Republican leaders — in the White House, Congress and on the presidential campaign trail — are pitching a flawed, misleading plan to stem the rise in gasoline prices.
Presumptive presidential nominee John McCain, long an opponent of expanded oil drilling off U.S. coastlines, reversed his position last month, and President Bush and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) have joined him in calling for more offshore exploration to increase the domestic supply. They’re drawing a false line between such drilling and short-term gas prices, attempting to sell anxious Americans on the idea that they’re doing something meaningful about the latter.
They’re not. Putting a significant dent in short-term gas prices isn’t within the government’s power.
In a May Gallup poll, 57 percent of respondents said they were willing to allow new drilling in coastal and wilderness areas — if it had the potential to reduce gas prices. McCain became a proponent of such drilling a short time later.
But the Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration reported last year that even if new offshore leases began by 2012, production couldn’t begin until 2017. The global energy market would simply absorb the relatively small increase in supply, the report said, making any impact on prices “insignificant.”
The United States, still by far the world’s leading consumer of petroleum, doesn’t have nearly enough supply to drill its way to lower prices, or to oil independence. Besides, the need to reduce carbon emissions to lessen the impact of climate change makes it imperative that we reduce our use of oil.
Quick, easy solutions don’t exist. What’s needed is a new paradigm that combines serious conservation and the development of alternative energy sources, particularly for automobiles. With biofuels falling out of favor for good reasons, cars that run primarily on electricity appear to be the best immediate answer.
To that end, McCain is right that viable alternatives such as wind and solar energy are an important but limited part of the answer. To keep our dynamic economy growing, larger-scale options like nuclear power need to be on the table for discussion. Finding ways to deal with its significant downsides should be a focus of the energy debate.
Calls to expand offshore drilling as a way to lower gas prices are just a cheap ploy for votes, one that distracts from the real energy debate the nation needs to hear. With nearly four months remaining before election day, there’s still time for it.
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