the United states needs to consider all possible energy sources -not just renewable ones - as part of a broad strategic plan to make itself independent of foreign energy sources. But what's to be gained from going from a dependence on foreign oil to a dependence on domestic oil? It's still more of a dependence on oil, and it gives us an excuse to continue an oil-based living pattern, encouraging more cars, more large cars and SUVs, more pollution, and more suburban sprawl. We don't need more oil. We need more biofuels, solar power, wind power, and, if there really is such a thing as clean coal, more of that. The jury is still out on natural gas.

We don't need the sprawl more oil will encourage, but rather, more walkable neighborhoods and towns. We need more mass transit, more small cars, and a gasoline tax to encourage such a living pattern. This decision by the President will just make our suburban lifestyle, with all of the driving and petrochemically grown foodstuffs that support it, last a little longer.

Many Democratic lawmakers, such as Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey and Benjamin Cardin of Maryland, are opposed to this plan, afraid of oil spills polluting their states's beaches. Southern politicians support it, even those from would-be affected Southern coastal states. Good, I hope they get gobs of oil on their private beaches. To be fair, President Obama excluded the pristine Bristol Bay off the southwestern coast of Alaska and all of the Pacific coastline of the continental U.S. (which includes the Democratic states of Washington, Oregon, and California). The President sought to strike a balance in the quest for a compromise. But as the deals over the extension of slavery proved, compromises usually resolve nothing. They just perpetuate bad situations that can erupt into something worse.

Isn't there anyone advising the President on a green economy right now? Not likely. If there were, Glenn Beck would have hounded him out of office just like he did to Van Jones.